Sure, but some fan wasn't going to make it either way.
Why should the fan who is willing to pay more money have to miss out, in favour of a fan who is paying less money?
Why should the fan who is willing to pay more money have to miss out, in favour of a fan who is paying less money?
The Artist (ie the provider of the 'value') is not making more profit, they have set what they feel their work is worth. Scalpers add no value and simply take. Automation of scalping is bad for everybody involved (edit: except of course the scalpers themselves), as typically bots will buy out tickets to popular events extremely quickly, leaving legitimate fans out in the cold.
If the performer were concerned about actually helping poorer people attend (rather than simply virtue-signaling), they could raise the ticket price to market value, and implement a lottery system for some block of tickets, similar to what the producers of Hamilton do. Best of both worlds!
Yes, that's what money represents in the current society. You might as well ask whether people with higher income are more "deserving" of better houses, schools, cars, holidays, restaurants, airplane seats. I don't know why concert tickets should deserve a different treatment.
On the contrary, it's extremely good for legitimate fans who e.g. have a job and can't take time off to buy tickets at the exact minute they were released.
He obviously is willing to give you more, so give it to him. That's fair. That's life.
EDIT: And if you sell it to me for $1000, don't be surprised if I turn around and sell it to the $2000 guy. He wants it more than I do, and he's going to get it one way or another.
It's three people offering me $1000 for something, I give it to you because you're the first person. Then, you turn around and say "hey, I'm selling this for $2000 because I never wanted it in the first place!"
The two other people who were waiting can't afford it. Some other guy comes along later who can afford it and pays up.
It's not fair, it's one of the nasty grimy sides of capitalism.
Scalpers are 100% middle-men who don't add value. The tickets would sell at base cost. All they do is artificially inflate the value of tickets.
Economic theory would say that
1) value, in contrast to price, is personal. Everything has a different value to everyone. For instance, it's a good bet French books have more value to me than to you, because I actually speak that language.
2) inflating value is impossible. Cannot be done
So scalpers inflate the price, not the value. And only because of an inefficient market. Why is a lower price market inefficient ? It's not at equilibrium. That means there are either shortages or oversupply. And indeed : your complaint points out exactly that : a shortage.
The scalpers actually do provide services for that profit :
1) they maintain ticket availability far beyond the original sale
2) they take risk away from the artist (some scalpers even in cooperation with the artist)
(I bet real scalpers would also point out that both of these, the investment and the extended availability involve actual work that needs to be done. As in answering mails, posting stuff online, going out to sell the tickets, ...)
So you're wrong on both fronts. They neither inflate value, nor do they lack services.
And frankly, the only person who can solve this for real is the artist : if they find a way to do enough shows so everyone can watch, that is (obviously) the only way to guarantee everyone can make it. This is not hard, but because of the risk rarely done. Ironically, more and earlier scalping is one of the things that would make it a lot easier for the artist to do this, at least financially. Some artists do this, but perhaps that is more work for less (average) reward for the artist.
Given these incentives, I would expect firstly that artists and venues would scalp tickets themselves, and secondly that all attempts at stomping out scalping will both make the problem worse and merely be a method to guarantee more profit for the designated scalpers. Of course in practice those are also exactly the people who don't want to take the financial risk, and so you'll have pussyfooting all around, lack of conviction, general complaints by everyone, and screwups.
By artificially and significantly suppressing it in the first place.
Saying that they maintain ticket availability for longer, it's a zero-sum game. The only reason those tickets are around longer than they otherwise would be, is because alternate purchasers were unable to get them.
Put another way, if 100 tickets at $50 sell out in a day, and scalped at $500 sell out in a month, yes, the same amount of tickets is sold. But 'ticket availability lasting for a month' is only there because the scalper has removed the ticket availability for the $50 purchasers.
Economic theory say that this isn't true. They should sell out at similar speed regardless of reselling happening or not.
And from personal experience: efficient markets are better than inefficient markets. I've seen quite a few inefficient markets and they're ... well they're stupid. They impose ridiculous costs (like having to F5 continuously so you can "deal" with the shortage, but that's quite a trivial one).
And yes, scalpers make the market more efficient.
The presence or absence of scalpers does not change the basic problem : not enough spaces for everyone who wants to go. That cannot be solved by introducing rules against scalpers. In fact, the opposite is true. Seriously, the opposite approach would likely improve matters far more : create a large-scale scalping company that would pre-purchase large amounts of tickets as an investment and resell them later. The presence of this company would massively improve ticket availability by enabling and incentivizing artists to make more spaces available, and this would make everyone's life better.
If people want to take a libertarian approach, why don't you say it is the person selling the tickets prerogative to do every legal thing in their power to limit prices. It is their show after all.
It would be as if I started selling piggy back rides to my friends for $10. When some random guy realizes my friends really like piggy back rides (for whatever strange reason), so he buys all my piggy back rides. I'm all booked. He then turns around and tries to sell them to my friends for $20. What the scalper apologist arguments are saying is that any attempt by me to tell this scalper to get lost is somehow wrong, because I am disturbing the natural order of things. It doesn't take into account that I care who I carry.
To be clear, I'm not saying artists only selling to "poor people" is the sole right way or something of that sort. I'm just arguing against saying that second price auction is the only way to do things.
But audience are not fungible. If you are to spend an evening with someone there are more important considerations involved than who will pay you the most money to do it, and trying to buy their way to that privilege could be a strong negative indicator.
They shouldn't necessarily have to. They should have to do the same amount of waiting in line, or struggling with whatever online box office system is in place.
Having more money doesn't imply being more deserving of going to an event. Without scalpers it would be more about the effort and desire to attend.
If you don't have time because you're working too much, consider that a sacrifice you're making to be more wealthy.
Funny how we scramble to defend making anything that needs investment in time/effort/emotion/people, but can't be bought, into something that can eventually be purchased by someone with enough wealth. As if that's the most just state of affairs.
I don't see the funny.
By funny I mean tragic.
They're not advocating a free market and society, they're advocating a serf market and society.
The artists are who create scarcity, by virtue of not having enough capacity to serve all fans willing the pay the retail price of the ticket. (Or by not doing tiered pricing, cheaper ticket distribution by lottery, etc.)