7 ms·

seller agrees to sell ticket at $PRICE. buyer agrees to buy ticket at $PRICE. how is society hurt, here? the government banning this is immediately harmful:

by _dain_ 11mo ago

seller agrees to sell ticket at $PRICE. buyer agrees to buy ticket at $PRICE. how is society hurt, here? the government banning this is immediately harmful: it prevents a mutually agreeable trade that would otherwise have increased the utility of both parties.

mrtksn 11mo ago
People can't go to concerts despite being just as hardworking or just as big fans and start shooting CEOs on the streets. Some systems need to work and be accessible to everyone so we can sustain peaceful and healthy society. This is not charity, this is to account for externalities and the miscalculations in the free market. Awful lot of people are underpaid and overpaid as they progress through their lives because the markets are actually not that efficient and prices are not formed under perfect information or instantly. You want your mechanical engineers to be able to afford decent life even if all the market current wants is JavaScript engineers because when the tides shift you may end up needing mechanical engineers to produce physical stuff so you want them around and happy. Also, the price could actually be too low too when its optimized for short term profits. Re-sell 100GBP tickets for 500GBP, filter for money and leave out the actual fans and maybe lose all the events for the next year. If you are going to do a daytime robbery, better not ever need money again from the people you are robbing.
- _dain_ 11mo ago
  if they want to go to the concert they should pay the fair market price for a ticket. and in addition, they should refrain from murdering people, because murder is wrong. the high ticket prices incentivise the creation of new venues and the entrant of new artists into the market. they indicate that the music industry is not supplying concerts in sufficient quantity/quality as the market demands, or perhaps not in the right places or at the right times. prices are a signal; you outlaw them at your peril. this is a case where the monkey-brain fairness intuition is simply flat out 100% wrong. scalper economics has been studied for decades; it is known that banning these trades exacerbates shortages. lot of ppl in this thread who would not pass introductory microeconomics.
  - salawat 11mo ago
    >the high ticket prices incentivise the creation of new venues and the entrant of new artists into the market. Always amuses me that the wannabe market experts ascribe theory of mind to markets. Personal risk tolerance and ability to execute without starving is what constrains supply of talent, who are not intrinsically born with either the knowledge or capability to begin the market based transaction process. God (or your market) does not magically whip up concerts in response to spreadsheets. People taking risks do.
    - mrtksn 11mo ago
      Amazing isn’t it, people don’t want to think about the implementation details at all. Things just happen magically, if the market demands more concerts and less coders then programmers start doing concerts!
      - card_zero 11mo ago
        That sounds true, though. Some of the coders can play an instrument, or if that's not important these days they can sing through a filter and dance in spandex. It can be their day job, to support their coding hobby.
        mrtksn 11mo ago
        "Can play instrument" is almost never good enough to sell tickets, just like "is good with computers" isn't good enough to be a professional programmer.
        card_zero 11mo ago
        So, by diverse ways, the market can reassign suitable people to performing. For instance the programmer can go into sound engineering to replace a sound engineer who is now fulfilling an ambition to be on stage.
        11mo ago
- kakacik 11mo ago
  Not sure about your situation, but the only situation I ever experienced out there were scalpers getting ridiculous amounts of tickets beforehand, sometimes via shady contacts and then reselling them for profit. What about some middle ground - allow sale for and below the purchase price and punish severely any profiteering? The only reason scalpers do it is for money - if the punishment and risk are big enough it solved itself. Where I live, the biggest festival in whole country (Paleo @Switzerland) explicitly bans resale for some time and nobody real is complaining, its fair and tickets are sold within minutes of becoming available. The last point - if some psycho is starting to shoot others because they can't go to some fucking concert then the underlying condition needs to be targeted, not sweeping reality in front of them so they never trip on some obstacle in real life. 'Eat the rich' trope is stuff immature frustrated kids tell to peers, nothing more.
