Comment on Reselling tickets for profit to be outlawed in UK government crackdown
FishFace@piefed.social 16 hours agoYou didn’t reply properly. I explained the alternatives which all seem reasonable to me, which you didn’t respond to at all, and I asked you a question which you didn’t answer. I’ll answer, and explain again, but if you reply in the same dismissive way without answering properly, you’re not worth trying to hold a discussion with.
you think it’s good that bots can automatically buy every single ticket, only to resell it at extortionate prices?
I don’t think it matters. It’s like asking if I think it’s good that diamonds are expensive due to supply-side uncompetitiveness; if you can’t afford it, you can just not buy it. Nobody needs a diamond. There’s no communist utopia where we’re handing out diamonds or Taylor Swift tickets to all citizens, right? There’s a limited number of tickets, and the people running the show can decide whether to hand them out by selling them for what people are willing to pay, by lottery, or by the current hybrid system: well below market value, but with a lottery to decide who gets to pay the suppressed price.
If the sellers’ lottery system is not working, or if they’re pretending it’s a lottery system when in fact all the tickets go to “resellers”, then that’s their problem. It’s not causing societal harm; the same number of people get to see Taylor Swift either way, and getting to see her isn’t important enough for the government to step in and say that Taytay tickets must be delivered by lottery system.
It was never about the bots; you’d be complaining if the sellers sold at market value as well; so it’s really about prices.
The government getting involved in enforcing prices is risky business and can introduce very bad unintended consequences. If nothing else, it’s just something that the government then has to do, which costs money. So it should be done in situations where the consequences of not doing so are clearly bad. The consequences of the prices of the following getting really high are really bad for society:
- Food
- Water
- Sanitation
- Healthcare
- Heating
- Electricity
- Transport
- Internet
Where does tickets to the biggest music superstars come on this list? Waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy down. It is not worth spending taxes on making sure that Taylor Swift’s ticket delivery lottery remains a true lottery.
pulsey@feddit.org 14 hours ago
allowing people to participate in cultural events is also very important, and buying a CD or streaming is not the same.
Culture is much more important to the well being of the people than you think and it’s a good thing that the government is getting involved.
FishFace@piefed.social 14 hours ago
Buying a CD or streaming is not “the same” but it is still participating in culture. As is “going to a cheaper concert by a less popular artist” which you didn’t mention. As are all the million other cultural outlets that are much cheaper or free: a museum visit, seeing a film, watching an amateur theatre company perform, heck, watching TV or going to a pub quiz is participating in culture - you obviously mean something very specific but unless you can explain why it is uniquely served by these big-name events like instant sell-out concerts and sports games there is just no reason to prioritise them. In general no two cultural experiences are “the same” but that doesn’t mean the government needs to step in to enable every single kind. Watching TV is not “the same” as watching The Proms in the Royal Box - no doubt an amazing cultural experience - but we’re not saying the government needs to enable that, are we? So we all understand that it’s not important to enable everyone to participate in any bit of culture that they might want to.
In a nutshell: how is it more - not just different - “participating in culture” to see Taylor Swift than to see Heriot (random band I picked off AllMusic… not the same genre) at a local venue? Why is it important enough that the government gets involved with keeping prices down, when it doesn’t do the same for million more important things?