With scalping, I know that I can get a ticket at at least some price. If I want to go to an event bad enough, I can pay more and get a ticket.
Without scalping, it doesn’t matter how badly I want to go to an event, if I am not lucky enough or fast enough, or able to wait in line, I can’t get a ticket.
Scalping does provide a value… it creates liquidity in the market.
The market is supposed to serve the people, not the other way around.
That already happens today. It's just that competition provides a counterbalance to foodmakers raising their price to infinity.
Why should tickets to a Rammstein concert sell for any price but what people are willing to pay for? This isn't exactly food or healthcare we're talking about.
Substitute X for whatever you want, and any affirmative response would be equivalent to saying "nobody should have X except the rich". If you agree with that sentence, then that's no other argument I can bring to the table.
Sounds like a plot to a dystopian movie to me.
I disagree with your opinion. Money is just a middleman - and a mathematical device used by the cunning to take everything away from everyone else and essencially enslave the world.
Food, water and shelter is obvious. Is there anything else you consider important except those three? If not, would you be willing to live a life where the only things available to you are food, water and shelter - i.e. a life of a prison inmate, or a labour slave?
You have incorporated the word "important" into your opinion, but you haven't explained what you mean by that word. Walking away from a discussion like that without explaining what you mean by the (subjective) word you used is nothing short of rude. Especially combined with the snarky remark about your own entertainment.
If you want to spill out your opinions, without engaging in further discussion when asked, feel free to open a personal blog.
If you are one of the wealthiest people perhaps you should consider the fact that you have been pretty lucky in life already, even if you sometimes can't attend a concert you really wanted to.
> There were hundreds of tickets available for around $25 the day of the concert.
This was not the case in Los Angeles even for general admission or the nosebleeds, and especially not if you want to be at the very front. Why you saw $25 tickets in Philly, I have no idea. I don't think I've ever been to one of their shows in the United States where tickets were as cheap as $25 for presale.
I've never paid more than $40 for a show in the east.
Something everyone can afford isn't a luxury. Food is a luxury in certain nations. Food is just another everyday regular bullshit item here in America, or in Sweden, or Denmark. Not everyone can afford a Rolls-Royce Cullinan. That's why it's a luxury SUV.
Ticket prices aren't really any different. First off, these tickets do have "fair" pricing, but what they don't have are protections. If I want to buy 153 tickets for $40 each so I can bring my entire extended family to an event, should I have the right to do that? I don't know. Obviously in America, I tend to lean more towards "yes" than "no".
I do agree with one of the posters above who said, "If someone really wants to go see a show, they'll pay whatever they have to pay." I do tend to agree with that. I don't even remember the last concert I've been to because, based on my experience, it's going to be hot, entirely too loud, entirely too distorted, and I could have a way better time in my home theater cranking a recording of a previous concert up to 50% volume and rocking out.
Frankly I don't even understand how someone could pay $50 to see a show, much less $250, but each to their own I guess.
Out of curiosity, do you wear concert earplugs? I get that some people prefer a controlled sound experience, but maybe your experience was subpar because of the loudness? I wore some concert earplugs from Amazon last weekend, everything sounded clear, and no ringing afterwards.
I think a fair price for flawless 2 carat diamonds is $100. Why won't anyone sell them to me at that price?
And more generally you can calculate a "fair" price by looking at costs and adding a comfortable profit margin on top.
Of course the concept of fair price is made up. The money itself is made up, it's just pieces of paper with serial numbers. Does that mean we all just have to bend down to every trickery ever invented by the rent seekers to extract value while bringing none? No, fuck rent seekers, their parasitic behavior ought to be punished by arbitrary rules.
Money is not sacred. The market is not sacred. It is supposed to serve people. Once it stops serving people, it ought to be changed.
Umm, that is literally how the food market works. The people selling food, including all the middle men, are selling it for as much as they can.
A sold out concert is like high end truffle... yes, they are crazy expensive, because they are rare and and in high demand. Most people can't afford to eat truffle often.
Most people have to eat cheaper food and don't get to eat truffles all the time. Because market sellers can sell their food at as high a price as they can get, more people are incentivized to produce food, and there ends up being enough food for most people to eat.
Of course the market isn't perfect, and we have to do things to make sure poor people don't starve, but that doesn't mean we stop using a market economy to allocate scarce resources.
Not to nitpick or take away from your point but this strategy is extremely myopic and counter-productive even from a maximum financial utility for the food producers as it eliminates the consumers gradually for their products destroying the demand side and the market altogether in the process.
People follow rules of the market. Market is those rules. "The market isn't real" isn't really an argument here, when you're using the mechanisms of the market itself as an argument.
> Are you proposing to force them to serve cheaper or perhaps for free?
No, I'm proposing we stop people from opportunistically extracting value without bringing any.
