The problem with this logic is that you assume since the "die-hard" fan does not have the money, he will simply give up and be shut out of being able to go.
As someone who was, and still is a huge music fan, I always plan the gigs I want to go see around when I was getting paid and my budget. I was able to balance seeing fairly unknown bands in small venues before they got big (once saw Korn and Marilyn Manson open for Danzig. Or HedPE, System of a Down and Static-X open for Fear Factory) with the larger, more expensive shows like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Linkin Park, or RUSH.
Most of my friends who are also rabid fans will know when a band is coming and plan accordingly. The whole idea that "die-hard" fans are being shut out is nonsense. We plan, we plot, and we scheme to see the bands we want to. I even took a gig at a CD shop so I could go see bands for free. I didn't care how much I was getting paid because the perks of seeing a national act for free with two of my friends was payment enough.
To me a "die-hard" fan will find a way regardless. I would categorize more fair weather fans with the attitude you're conveying. If they get a ticket to a "must see" show, then cool, if not, well, it's not a huge deal to them.
How so?
If you expand it out to the 100th percentile then the difference is even more stark. The 100th percentile income is many orders of magnitude higher than the 10th percentile, while the 100th percentile time is less than 3x higher than the 10th percentile.
If I employ someone, their time was mine; If it wasn't, they could use it to stand in line for tickets. This is a different thing from 'mortality', although I assume the wealthy have both better medical care, and quality of life beyond average male/female lifespans.
What do you mean by "the average person"? The median wrt wage? Because the average wage will be the same regardless of distribution.
For "the average person," pick any reasonable meaning you like. I think they'll all work about the same in this context. The person who makes the most money makes orders of magnitude more than the average. The person who has the most free time has, at most, 168 hours of free time per week. If the inequality there were similar, than the average person's free time would be measured in seconds.
If I employ someone to do something, they are acting on my behalf, as proxy. These lose the free time I pay them for, and I gain it. Hence an individual that employs people maybe have more than 24 hours a day; e.g. If I pay someone to wait in line for an hour (for a ticket), so I don't have to, then I just bought an hour of free time.
> I think they'll all work about the same in this context
It sounds like you're just guessing then. I tried working it out, but it depends on what you are trying to measure.
I mean, you can define it that way, but then you and I are just talking about completely different things that happen to use the same spelling, and this discussion is pointless.
It depends on what you're trying to achieve. That time is a poor metaphor for distributable currency?
It still leaves healthcare and QoL as issues.
Health care and quality of life disparities still won't get you anywhere near the level of inequality seen with money.
I did. You talk about distribution of time, then definite as an un-distributable thing.
What has mortality got to do with wealth inequality, if it isn't a metaphor?
A metaphor is when you literally talk about one thing, but are actually referring to something else. I'm not doing that here. When I talk about time, I'm actually talking about time. I'm comparing it to money, not using it as a metaphor for money.
As for what they have to do with each other, it's simple:
The usual way to allocate scarce goods is to use supply and demand to set an equilibrium price, and then let people spend money in order to obtain it. Another way to allocate scarce goods is to require people to spend time in order to obtain it.
People tend to consider the first way to be unfair, especially for goods with high emotional value, and whose cost to produce is not connected to the price. People tend to consider the second way to be more fair, because time is more equally distributed among humans.
The first paragraph is fact. The second paragraph is observation and speculation. No metaphors in sight.
> People tend to consider the first way to be unfair
Time and money are linked, so I see both ways as the same. I disagree with the above, some people thing this, but I have no idea what %.
All I'm saying is: requiring people to give up time to obtain a scarce good tends to be seen as more fair, because time is more equitably available to people than money.
I can't understand why you keep thinking I'm somehow using time as a metaphor for money.
I said currency. If you exchange one thing for another (or talk abstractly in terms of this), it's a currency.
> requiring people to give up time to obtain a scarce good tends to be seen as more fair
People too poor to take time off work, or with high-paid careers that leaves them little free time won't have time to spare.
People who are wealthy with no associated constraint on their free time (e.g inherited wealth, or retirees), the unemployed and children/students have plenty free time.
Why does the latter group deserve tickets more than the former?
> time is more equitably available to people than money
Time is more 'equally' (but not necessarily more 'fairly') distributed than time, but what does that matter? Daily toe-nail growth is more evenly distributed than money, and maybe more evenly distributed than time too, so should we ditch time in favor of exchanging good for toenails?
Your toenail hypothetical, and much of the rest of your comment, entirely misses my point. I'm not saying we should do this or that. I'm merely saying that people find it to be more fair when there's a time requirement. That's not the same thing as "we should require people to spend time."
If I initiate an electronic transaction, where my bank balance goes down by $10, and yours up by $10, that's an exchange, even though nothing physically passed between us.
If I solicit you to do something for me (in exchange for money) that means you spend an hour doing something (therefore not having that time free, but freeing me from having to do it (therefore freeing up an hour of my time), a similar exchange has taken place.
Time can perish, but it can still be used as a currency.
> I'm merely saying that people find it to be more fair
fair enough. Then I disagree that this is true, without proof, and also disagree this is relevant, without justification. I'd assume most people that thing this are part of a group with more time than money.
Why should the fan who is willing to pay more money have to miss out, in favour of a fan who is paying less money?
The Artist (ie the provider of the 'value') is not making more profit, they have set what they feel their work is worth. Scalpers add no value and simply take. Automation of scalping is bad for everybody involved (edit: except of course the scalpers themselves), as typically bots will buy out tickets to popular events extremely quickly, leaving legitimate fans out in the cold.
Yes, that's what money represents in the current society. You might as well ask whether people with higher income are more "deserving" of better houses, schools, cars, holidays, restaurants, airplane seats. I don't know why concert tickets should deserve a different treatment.
