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Comment by NLips | Hacker News Reader

This is incorrect. There's a false equivalence between the fans who want to see the gig the most and the fans who are willing to spend the most. The current system means that people with lots of money who aren't super interested will out compete raging fans on low incomes.

I'm not suggesting that basing it on first come, first served is ideal, but I think it's probably fairer.

If an event organiser/ticketer wants to use dynamic pricing, that's up to them. Sometimes they don't want to be cause they'd rather build or reward loyalty. Maybe they want to make sure that low income households have a decent chance of getting tickets.

The system above is advocating for efficient markets over everything else.

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> There's a false equivalence between the fans who want to see the gig the most and the fans who are willing to spend the most.

This is how scarce resources are allocated. There is no fairer way to decide who wants something the most than to ask who is willing to give up the most to acquire it.

> If an event organiser/ticketer wants to use dynamic pricing, that's up to them.

Absolutely. And if a third party wants to buy tickets at the offered price, that's up to them.

"...There is no fairer way to decide..."

Now, this seems unimaginative. Surely, especially given all the feedback and critique on this thread, you can come up with other factors besides price that should influence fairness in this transaction?

We may decide that introducing other factors (like band loyalty or degree of enthusiasm for the show) is difficult, impractical, or threatens entrenched interests, but that's another issue.

We can't let enthusiasm for the allocation properties of markets ("it's Pareto optimal!") bleed over into value judgements about the outcome ("...so we all agree it's most fair!").

> There is no fairer way to decide who wants something the most than to ask who is willing to give up the most to acquire it.

What is 'the most' for one may be pocket change for another.

> There is no fairer way to decide who wants something the most than to ask who is willing to give up the most to acquire it.

A $200 scalped ticket is a few hour's work for us in the IT bubble. A $100 original ticket is a few day's work for someone on the minimum wage. Who is willing to give up the most in this case?

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