I once worked with an aspiring artist and figured out that you could get a couple thousand professionally pressed CDs, complete with four color art in jewel cases with insert for about a dollar each. While financing would be a concern, even mastering costs are limited today - any home PC can do most of it today, and for ~ thousand you can get quite a bit of pro, or at least semipro equipment. This doesn't include instruments, of course.
Buy two thousand CDs @ $1/each, add in producing costs of ~$1k, total cost $3k. Sell the CDs for $10/each at gigs, after the first 300 it's pure profit*. $17K worth, as a matter of fact. See if you can get the CDs into some of the local indie stores(be sure to get a UPC barcode). Sell ten a show, three shows a week, 50 weeks a year, that'd be 3.5k CDs sold a year. Add in a neat t-shirt design(be careful about copyright infringement, original art only, please).
Of course, I told him that I wasn't a music critic or fan, so it was up to him to be good enough to sell them.;)
*excepting taxes, of course, but at that point you're running a business, and something like a band is will probably have lots of deductions.
I must be an oddball then. Despite my being technically sophisticated enough to download pretty much anything, I still mostly buy my stuff - software and movies included.
Why? That's the legal way. As long as they don't screw stuff up, I prefer being legal.
I've dropped literally hundreds of dollars at webscription.net, which not only allows me to buy DRMless books, but to redownload them whenever I want to. It doesn't take two minutes and an internet connection to open them. It'd take two bookshelves to hold them all if I'd bought physical copies. I appreciate the saved space.
Basically, don't try to sell a product that's measurably inferior to the pirated version. I've heard everything from 20 minutes of unskippable ads(a disney DVD), condescending 'don't steal movies' ads, music with DRM so computationally expensive that playing them on a portable player sucks out half of the battery life, unable to play on average(or even top of the line) systems, installs root-kits, huge hassle when you change computers, etc...
*I'll normally download cracked executables for games even though I purchased it, that'd make for an interesting court battle when they claim I pirated software and I produce a receipt from before they say I downloaded it.
With a dutch auction you would wouldn't have enter the auction as soon as you'd have to purchase tickets - the first come first served problem - where scalpers can afford to come in on the razor's edge of sales opening.
To solve some of the other problems you could always hold a couple auctions - sell some seats early for those who have to make advanced travel plans, and some late for those who won't know until the last minute(IE a week before or some such).
Sorry, there's still prior art. We had a system that matched this at least four years ago. It was a number of shipping containers - one didn't have any AC. Still, it had computers in it. The rest did, of course, it was also intended for a desert climate, so the AC was extreme. 4-8 units per trailor. Racks were permanently installed, with most equipment mounted in the racks.
AC systems were winched out for use, freeing up walkway space.
Even better prior art would be the fact that the US Military, at least, has been building data centers into shipping containers for years. Many the time have I worked out of a conex box. Heck, the larger container has been used as well - pull up, drop it down, winch out the AC units to free up room to walk around inside, hook up power, feed the cables into it to hook up to the patch panels and you're ready to rock.
in my youth banks went out of their way to advertise bank accounts to small kids
It worked for me. I've with the same bank from 14 to now. Through three mergers that changed the name of the bank even. I was actually told that I had had a slightly illegal account when I went in to adjust things - my parents should of been on the account.
Of course, I've heard horror stories about my bank, but I've never experienced them - and given that you can find horror stories about almost every business, much less any large bank, I figure they're at least average, plus the new larger bank has good ATM coverage in most areas I wander.
You're right, your 3 credit cards leads to 15 tickets.
Don't forget the debit card, which acts like a credit card, for 5 more.
As for a scalper having hundreds of cards? Are you serious? Does any one person have hundreds of credit cards?
I could have dozens with very little effort. Simply start filling out the applications the banks send me.
From my bank: 3. One Visa, One Mastercard, one debit Independent: 3: Discover, American Express, and Bank one
Double all these for separate business cards.
Then start opening a few more bank accounts and credit cards, apply online, etc...
Do this for the wife, kids, and any dogs/cats*.
Scalpers, as grey marketeers, are probably willing to break or at least bend some laws.
You're already automating the purchase, so put all the CC details into a database for filling. Rather than taking 10 minutes for a huge block of seats, it takes 12.
