Hacker News Reader

Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

Scalping is necessary for a lot of events. For instance, a few years back concert sales used to sell a year ahead of time. Who decides they want to go to a concert a year from now? So after a few days they're all sold out to scalpers. Maybe without scalpers they would get sold out by maybe 6 months. But who plans to go to a concert 6 months from now? It's unreasonable. So the alternative is to never get to go to concerts unless you're a fastidious planner.

The other side is even if you want to go to a concert and buy tickets a year ahead of time. What happens if something comes up? You can't resell them. Having the ability to resell your tickets is a huge value to people intending to go to the concert.

You can argue that there should be a better distribution mechanism and I agree, but scalpers are not the problem

View on HN

Scalpers buy with the intention of flipping tickets for higher prices.

They are effectively rent seeking parasites that distort the market and make things worst for regular people.

There’s nothing wrong with reselling tickets if something comes up, but if you buy up bulk tickets to flip them for profit that is scummy behavior.

>>[Scalpers] are effectively rent seeking parasites that distort the market and make things worst for regular people.>> I'm trying to understand this sentiment from a totally unsentimental, mechanical view of economics. I've always had a problem with the negative sentiment towards what people refer to as "price gouging" and it strikes me that scalping is similar.

>>if you buy up bulk tickets to flip them for profit that is scummy behavior.>> For me to relate to this, the "buy up bulk" part would have to be qualified. Does that mean buying so many that the market is cornered - hence forming a monopoly? If that's the case yes - I can ethically map monopolies and anti-competitive behavior to "scummy behavior".

But if, for whatever reason, I have some statistically non-significant amount of tickets - say 10 or 15 for a 50k-100k stadium event - and standing on the sidewalk outside, there is plenty of demand for those tickets at say double the original price, it's not clear to me how that is ethically problematic any more than the buying any other asset that you expect to appreciate.

But maybe what I'm describing does not fit the definition of "scalping"?

You didn't address any of my points as to why they exist. You're just using charged language to describe people working in a system that is kind of shitty for event goers. They're providing a service for people like me that may not want to buy tickets a year ahead of time, but rather keep that optionality to go open closer to the date of the event even if it means a higher price

Reselling != scalping

The system would work fine if there weren’t rent-seeking parasites who offer no service other than taking tickets off of the market that would go to regular people.

I told you the service that they offer, you're just choosing to ignore it. They buy and hold the tickets a year ahead of time and allow me to buy tickets to a concert or show up to the day the date of the show. If they misprice the tickets or get unlucky, they're stuck losing 100% of the amount they paid for it.

I wish artists sold tickets in batches starting a month or two out, but they don't. So this is the system we're stuck with.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com