  - mrtksn 11mo ago
    Sure, the issue isn't ticket resale but profiteering that damages the scene. An alternative could be the tickets be assigned for the individual like plane tickets but be transferable so if someone is transferring tickets all the time you can block them.
  - WalterBright 11mo ago
    > The only reason scalpers do it is for money The only reason people work and run businesses is for money. Not doing it for money is called a "hobby", "charity" and "volunteering".
    - YeGoblynQueenne 11mo ago
      The "only" reason? What happened to "making the world a better place"?
- WalterBright 11mo ago
  > prices are not formed under perfect information There is no requirement for perfect information in order for a free market to function. The term for lack of perfect information is "risk" and is factored in to negotiations and the price.
  - card_zero 11mo ago
    I wonder what would happen in a world where sellers have instant information about how rich the buyer is, and they all raise the offered price accordingly, for every product.
    - mrtksn 11mo ago
      That's already being done at some scale to consumers but the actual monumental shift can happen if it can be done to everybody. People are leaving a lot of money on the table by not gauging the prices for individuals that can pay much much more. If Musk is thirsty and forgot to bring his bottle, it should be possible to sell him a billion dollar bottle of water. Anyone around him can just coordinate and gauge the price to the limit and share the profit. The profits from such a trade will greatly exceed the pay of any PA etc, if the opportunity arises just resign don't give him the water for the optimal deal.
      - card_zero 11mo ago
        If executed perfectly, I imagine this removes all incentive to make money, since you can't obtain any more stuff with more money. It wouldn't even be nicer water. Trading is cut off from ability to accomplish anything. This kills the economy.
        WalterBright 11mo ago
        All these theories have been tried one way or another. The only one that works is the free market, because the free market is the only one that relies on people being selfish. Any system that relies on unselfish behavior fails.
tombot 11mo ago
why can’t I just pay ticketmaster the face value, why must we allow another middleman to charges me more? because capitalism? na mate
- lotsofpulp 11mo ago
  "Face value" is constantly changing. Why must you forbid someone from buying and selling something? If the performer has a problem with it, they can easily enforce ID requirements that require whoever buys the ticket first to be the person that attends.
helsinkiandrew 11mo ago
That would be an auction. Now we have a situation where a third party gets between seller and buyer, purchases large quantities of tickets then sells them for an inflated price to the buyer and both buyer and seller feel ripped off.
- lotsofpulp 11mo ago
  That's not an auction. It's just entity A selling to entity B and entity B selling to entity C.
  - helsinkiandrew 11mo ago
    Sorry, I should have quoted what I was calling an auction from the comment: > a mutually agreeable trade that would otherwise have increased the utility of both parties.
matthewdgreen 11mo ago
Seller agrees to sell ticket at PRICE. Monopoly intermediate provider sells it at $PRICE+$markup. Monopoly intermediate provider sells it to a reseller, which artificially limits the supply available to buyers at any given moment. Buyers have to go to resellers, who then pay $markup2 back to the monopoly provider to transfer the ticket to the ultimate buyer. This may even repeat several times, resulting in the monopoly provider reaping more in markup fees than the seller receives for the actual product.
- lotsofpulp 11mo ago
  Original seller is free to sell it with the stipulation that original buyer is the only person that can use the ticket. However, entertainers have an image problem that conflicts with the desire to maximize profit. Entertainers are often times in the business of appealing to the broader public. But if they restrict their ticket sales to the highest bidder, then the broader public's appeal is limited. Having a third party engage in the price discrimination allows the entertainer's image to remain intact, while also collecting higher prices (perhaps not from the ticket sales directly, but the third party willing to pay more for the entertainer if the entertainer allows them to resell tickets).
sowbug 11mo ago
That argument should be equally valid for US healthcare, prison phone calls, price gouging during natural disasters, housing prices, and college tuition. Yet many people, possibly most people, feel something is broken.
hertzdonut 11mo ago
[dead]