Also, "In slightly different names, with slightly different addresses(a couple PO boxes, for example)." that's credit card fraud.
And the CC companies don't care one bit as long as they're paid. I quite legitimately have 3 different addresses. One work, one PO Box(don't have a mailbox at home), One street address(which gets delivered to my PO BOX). Because of my tendency to leave the country for long periods of time, my parent's house is on some stuff.
There are a lot more people around today with a lot more disposable income, and a venue can only get so large before you start needing binoculars to see the band.
Thus, supply has not kept up with demand and prices have risen.
I think that you can still go to concerts like you describe - it's just that they're lesser known bands.
I was giving the libertarian perspective. They bought the goods through use of fraudulent techniques. It could be considered 'illegal' as they bypassed the software equivalent of a lock, but I feel that civil court would be a much better venue than criminal court.
For one thing, the 'victim' is more likely to be made whole, while the defrauding scalper gets hit where it hurts the worst - his checkbook. Doesn't cost the state much either, don't have to put him in jail/prison.
I do not know if TicketMaster has a mandatory "user agreement" that is shown prominently on their site that prohibits such behavior, or whether they just use language like "one customer can only order xxx tickets". The latter carries no legal obligation on the part of the "customer".
I'm not sure either, but in a more libertarian society where they're actually trying to prevent scalping it'd be standard procedure.
This can't be a serious reply, yet it's been modded insightful for some reason.
That's because it is a serious reply, just alien to your views.
Concerts should be accessible to fans,
They are. It's just accessible to the richest fans first.
which is precisely why when a guy like Bob Dylan plays a big market, he'll book three nights at a reasonable price instead of one night at three times the price.
Uh - did you catch this part - "If they really want to let the people who can only scrounge up $100 attend a show, then hold more concerts. Eventually even the rich fans will run out of money for multiple concerts."
Bob Dylan wants even his poorer fans to be able to attend his concerts. He thus hold three concerts where he could get away with holding one at a much higher price. Probably makes a bunch of money this way as well - less set up and tear down per concert when you run it three days before moving. Moving to different venues is expensive at the pro level as well - buses, trains, planes, road crew, set up/tear down time, etc...
If what you're saying were actually true, I would think a lot more bands wouldn't even bother to tour. They'd hold one private show in a nice venue, hold a raffle for their most die hard fans to make sure they have the best possible crowd, record the whole thing and just sell double-disc live DVDs for $35 a pop.
You're a lot of the economies of scale. 5k hardcore fans at $5k ticket prices is only $25 million. 1 Million fans @$200/ticket is $200 million. Yes, there are additional expenses. But there's still more money to be made touring. This is without the not immediately tangible benefits like increased awareness and fan base, increasing CD and memorabilia sales.
It would save them the effort of living in a bus for four months, eliminate the overhead associated with touring, and they'd still likely see as much if not more revenue than they would if they actually toured. But that's not the point of live shows.
They're still down $175 million with the 'high priced single showing'. Besides, they can do the exclusive showing, then go out and tour, collecting up the lesser money from the poorer fans.
Hmm... That reads a lot like a dutch auction, just modified to be revenue maximizing when the material to be auctioned is unlimited.
You could do that at least a bit with a regular dutch auction. If you see that selling 99 out of a 100 items would raise the price by a dollar each, say $20 to $21 dollars. The seller could place an extra 'bid' at $21, buying the last one, increasing the price from $2079 rather than $2000 for an extra profit of $79, plus having the item available.
Still, when you're talking about a dutch auction of the magnitude a concert would have, any given seat is unlikely to make much of a price difference.
5k seats,.01 price difference, $200 ticket, $1Million vs. $999,849.99. Better to sell all 5k seats. 10 cent difference would make it worth it, by a whole $299.90. Heck, if you do that, make the extra seats a 'reserve' for at the door ticketing, killing even more scalper potential revenue.
Your proposed solution might work because it makes sure the high profits go the venue/artist, not the scalpers, but it only works if you can design such a system that can keep out/identify the scalpers.
Doesn't have to identify the scalpers - If you remove the potential profit from scalping, scalpers can't make any money, they cease being scalpers in favor of some other occupation that actually makes money.
