> Arbitrage is never shady.

That's very much an opinion, not a fact.

By that logic reseller is acting perfectly rationally by raising the price of the good they're reselling even though they're excluding some people that can't afford the markup.

By that logic and taking it to the extreme then it's perfectly logical some drug companies are raise the prices on their essential drugs, leading to prolonged sickness and death for some that can't afford the markup. I mean, they don't want to leave profit on the table!

If I really, really want to ensure that people who might not be able to afford market price can reasonably come to see my show while still making a reasonable profit, there's no mechanism under capitalism to be able to do that, because of arbitrage. I think that's sad.

> If I really, really want to ensure that people who might not be able to afford market price can reasonably come to see my show while still making a reasonable profit, there's no mechanism under capitalism to be able to do that, because of arbitrage.

But people who can afford your artificially-cheap tickets can sell them to folks who can afford the market price, making them better-off.

> But people who can afford your artificially-cheap tickets can sell them to folks who can afford the market price, making them better-off.

Except that in reality they can't because other large companies and people who have this down to a business buy all your tickets first. Also, money does not actually replace not getting to see a unique show. We can see this by the fact that not everybody sells their cheap tickets onwards.

Long story short - the group of people who really wants to see the show but can't afford it, and the group of ticket scalpers, are really, really not the same groups, 99% of the time - unless all your fans are ticket scalpers. This is pretty much by definition. Why is worship of capitalism more important than a person's desire to ensure their fans can actually afford to go see them?