It's not the scalpers. It's Nvidia and it's partners selling cards directly to "clients". There are a total of 25 6800XT's based in North America when I checked Ebay this morning (shipping to Canada). Just after the launch of Nvidia's 3000 series there was a picture posted of a mining farm with 78 cards. That was more cards than was available in all of Canada. The other thing is the 3080 is still impossible to find retail but you can actually get one in a prebuilt. That is also outside of the manufacturer/distributor/retailer pipeline at either the 1st or 2nd point in the process. The only thing that bothers me about the whole thing is how some in the Community are quick to blame anyone other than Nvidia. Where is AMD in the argument you might say well Nvidia only makes GPUs while AMD is using the same 7nm for Consoles, CPUs and GPUs at time when the interest in electronic Gaming is at an all time high.
I agree with some of your points, with the exception of actual stock levels.
I have seen wild assertions of single digit allocation for a large country/consumer base which is patently false.
Also, worth mentioning, OEM always get first dibs on parts, not just GPU, but chipsets and CPUS as well.
It is easier and far more profitable for AMD/Nvidia/Intel to sell bulk pack/Tray/etc products to an OEM like HP/Dell/etc than to DIY users, this is purely due to scale and lack of end user support.
Thats the same way you see that even when consumer CPUs can be on shortage, there is rarely a shortage for enterprise... This is because there is a tiering system in regards to allocation, and all companies involved know what their bread and butter is.
This is not just electronics either, for example, I spent a decent stint of my career working in automotive which I guess would explain why I tend to lean into parallels with that industry.
But, we have all seen "fleet vehicles" and just so you know, i have seen when parts such as transmissions or engines were on shortage at GM, and they opted to equip base model stripped down fleet vehicles versus building consumer cars where they make more profit. The reason is, they know who pays the bills at the end of the day and less hassle to deal with as well.