These technical hurdles is what caused the problem in the first place: if Ticketwhatever made a system with all security features working as intended, then there would be much less of a problem. The same technical hurdles would need to be taken for your proposed auction system.
These technical hurdles appear because artists/venues decide to charge less than the market will bear. You don't see scalpers buying all the vehicles in dealerships to resell at higher prices, do you? Why not? Because vehicles are already priced pretty much where the market will bear.
But the reason scalpers can make a living is because they can manipulate the market. By buying up all tickets, they create an artificial scarecity which enables them to ask what the mark will bear. Selling at a lower than facevalue price is just the cost of obtaining market dominance.
You don't appear to recognize how a dutch auction works. I want to attend concert X. Artist/venue is irrelevant. I'm willing to pay $200 to attend the concert. I bid $200. Meanwhile other people bid anything from $1000 to $20. They have 4k seats. They determine that the 'Magic number' is $160 to sell all 4k seats. That means that everybody who bid $160+ gets their ticket. I get my ticket for $160(as does everybody else), so there's no hard feelings as I don't feel ripped off for overpaying, or feel missed out because I underbid hoping to score a deal. Dutch auctions work by encouraging everybody to bid their highest, confident that they'll most likely pay less.
Now, ask yourself, in such a scheme where can the scalpers make money? Everybody who entered the auction like they should already got tickets at the minimum price the scalpers can get them at. Everybody willing to pay more already got them. People who didn't get tickets didn't get them because they weren't willing to pay the final price(maybe they bid $150). It'd cost the scalpers to sell them tickets in most cases, as the most they'd be willing to pay would be that $150. Could the scalpers buy a venue out? Quite possibly - but it'd ruin them to do it.
Perhaps more importantly - it removes the ability for scalpers to use the fact that they can afford to use methods to get in first , be right there when selling starts to get all the tickets. In a dutch auction a scalper's bids are in the list with all the others. If he gets tickets, it's because he outbid the people who weren't willing to pay more. Thus, almost by definition, they wouldn't be willing to pay the scalper more, removing his profit potential(those willing to pay more already have tickets).
John Hurliman is right - excepting people who were lazy and missed the auction or came into money later(IE they're willing to pay more than they bid), there just wouldn't be any money in scalping. You could even handle that by having a small reserve of seats so some people could buy their tickets 'at the door'. IE you pay in person and enter, non-transferable tickets.
Undercover agents with a licence to kill scalpers would be a good solution, but just realising that intervening in a free market is contrary to the US' capitalist ideals, would be an even better solution. Then the only problem is for the venues that don't get all the profits.
Who said anything about killing scalpers? Spammers, sure, but scalpers? There's plenty of nonviolent ways to deal with them - you simply have to eliminate their profit.
Seriously, where in my post did you read any call for government intervention? I'm talking about ticketmaster or the venue changing the way they sell tickets.
Check out one of the other postings about baseball games where swaths of seats are empty because someone has done just this.
Then offer 'oversell' tickets at standard prices starting 10 minutes before the game/show starts. 5 minutes or start, start discounting. Adjust times as necessary to handle crowds.
Suddenly the supply isn't artificially constrained any more, and the consumers know this. They can simply wait until then, when your tickets become useless.
Finally, if the show's charging enough in the first place, scalpers won't be able to buy large blocks of seating, and won't be able to get enough people willing to pay 5x-10x the sticker price.
Take the $20 ticket. Sure, there'll be people willing to pay $200, if limited. A block of 100 seats will cost $2k, you'll have to sell 10 at $200 to break even. Increase the price to $40, it'd cost you $4k for that block, and you'd have to sell 10 tickets at $400 to break even. Much more difficult.
To put it another way: The contract for the tickets say that you're to be the one using it; that they aren't to be bought for deliberate resale; you're limited to X tickets, etc...
They put some anti-fraud measures in place.
The Scalpers deliberately bypass or defraud the measures.
In a libertarian society they could be sued for breach of contract, fraud, etc...
Or, in later audits the company could revoke the tickets - and neither the scalpers or the people who bought tickets from the scalpers would have a leg to stand on. Though, depending, the people who bought the tickets could sue the scalpers for sale of defective goods.