by _dain_ 11mo ago

mrtksn 11mo ago

People can't go to concerts despite being just as hardworking or just as big fans and start shooting CEOs on the streets. Some systems need to work and be accessible to everyone so we can sustain peaceful and healthy society. This is not charity, this is to account for externalities and the miscalculations in the free market. Awful lot of people are underpaid and overpaid as they progress through their lives because the markets are actually not that efficient and prices are not formed under perfect information or instantly. You want your mechanical engineers to be able to afford decent life even if all the market current wants is JavaScript engineers because when the tides shift you may end up needing mechanical engineers to produce physical stuff so you want them around and happy. Also, the price could actually be too low too when its optimized for short term profits. Re-sell 100GBP tickets for 500GBP, filter for money and leave out the actual fans and maybe lose all the events for the next year. If you are going to do a daytime robbery, better not ever need money again from the people you are robbing.

_dain_ 11mo ago
if they want to go to the concert they should pay the fair market price for a ticket. and in addition, they should refrain from murdering people, because murder is wrong. the high ticket prices incentivise the creation of new venues and the entrant of new artists into the market. they indicate that the music industry is not supplying concerts in sufficient quantity/quality as the market demands, or perhaps not in the right places or at the right times. prices are a signal; you outlaw them at your peril. this is a case where the monkey-brain fairness intuition is simply flat out 100% wrong. scalper economics has been studied for decades; it is known that banning these trades exacerbates shortages. lot of ppl in this thread who would not pass introductory microeconomics.
- salawat 11mo ago
  >the high ticket prices incentivise the creation of new venues and the entrant of new artists into the market. Always amuses me that the wannabe market experts ascribe theory of mind to markets. Personal risk tolerance and ability to execute without starving is what constrains supply of talent, who are not intrinsically born with either the knowledge or capability to begin the market based transaction process. God (or your market) does not magically whip up concerts in response to spreadsheets. People taking risks do.
  - mrtksn 11mo ago
    Amazing isn’t it, people don’t want to think about the implementation details at all. Things just happen magically, if the market demands more concerts and less coders then programmers start doing concerts!
    - card_zero 11mo ago
      That sounds true, though. Some of the coders can play an instrument, or if that's not important these days they can sing through a filter and dance in spandex. It can be their day job, to support their coding hobby.
      - mrtksn 11mo ago
        "Can play instrument" is almost never good enough to sell tickets, just like "is good with computers" isn't good enough to be a professional programmer.
        card_zero 11mo ago
        So, by diverse ways, the market can reassign suitable people to performing. For instance the programmer can go into sound engineering to replace a sound engineer who is now fulfilling an ambition to be on stage.
        11mo ago
kakacik 11mo ago
Not sure about your situation, but the only situation I ever experienced out there were scalpers getting ridiculous amounts of tickets beforehand, sometimes via shady contacts and then reselling them for profit. What about some middle ground - allow sale for and below the purchase price and punish severely any profiteering? The only reason scalpers do it is for money - if the punishment and risk are big enough it solved itself. Where I live, the biggest festival in whole country (Paleo @Switzerland) explicitly bans resale for some time and nobody real is complaining, its fair and tickets are sold within minutes of becoming available. The last point - if some psycho is starting to shoot others because they can't go to some fucking concert then the underlying condition needs to be targeted, not sweeping reality in front of them so they never trip on some obstacle in real life. 'Eat the rich' trope is stuff immature frustrated kids tell to peers, nothing more.
- mrtksn 11mo ago
  Sure, the issue isn't ticket resale but profiteering that damages the scene. An alternative could be the tickets be assigned for the individual like plane tickets but be transferable so if someone is transferring tickets all the time you can block them.
- WalterBright 11mo ago
  > The only reason scalpers do it is for money The only reason people work and run businesses is for money. Not doing it for money is called a "hobby", "charity" and "volunteering".
  - YeGoblynQueenne 11mo ago
    The "only" reason? What happened to "making the world a better place"?
WalterBright 11mo ago
> prices are not formed under perfect information There is no requirement for perfect information in order for a free market to function. The term for lack of perfect information is "risk" and is factored in to negotiations and the price.
- card_zero 11mo ago
  I wonder what would happen in a world where sellers have instant information about how rich the buyer is, and they all raise the offered price accordingly, for every product.
  - mrtksn 11mo ago
    That's already being done at some scale to consumers but the actual monumental shift can happen if it can be done to everybody. People are leaving a lot of money on the table by not gauging the prices for individuals that can pay much much more. If Musk is thirsty and forgot to bring his bottle, it should be possible to sell him a billion dollar bottle of water. Anyone around him can just coordinate and gauge the price to the limit and share the profit. The profits from such a trade will greatly exceed the pay of any PA etc, if the opportunity arises just resign don't give him the water for the optimal deal.
    - card_zero 11mo ago
      If executed perfectly, I imagine this removes all incentive to make money, since you can't obtain any more stuff with more money. It wouldn't even be nicer water. Trading is cut off from ability to accomplish anything. This kills the economy.
      - WalterBright 11mo ago
        All these theories have been tried one way or another. The only one that works is the free market, because the free market is the only one that relies on people being selfish. Any system that relies on unselfish behavior fails.

tombot 11mo ago

why can’t I just pay ticketmaster the face value, why must we allow another middleman to charges me more? because capitalism? na mate

lotsofpulp 11mo ago
"Face value" is constantly changing. Why must you forbid someone from buying and selling something? If the performer has a problem with it, they can easily enforce ID requirements that require whoever buys the ticket first to be the person that attends.

helsinkiandrew 11mo ago

That would be an auction. Now we have a situation where a third party gets between seller and buyer, purchases large quantities of tickets then sells them for an inflated price to the buyer and both buyer and seller feel ripped off.

lotsofpulp 11mo ago
That's not an auction. It's just entity A selling to entity B and entity B selling to entity C.
- helsinkiandrew 11mo ago
  Sorry, I should have quoted what I was calling an auction from the comment: > a mutually agreeable trade that would otherwise have increased the utility of both parties.

matthewdgreen 11mo ago

Seller agrees to sell ticket at PRICE. Monopoly intermediate provider sells it at $PRICE+$markup. Monopoly intermediate provider sells it to a reseller, which artificially limits the supply available to buyers at any given moment. Buyers have to go to resellers, who then pay $markup2 back to the monopoly provider to transfer the ticket to the ultimate buyer. This may even repeat several times, resulting in the monopoly provider reaping more in markup fees than the seller receives for the actual product.

lotsofpulp 11mo ago
Original seller is free to sell it with the stipulation that original buyer is the only person that can use the ticket. However, entertainers have an image problem that conflicts with the desire to maximize profit. Entertainers are often times in the business of appealing to the broader public. But if they restrict their ticket sales to the highest bidder, then the broader public's appeal is limited. Having a third party engage in the price discrimination allows the entertainer's image to remain intact, while also collecting higher prices (perhaps not from the ticket sales directly, but the third party willing to pay more for the entertainer if the entertainer allows them to resell tickets).

sowbug 11mo ago

That argument should be equally valid for US healthcare, prison phone calls, price gouging during natural disasters, housing prices, and college tuition. Yet many people, possibly most people, feel something is broken.

hertzdonut 11mo ago

[dead]