If you're an artist, and want to price your tickets at 1000$, and people still buy it - more power to you. If I want a cheaper show, I'll wait for another band I like to make a cheaper show.
But if you're a scalper who buys all the 10$ tickets to a show, then resells them at 100$ - effectively removing the choice of even attending a 10$ show - then you should be stopped, and, if possible, punished by law, as you're only extracting value without providing any.
The businessman philosophy of "let's price things as much as we can get away with" inevitably leads to standards of living getting shittier and shittier. Isn't the whole argument of capitalism that "competition will create abundance"? Add scalpers to the equation, and the whole argument goes down the drain. Scalping is philosophically inconsistent with capitalism.
You might be able to, but lots of people can't afford to do that. You seem to be assuming that the people who want to go the most will pay the most, thus leading to meritocratic distribution of tickets. In reality, it will just skew concert attendance towards the wealthy who can afford to pay even if they're not that fussed about going.
Also it’s been established the artists are often hiding behind scalpers to sell tickets at true market prices, whilst appearing to sell them at “fair” prices.
Not everyone can live in the best location, not everyone can drive the best car, not everyone can attend the best concert. There is no other way when many people want something that is in limited supply - someone will be left out.
Wealth is a proxy for the amount of services provided to others earlier, so why giving tickets in exchange for that is less fair than giving tickets to the one who clicked first?
It's a bad thing because wealth is a poor measure of the amount of services provided to others. And because while someone will always be left out, it's much better if it's not the same people always getting left out. Being able to click first is more accessible to more people, although I'd argue it isn't great either, and some kind of random lottery system might be better.
It's the best we have though.
Otherwise, should we also randomly distribute best homes, or whatever else is in limited supply?
Isn't it better than pure luck, even if luck plays a part in wealth?
Source? I don't think the research agree with that statement.
Yeah right. How many services has Elon Musk's toddler given to others, and how much have you?
Note that one of the strong drivers making people take risks, work shitty jobs, and otherwise do things that others don't want to do is exactly this -- providing for their families.
If I can be wealthy without providing others services, then my wealth is certainly a poor proxy for how many services I have provided.
That alone would wipe out everyone who doesn't want to go but wants to resell for a profit.
The rest works itself out within the margin of error... if you want the tickets be there at opening.
And before someone else replies in bad faith like the comment I'm replying to did... maybe along the lines of "well what if your internet cuts out!!! or you get hit by a bus at that moment!!!": that's the margin of error.
You can't have a perfect meritocracy but you can have a better one.
So now instead of discriminating against people who don’t have enough money, now you are discriminating against people with busy lives who can’t be there right when the tickets go on sale.
Also, you would still end up with people who were there right when the tickets go on sale and still didn’t get any.
I don’t think your method is any more of a meritocracy.
If you can't figure out how biasing sales towards people who want to go to a concert is more meritorious than allowing people who want to resell for more than face in a context where "merit" is literally "wanting to see the show", you need to take a long hard sit and really think this one out.
You cannot have perfect system in real life, but you can move away from enabling people with no interest at all in the event to just those who at least had a cursory enough interest when they're not profiting.
Come on, let's get real here!
It is possible (and would depend on demand elasticity and proportion of tickets scalped) that scalpers might have an incentive to intentionally remove tickets in the same way a monopolist has incentive to artificially restrict supply. If prices on the remaining tickets increase more than the price of the unsold ticket, they’re money ahead.
This probably isn’t happening, but could in theory.
Scalpers increase market demand just as much as people that actually want to go and the only person profiting here is the scalper, who is not really deserving to do so here.
If you are going to increase price with demand, at least let it go to the people behind the event/artist in a fair way.
But the only reason that scalping is profitable is that more people want to go to these events at the original ticket price than there are seats available.
> If you are going to increase price with demand, at least let it go to the people behind the event/artist in a fair way.
I agree with this. When a show sells out in 5 minutes, the organizers should take note and charge more the next show.
In general yes, however I have seen plenty of events that didn't sell out and scalpers where left still selling tickets and perhaps some people only knew about sites like ViaGoGo so bought of there.
I'm sure times when demand closely matches supply, it's still going to the scalpers because they get in there first.
And OFC, they will charge you way ABOVE what would be the free market price of the ticket, i.e. the amount you would have to offer to find an individual willing to sell you their ticket, if the direct sales ended up to fans instead of the scalpers.
They charge exactly the free market price of the ticket, which does not necessarily have any relationship to the face price.
i.e. the amount you would have to offer to find an individual willing to sell you their ticket, if the direct sales ended up to fans instead of the scalpers.
This doesn't make sense. If you had a magical way of allocating tickets to the people who genuinely most wanted to attend, the price you'd pay to get one of those people to sell you their ticket would be even higher.
All that is needed to stop scalping is to price the tickets appropriately when they are first issued.
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See how pointless this type of comment is? What exact information are you trying to convey here? "I disagree"? Do you consider that your disagreement alone is supposed to be a valid argument?