The simplest solution would be that you, as the purchaser, have to go to the show*. The tickets would note: swampa + 3 - IE you bought four tickets, so you're allowed to bring three others in. You just have to be there to get the tickets validated on entry.
And no, it's not handy, much like DRM it ends up being more annoying to the honest customers than it does to the scalpers.
*or your predesignated alternate, set during purchase.
That'd delay them for all of ten minutes in most probability.
For example, I have 3 separate credit cards and a debit card in my wallet.
That's 20 tickets.
Next, add in a wife's card, a few coworker's cards, etc... Heck, if the scalper has good credit, he could quickly have dozens or hundreds of separate cards. In slightly different names, with slightly different addresses(a couple PO boxes, for example).
Heck, various credit card companies offer temporary numbers - just build a hook into that to get around the limit.
It's a lot like DRM and spam blocking - no matter how hard you try, some still break through.
Then you get scalpers, as the rich may be willing to pay dramatically more for the ticket. To the point that a poorer fan who got lucky starts wondering 'Sure, I love X band, but this dude's waving 10x the ticket price in my face, I could make a couple car payments off of that!'.
ProTonk addressed most of it, but the easiest way to get what you want would be to have the band hold more concerts. Lots of concerts.
Eventually those $400 tickets would drop to $150 after everybody willing to pay more has already attended as many concerts as they were willing to pay for at the higher prices.
Other options would be to find larger venues - if you can play to 10k people rather than 5k, that'll lower the price a bit. Sectioned seating can help as well (nosebleed seats are cheap).
Law of supply and demand - if demand is high compared to supply, prices rise. If demand is static for a given price, and you want to lower prices, the easiest way is to increase supply.
Of course, I've haven't been to a concert in years due to their tendency to play stuff so loud that it hurts my ears. Wearing earplugs tends to wipe out the higher sounds first, so I end up with an unbalanced experience.
*IE you aren't going to run a smear campaign against the band or have the band release a crap album to drive fans away...
No, of course not. Scalpers introduce all sorts of negative externalities, but they are making mutually beneficial transactions occur, they are pretty irrepresable in that regard.
You think about it, they're actually pretty calm compared to other black marketeers- which tend to spring up when prices are fixed.
When prices are fixed artificially low, supplies tend to disappear and black markets spring up to service people willing to pay more.
Bingo - If you can sell out concerts at $400 per ticket, why sell tickets at $100 per ticket. Sure, you get the excuse 'but legions of my fans can't afford $400'. So what? They can buy the CD/music video DVD when it comes out. If nothing else, it's an incentive for various fans to get better paying jobs, save up, etc...
If they really want to let the people who can only scrounge up $100 attend a show, then hold more concerts. Eventually even the rich fans will run out of money for multiple concerts.
But yeah, I agree with you - I seriously doubt that 'yuppies' will attend many concerts of shows they aren't fans of.
My economic solution, that would also ensure that scalping is minimized would be to hold a dutch auction - everybody bids what they're willing to pay, then the tickets are all sold at the highest price that ensures a sellout.
If that doesn't work, start up with sky-high prices, then gradually drop them until a sellout is achieved - it would minimize scalping because in order to get large numbers of tickets you'd have to buy early, at the higher price.
Though making the tickets non-transferable works at least a little bit.
Besides, scalpers don't always make out - I've heard of them selling tickets at half the price they paid for them on the day of the show because they just can't move them.
We're not going to get a significant fraction of humanity off this planet in our lifetime, much less all of it. Therefore we need to look into living here; and keeping the planet up is part of keeping our lives here good.
Though I do believe that spreading out to the stars is necessary and I'll be researching long term survival in space and on various other orbital bodies such as the moon and mars a lot more than we are now.
1. The transition is already happening without banning, and enviromentalists are already whining about the mercury present in CFLs. LED bulbs are still too expensive to be economical. 2. Raise CAFE to 40MPG and watch people stream to even less efficient trucks and SUVs. If you eliminate the exception for trucks, watch out for the trailoring crowd and farmers and other such workers to scream. 3. Already done. Seriously, I haven't seen one below 90% for sale in quite a while. Going above that does start marginalizing gains though. You'd save more going to heatpumps, preferably geothermal where possible. Other than that, increasing the SEER rating for AC systems would save quite a bit, as would additional insulation. 4. Believe it or not, depending on your usage tankless heaters don't automatically save energy over a modern, properly sized tanked one. Especially if they're electric. You lose ~5% efficiency going to a tankless design, even though you reduce heat losses during non-usage periods.
