4 ms·

This really feels like treating the invisible hand like a religion. At all costs, price controls must be avoided! The will of the merchant is irrelevant! Th

This really feels like treating the invisible hand like a religion. At all costs, price controls must be avoided! The will of the merchant is irrelevant! The only thing that matters is maximizing profit- any other solution would commit the heresy of denying power to wealth! Seriously - either background checks, or rent out yankee stadium? No solutions in between?

ikeboy 10y ago
What will of the merchant here is being thwarted? The question was how to fulfil the merchant's desires, and I gave several possible answers. As long as there's more demand than supply, some mechanism will allocate the scarce supply to the buyers who want it most in the sense of being willing to pay the most for it. Any other system cannot be pareto-optimal.
- knodi123 10y ago
  > What will of the merchant here is being thwarted? Allowing poor fans the opportunity to get in to a show. > I gave several possible answers No, you gave two. And the background check one was so ludicrous that you probably should have kept it to yourself. And you missed the most obvious, don't allow ticket resale. No need for hundreds of expensive financial investigations, and you don't have to rent out a stadium. Dedicated fans can still get a ticket, regardless of their wealth. Mission accomplished.
  - ikeboy 10y ago
    Why can't they meet the demand by renting a larger venue? Banning ticket resale is also expensive at scale.
    - soundwave106 10y ago
      At some point, there's a limit to practical venue size. Football stadiums are probably the most common large venue readily available to rent, and that will only hold at maximum 60-100K. Large outdoor venues can hold a lot more people than that, but the logistics probably are a lot harder (most large outdoor events go for the "festival" approach, for all I know it is not worth it to do that scale for single artist events). TBH I imagine (as implied in the article) scalping is "tolerated" a bit by venues because some of the risk of a dud event is offloaded to the scalpers. The main problem with high priced concerts is probably more in artist image. It's harder to have a "mass market" friendly image if your concert tickets are not really accessible to the "mass market". Branding is critical for artists; if chasing the short term dollar is bad for the brand, it may not be the best thing to do long term. Allocating a section of low cost tickets via ID based lottery (ala Hamilton) is a great solution for this in my opinion.
    - knodi123 10y ago
      > Why can't they meet the demand by renting a larger venue? For a variety of reasons. If Sting reunites with The Police and goes on tour- sure, rent a football stadium. Some bands prefer smaller, more intimate venues. Some may have a hard time competing for the limited spaces at larger venues. Some may choose to avoid that level of fame. Who knows? It's none of my business. Bands are always free to chase as much fame as they want, and to make their own policies about pricing or resale or whatever. I just think it's a little dystopian to say they're required to zealously follow some sort of capitalist ideal. > Banning ticket resale is also expensive at scale. Checking tickets at the door doesn't get much more expensive if you also require showing an ID with a name that matches the name on the ticket. You can even use the barcodes on most IDs, no fiddly reading required! Remember, you're trying to keep out the people who capitalize on scale, so if somebody sneaks in with a resold ticket and a corresponding fake ID, who cares? A 99% solution is fine.
      - ikeboy 10y ago
        >require showing an ID with a name that matches the name on the ticket Then scalpers would just pre-sell tickets and buy it in the given name. There's an arms race and it's not easy to fight the market.
        knodi123 10y ago
        No, you show ID to buy the tickets too. This isn't brain surgery, folks- plenty of venues already do this. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to make scalping not worth the effort.

ikeboy 10y ago

What will of the merchant here is being thwarted? The question was how to fulfil the merchant's desires, and I gave several possible answers. As long as there's more demand than supply, some mechanism will allocate the scarce supply to the buyers who want it most in the sense of being willing to pay the most for it. Any other system cannot be pareto-optimal.

knodi123 10y ago
> What will of the merchant here is being thwarted? Allowing poor fans the opportunity to get in to a show. > I gave several possible answers No, you gave two. And the background check one was so ludicrous that you probably should have kept it to yourself. And you missed the most obvious, don't allow ticket resale. No need for hundreds of expensive financial investigations, and you don't have to rent out a stadium. Dedicated fans can still get a ticket, regardless of their wealth. Mission accomplished.
- ikeboy 10y ago
  Why can't they meet the demand by renting a larger venue? Banning ticket resale is also expensive at scale.
  - soundwave106 10y ago
    At some point, there's a limit to practical venue size. Football stadiums are probably the most common large venue readily available to rent, and that will only hold at maximum 60-100K. Large outdoor venues can hold a lot more people than that, but the logistics probably are a lot harder (most large outdoor events go for the "festival" approach, for all I know it is not worth it to do that scale for single artist events). TBH I imagine (as implied in the article) scalping is "tolerated" a bit by venues because some of the risk of a dud event is offloaded to the scalpers. The main problem with high priced concerts is probably more in artist image. It's harder to have a "mass market" friendly image if your concert tickets are not really accessible to the "mass market". Branding is critical for artists; if chasing the short term dollar is bad for the brand, it may not be the best thing to do long term. Allocating a section of low cost tickets via ID based lottery (ala Hamilton) is a great solution for this in my opinion.
  - knodi123 10y ago
    > Why can't they meet the demand by renting a larger venue? For a variety of reasons. If Sting reunites with The Police and goes on tour- sure, rent a football stadium. Some bands prefer smaller, more intimate venues. Some may have a hard time competing for the limited spaces at larger venues. Some may choose to avoid that level of fame. Who knows? It's none of my business. Bands are always free to chase as much fame as they want, and to make their own policies about pricing or resale or whatever. I just think it's a little dystopian to say they're required to zealously follow some sort of capitalist ideal. > Banning ticket resale is also expensive at scale. Checking tickets at the door doesn't get much more expensive if you also require showing an ID with a name that matches the name on the ticket. You can even use the barcodes on most IDs, no fiddly reading required! Remember, you're trying to keep out the people who capitalize on scale, so if somebody sneaks in with a resold ticket and a corresponding fake ID, who cares? A 99% solution is fine.
    - ikeboy 10y ago
      >require showing an ID with a name that matches the name on the ticket Then scalpers would just pre-sell tickets and buy it in the given name. There's an arms race and it's not easy to fight the market.
      - knodi123 10y ago
        No, you show ID to buy the tickets too. This isn't brain surgery, folks- plenty of venues already do this. It's not perfect, but it's good enough to make scalping not worth the effort.