Scalping is only an issue if the sales price of products is artificially depressed.

Silly me.

(I don't think that the capitalist ideal matches reality. But you should at least get the idea if you're gonna disagree.)

Free market as imagined by libertarians can only exist in the presence of unlimited resources and magic.

Markets exist because of scarcity, not because of abundance. If something is available in unlimited abundance, there's no need of a market for it.

The only free market where this is possible is a magical place where there are unlimited resources and ability to create new Woodstocks at the snap of a finger.

Scalpers' motive is to gain profit off of a limited resource. It doesn't matter if the tickets cost even less than the concert costs to produce.

By the way, who determines the "actual worth" of tickets?

> That is not a libertarian fantasy or anything close to it

That is not what I was responding to.

If ticket booths charged exactly what scalpers charge would that change anything for you?

Indeed

> Do people sell tickets for less than the concert costs to produce where you live?

No, they don't, at it's not what I said.

> If ticket booths charged exactly what scalpers charge would that change anything for you?

Ni idea why you're asking me this question

You are interpreting the original comment as uncharitably as possible.

"Additional Woodstocks" can be easily interpreted as "additional concerts similar to Woodstock" without changing the meaning of the comment.

Also, you don't need unlimited resources to create new concerts, and you don't need the "snap of a finger", you simply need people who are motivated to do so by virtue of the profit motive (as well as their love for music and live shows) incentivized through the price mechanism.

Yes. Because all of their notions of "one true free market" require unlimited resources and ability to immediately create anything from scratch.

> can be easily interpreted as "additional concerts similar to Woodstock"

Same thing, different attempt to argue semantics.

> Also, you don't need unlimited resources to create new concerts, and you don't need the "snap of a finger", you simply need people who are motivated to do so by virtue of the profit motive

I'll repeat this again for the fourth-fifth time in this thread. Literally thousands of concerts exist, "simply" driven by "people who are motivated to do so by virtue of the profit motive". And yet, Woodstock is Woodstock. And Sziget is Sziget etc. I wonder why.

The same applies to concerts.

Woodstock, due to various factors is able to charge a premium, but that doesn't mean you can't go to other concerts.

As more and more concerts are held, the premium that Woodstock can command is held in check, because people have other options.

The analogy is incorrect when what was claimed was: "So if the free-market price of the ticket is higher than the sales price, people should be producing additional Woodstocks until the prices match"

> As more and more concerts are held, the premium that Woodstock can command is held in check, because people have other options.

- 6-day festival pass to Sziget is 315 EUR (~$346).

- Glastonbury (5 days) tickets are ~$365.

So, in check, according to you. And then...

- Coachella $449 and up

- Burning Man (which is not even a concert per se) is $525 and up (some tickets are sold at $2500)

And then...

- Justin Bieber can easily ask for 1000 dollars per ticket and more.

And so on.

Even though, according to you and @FeepingCreature, it's enough to just create another Sziget/Glastonbury/Coachella/Bieber for the prices to go down to an equilibrium.

Oh and there will be no scalpers.

Even though already, now, no one is stopping you from creating thousands of concerts.... and yet the price for those discussed doesn't go down, and scalpers exist.

Same for any sporting events etc.

No offense, but you do not understand art.

Yes, there are a lot of bands that could sell higher priced tickets but don't because they want to be accessable to everyone, not just people with money to burn.

Right now they're not accessible to everyone, they're accessible to rich people and a lottery of poor people.

When prices of a good or service goes up, it incentivises other manufacturers or service providers to produce more of that good or service, which increases supply and puts downward pressure on prices.

So to answer your question, higher priced tickets increases supply, which causes lower priced tickets, which benefits poor people.

Eventually prices reach a level where supply and demand match and (for example) concerts are as cheap as they can be given their cost and the demand in the market for them (including the demand from poor people).

This EconTalk episode on price gouging during a natural disaster was very interesting, and somewhat related to this topic: https://www.econtalk.org/munger-on-price-gouging/

Guess why people still go to Sziget or Woodstock.

Also guess why it's impossible to just click your fingers and pull an unlimited number of Woodstocks out of thin air.

The fact that there is a limited number of Woodstocks is irrelevant.

There are other organizers and bands who can also offer concerts, and at a reduced price compared to the premium that something like Woodstock would demand. That's competition, and it puts downward pressure on concert prices in general, thereby helping people on a tight budget.

Why do you think that is?

Hundreds of shitty ape pictures that anyone has access to view has not changed the price of entry to the Louvre.

You do not reduce the price for one form of art by having other artists available. They are all different, and people will want to see one and not another.

So your "proper market" criteria doesn't really exist for anything but digital or virtual goods.