By just switching every bulb in the US to a CFL, we'd save $600 million a year).
Are you talking every bulb, or just the 'conventional' ones - excluding the ones in things like EZ-Bake ovens, refridgerators, outside lights, and ovens where the enviroment isn't suitable for them?
Wouldn't save much money in my house - you'd replace a total of 2 lights, both in the basement, which are turned on for ~2 minutes once a month so I can check my water meter. Haven't bothered to put a CFL in yet because they haven't blown.
I don't accept your weaseling. It's not the job of climatologists to perform ANY economic analysis: most of them haven't taken a single class in the field. Sure, they could learn, but what for? That's what, you know, actual economists are for, and it just takes time away from their actual field of expertise.
With some very rare exceptions, humans are generalists. I'm not talking about complicated analysis here - but they need to know enough to be able to talk to the economists, just like the economists should be able to understand the climatologists enough to understand why something is bad.
Better communication can lead to better solutions.
What a remarkably dumb statement.
Insulting me gets you nowhere. I consider being able to balance at least a household budget to be a basic skill needed for anybody graduating high school. As I'd assume a qualified climatologist to have graduated HS, he or she should be able to balance their budgets. Hiring an accountant to help in large projects is allowed, but they should still know how to use resources effectivly, and money is a resource.
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I once worked with an aspiring artist and figured out that you could get a couple thousand professionally pressed CDs, complete with four color art in jewel cases with insert for about a dollar each. While financing would be a concern, even mastering costs are limited today - any home PC can do most of it today, and for ~ thousand you can get quite a bit of pro, or at least semipro equipment. This doesn't include instruments, of course.
;)
Buy two thousand CDs @ $1/each, add in producing costs of ~$1k, total cost $3k. Sell the CDs for $10/each at gigs, after the first 300 it's pure profit*. $17K worth, as a matter of fact. See if you can get the CDs into some of the local indie stores(be sure to get a UPC barcode). Sell ten a show, three shows a week, 50 weeks a year, that'd be 3.5k CDs sold a year. Add in a neat t-shirt design(be careful about copyright infringement, original art only, please).
Of course, I told him that I wasn't a music critic or fan, so it was up to him to be good enough to sell them.
*excepting taxes, of course, but at that point you're running a business, and something like a band is will probably have lots of deductions.
I must be an oddball then. Despite my being technically sophisticated enough to download pretty much anything, I still mostly buy my stuff - software and movies included.
Why? That's the legal way. As long as they don't screw stuff up, I prefer being legal.
I've dropped literally hundreds of dollars at webscription.net, which not only allows me to buy DRMless books, but to redownload them whenever I want to. It doesn't take two minutes and an internet connection to open them. It'd take two bookshelves to hold them all if I'd bought physical copies. I appreciate the saved space.
Basically, don't try to sell a product that's measurably inferior to the pirated version. I've heard everything from 20 minutes of unskippable ads(a disney DVD), condescending 'don't steal movies' ads, music with DRM so computationally expensive that playing them on a portable player sucks out half of the battery life, unable to play on average(or even top of the line) systems, installs root-kits, huge hassle when you change computers, etc...
*I'll normally download cracked executables for games even though I purchased it, that'd make for an interesting court battle when they claim I pirated software and I produce a receipt from before they say I downloaded it.
With a dutch auction you would wouldn't have enter the auction as soon as you'd have to purchase tickets - the first come first served problem - where scalpers can afford to come in on the razor's edge of sales opening.
To solve some of the other problems you could always hold a couple auctions - sell some seats early for those who have to make advanced travel plans, and some late for those who won't know until the last minute(IE a week before or some such).
Sorry, there's still prior art. We had a system that matched this at least four years ago. It was a number of shipping containers - one didn't have any AC. Still, it had computers in it. The rest did, of course, it was also intended for a desert climate, so the AC was extreme. 4-8 units per trailor. Racks were permanently installed, with most equipment mounted in the racks.