I do agree with you that the solution should be to have the artist make the money… they should raise ticket prices or us an auction system to match the price to the demand.
Except it does matter how badly you want to go... if you really want to go but you don't want to wait in line, and someone else also badly wants to go, and they do want to wait... they want it more. They deserve it.
So really you're against a meritocracy based on how badly someone wants to go to the concert, and instead want to define merit based on discretionary income.
It takes some self-awareness but people really need to take themselves out of their bubbles before they speak. I can't imagine people who don't live in the HN bubble saying things like "if I really want to go I can just pay more, duh" it's a bad look that's the root if why people look down on "techies" as being aloof and socially backwards.
Because the limited supply usually isn't there and artificially created for the sole purpose of rising prices. For tickets you can see this happening when there are suddenly lots of tickets available all over the radio and tv shows a week or so before the event (since they have to fill up all the unsold places).
How exactly is scalping "free market"? It is a textbook definition of artificial scarcity.
Also, "market liquidity" is just fine, without the help of the scalpers. If you want that bad to go to a concert, just post how much you're willing to pay for a ticket on a couple of FB groups. If you're willing to give 2x - 4x the face value, I'm pretty sure someone will be willing to part with their ticket.
Buying up a bunch of diamonds from DeBeers and reselling them isn't artificial scarcity. It's just scarcity that people don't like.
If you could afford to buy ALL of the DeBeers stock, it would have a similar effect on the diamonds market: You could charge the poor sods that are desperate to get engaged ASAP 4x the price DeBeers charged.
No, artificial scarcity is for things that there could be an unlimited amount of, but that the seller artificially restricts the supply of. The limit on the number of seats at a concert is real, and scalpers don't change it.
> If you want that bad to go to a concert, just post how much you're willing to pay for a ticket on a couple of FB groups. If you're willing to give 2x - 4x the face value, I'm pretty sure someone will be willing to part with their ticket.
What's the difference between the person who would sell me a ticket in your example and the scalpers we have today?
Since the "unlimited amount of" anything doesn't exist in the real world, replace the "unlimited" with "sufficient", and the concept of artificial scarcity can be applied to scalping again. If scalpers sell tickets at 4x the face value, they don't need to sell them all to make a profit - they only need to sell more than 25%. All the others can go to waste, and scalpers are still profiting.
That's, again, textbook artificial scarcity.
There's no such thing as "unlimited amount" of anything that involves the physical world.
> What's the difference between the person who would sell me a ticket in your example and the scalpers we have today?
Everyone involved would be better-off. Except for the scalpers. Simple as that.
I can believe that. Offhand, I can't think of any examples of artificial scarcity that don't involve digital goods.
> Everyone involved would be better-off. Except for the scalpers. Simple as that.
I'm saying that the seller in your example is a scalper.
They're not. Intent and quantity are the defining traits of scalpers. If you're buying a single ticket with original intent to use it, you are not a scalper.
It isn't, at all. There are a limited number of seats in a physical venue, and this is what gives tickets their value. There is nothing artificial about their scarcity.
That's invalid economic reasoning. Tickets are a monopoly market with a fixed supply. The monopolist (band/label) can issue tickets at whatever price they want, but once that price and quantity is set, additional resellers are only rent extracting, they are gouging consumer surplus and providing zero service in return - the exact same number of tickets are sold to the exact same show.
There are many legitimare reasons for a band to issue tickets bellow market clearing prices, i.e. leave some fans with money in their pockets even if they would be willing to pay more. For example, building a long term relation with their fan base, providing a good service for a "fair" price etc. Essentially it's a gift economy where people exchange more values than just money (trust, appreciation, artistic expression etc.); the scalper is throwing sand in that transaction by maximizing its own financial revenue.
Yes, economic substitutes exist for almost all human needs except perhaps air and water, not really pertinent to this debate.
But often tickets are sold below the market price, and scalpers insert themselves and suck up the difference while providing next to no value in exchange.
Without scalping, the band sells tickets for $X and nearly everyone who wants to go is able to buy a ticket for $X.
With scalping, the band sells tickets for $X, the scalpers buy a large fraction of them or even all of them for $X each, and then sells them for much more than $X each.
This doesn't let people go who otherwise would not have been able to. It just makes them all pay more to do so.
And in this imaginary 'free market', the ones with most money buy the political power and the fastest bots.
It's literally the scalper who's acquired a near monopoly on the supply and is setting the price, not the "free market". Not every dog-eat-dog situation pertains to free market.
This isn't the free market at first place, it's artificially limiting supply and price gouging as Viagogo provides strictly no added value upon the official ticket retailer. None.
It allows people who are willing to pay more to attend, when they otherwise wouldn't have been able to. That's an added value. You can argue that that's outweighed by the loss to people who really wanted to go and who can't afford the market-clearing price, but it's false that zero people benefit.