> The problem isn't a technical problem. It'd be easy to solve the problem of ticked distribution/resale without blockchain if the concert vendors actually wanted. But now Ticketmaster owns most of those, so you can't solve it easily even if blockchains would help anyway.

Also since Ticketmaster merged with Live Nation it's not just ticket sales but also concert promotion and artist management, so even if blockchains were useful for ticket sales it would be hard to get traction because any venue which tried to cut them out would also find that a large number of popular performers wouldn't play at their venue:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/arts/music/live-nation-ti...

> I think blockchain is potentially a huge detriment to solving real-world problems.. because it tricks smart people into thinking "you apply blockchain, and then all these problems are magically solved", rather than actually working with other people on the actual social, economic and political problems we need to solve to make real progress.

This is a very important point, amplified by the built-in conflicts of interest caused by turning the tech layer into a financial instrument. Many blockchain proponents are capable of reasoning through complex problems but doing so means that they are guaranteed to be leaving money on the table compared to their less ethical peers and since the only way their tokens have value is by talking them up there's even a strong disincentive to acknowledging when other people are selling something they can't deliver.