If the performer were concerned about actually helping poorer people attend (rather than simply virtue-signaling), they could raise the ticket price to market value, and implement a lottery system for some block of tickets, similar to what the producers of Hamilton do. Best of both worlds!
On the contrary, it's extremely good for legitimate fans who e.g. have a job and can't take time off to buy tickets at the exact minute they were released.
He obviously is willing to give you more, so give it to him. That's fair. That's life.
EDIT: And if you sell it to me for $1000, don't be surprised if I turn around and sell it to the $2000 guy. He wants it more than I do, and he's going to get it one way or another.
It's three people offering me $1000 for something, I give it to you because you're the first person. Then, you turn around and say "hey, I'm selling this for $2000 because I never wanted it in the first place!"
The two other people who were waiting can't afford it. Some other guy comes along later who can afford it and pays up.
It's not fair, it's one of the nasty grimy sides of capitalism.
Scalpers are 100% middle-men who don't add value. The tickets would sell at base cost. All they do is artificially inflate the value of tickets.
Economic theory would say that
1) value, in contrast to price, is personal. Everything has a different value to everyone. For instance, it's a good bet French books have more value to me than to you, because I actually speak that language.
2) inflating value is impossible. Cannot be done
So scalpers inflate the price, not the value. And only because of an inefficient market. Why is a lower price market inefficient ? It's not at equilibrium. That means there are either shortages or oversupply. And indeed : your complaint points out exactly that : a shortage.
The scalpers actually do provide services for that profit :
1) they maintain ticket availability far beyond the original sale
2) they take risk away from the artist (some scalpers even in cooperation with the artist)
(I bet real scalpers would also point out that both of these, the investment and the extended availability involve actual work that needs to be done. As in answering mails, posting stuff online, going out to sell the tickets, ...)
So you're wrong on both fronts. They neither inflate value, nor do they lack services.
And frankly, the only person who can solve this for real is the artist : if they find a way to do enough shows so everyone can watch, that is (obviously) the only way to guarantee everyone can make it. This is not hard, but because of the risk rarely done. Ironically, more and earlier scalping is one of the things that would make it a lot easier for the artist to do this, at least financially. Some artists do this, but perhaps that is more work for less (average) reward for the artist.
Given these incentives, I would expect firstly that artists and venues would scalp tickets themselves, and secondly that all attempts at stomping out scalping will both make the problem worse and merely be a method to guarantee more profit for the designated scalpers. Of course in practice those are also exactly the people who don't want to take the financial risk, and so you'll have pussyfooting all around, lack of conviction, general complaints by everyone, and screwups.
By artificially and significantly suppressing it in the first place.
Saying that they maintain ticket availability for longer, it's a zero-sum game. The only reason those tickets are around longer than they otherwise would be, is because alternate purchasers were unable to get them.
Put another way, if 100 tickets at $50 sell out in a day, and scalped at $500 sell out in a month, yes, the same amount of tickets is sold. But 'ticket availability lasting for a month' is only there because the scalper has removed the ticket availability for the $50 purchasers.
Economic theory say that this isn't true. They should sell out at similar speed regardless of reselling happening or not.
And from personal experience: efficient markets are better than inefficient markets. I've seen quite a few inefficient markets and they're ... well they're stupid. They impose ridiculous costs (like having to F5 continuously so you can "deal" with the shortage, but that's quite a trivial one).
And yes, scalpers make the market more efficient.
The presence or absence of scalpers does not change the basic problem : not enough spaces for everyone who wants to go. That cannot be solved by introducing rules against scalpers. In fact, the opposite is true. Seriously, the opposite approach would likely improve matters far more : create a large-scale scalping company that would pre-purchase large amounts of tickets as an investment and resell them later. The presence of this company would massively improve ticket availability by enabling and incentivizing artists to make more spaces available, and this would make everyone's life better.
If people want to take a libertarian approach, why don't you say it is the person selling the tickets prerogative to do every legal thing in their power to limit prices. It is their show after all.
It would be as if I started selling piggy back rides to my friends for $10. When some random guy realizes my friends really like piggy back rides (for whatever strange reason), so he buys all my piggy back rides. I'm all booked. He then turns around and tries to sell them to my friends for $20. What the scalper apologist arguments are saying is that any attempt by me to tell this scalper to get lost is somehow wrong, because I am disturbing the natural order of things. It doesn't take into account that I care who I carry.
To be clear, I'm not saying artists only selling to "poor people" is the sole right way or something of that sort. I'm just arguing against saying that second price auction is the only way to do things.
But audience are not fungible. If you are to spend an evening with someone there are more important considerations involved than who will pay you the most money to do it, and trying to buy their way to that privilege could be a strong negative indicator.
They shouldn't necessarily have to. They should have to do the same amount of waiting in line, or struggling with whatever online box office system is in place.
Having more money doesn't imply being more deserving of going to an event. Without scalpers it would be more about the effort and desire to attend.
If you don't have time because you're working too much, consider that a sacrifice you're making to be more wealthy.
Funny how we scramble to defend making anything that needs investment in time/effort/emotion/people, but can't be bought, into something that can eventually be purchased by someone with enough wealth. As if that's the most just state of affairs.
I don't see the funny.
By funny I mean tragic.
The artists are who create scarcity, by virtue of not having enough capacity to serve all fans willing the pay the retail price of the ticket. (Or by not doing tiered pricing, cheaper ticket distribution by lottery, etc.)
They're not advocating a free market and society, they're advocating a serf market and society.
Except perhaps those die-hard fans who do not have the extra money available to see what may be a once-in-a-lifetime show.
Perhaps a more correct ending would be "Everyone who has enough disposable income is a winner."