AC systems were winched out for use, freeing up walkway space.
Even better prior art would be the fact that the US Military, at least, has been building data centers into shipping containers for years. Many the time have I worked out of a conex box. Heck, the larger container has been used as well - pull up, drop it down, winch out the AC units to free up room to walk around inside, hook up power, feed the cables into it to hook up to the patch panels and you're ready to rock.
in my youth banks went out of their way to advertise bank accounts to small kids
It worked for me. I've with the same bank from 14 to now. Through three mergers that changed the name of the bank even. I was actually told that I had had a slightly illegal account when I went in to adjust things - my parents should of been on the account.
Of course, I've heard horror stories about my bank, but I've never experienced them - and given that you can find horror stories about almost every business, much less any large bank, I figure they're at least average, plus the new larger bank has good ATM coverage in most areas I wander.
You're right, your 3 credit cards leads to 15 tickets.
Don't forget the debit card, which acts like a credit card, for 5 more.
As for a scalper having hundreds of cards? Are you serious? Does any one person have hundreds of credit cards?
I could have dozens with very little effort. Simply start filling out the applications the banks send me.
From my bank: 3. One Visa, One Mastercard, one debit
Independent: 3: Discover, American Express, and Bank one
Double all these for separate business cards.
Then start opening a few more bank accounts and credit cards, apply online, etc...
Do this for the wife, kids, and any dogs/cats*.
Scalpers, as grey marketeers, are probably willing to break or at least bend some laws.
You're already automating the purchase, so put all the CC details into a database for filling. Rather than taking 10 minutes for a huge block of seats, it takes 12.
Also, "In slightly different names, with slightly different addresses(a couple PO boxes, for example)." that's credit card fraud.
And the CC companies don't care one bit as long as they're paid. I quite legitimately have 3 different addresses. One work, one PO Box(don't have a mailbox at home), One street address(which gets delivered to my PO BOX). Because of my tendency to leave the country for long periods of time, my parent's house is on some stuff.
*Its happened.
There are a lot more people around today with a lot more disposable income, and a venue can only get so large before you start needing binoculars to see the band.
Thus, supply has not kept up with demand and prices have risen.
I think that you can still go to concerts like you describe - it's just that they're lesser known bands.
I was giving the libertarian perspective. They bought the goods through use of fraudulent techniques. It could be considered 'illegal' as they bypassed the software equivalent of a lock, but I feel that civil court would be a much better venue than criminal court.
For one thing, the 'victim' is more likely to be made whole, while the defrauding scalper gets hit where it hurts the worst - his checkbook. Doesn't cost the state much either, don't have to put him in jail/prison.
I do not know if TicketMaster has a mandatory "user agreement" that is shown prominently on their site that prohibits such behavior, or whether they just use language like "one customer can only order xxx tickets". The latter carries no legal obligation on the part of the "customer".
I'm not sure either, but in a more libertarian society where they're actually trying to prevent scalping it'd be standard procedure.
This can't be a serious reply, yet it's been modded insightful for some reason.
That's because it is a serious reply, just alien to your views.
Concerts should be accessible to fans,
They are. It's just accessible to the richest fans first.
which is precisely why when a guy like Bob Dylan plays a big market, he'll book three nights at a reasonable price instead of one night at three times the price.
Uh - did you catch this part - "If they really want to let the people who can only scrounge up $100 attend a show, then hold more concerts. Eventually even the rich fans will run out of money for multiple concerts."
Bob Dylan wants even his poorer fans to be able to attend his concerts. He thus hold three concerts where he could get away with holding one at a much higher price. Probably makes a bunch of money this way as well - less set up and tear down per concert when you run it three days before moving. Moving to different venues is expensive at the pro level as well - buses, trains, planes, road crew, set up/tear down time, etc...
If what you're saying were actually true, I would think a lot more bands wouldn't even bother to tour. They'd hold one private show in a nice venue, hold a raffle for their most die hard fans to make sure they have the best possible crowd, record the whole thing and just sell double-disc live DVDs for $35 a pop.
You're a lot of the economies of scale. 5k hardcore fans at $5k ticket prices is only $25 million. 1 Million fans @$200/ticket is $200 million. Yes, there are additional expenses. But there's still more money to be made touring. This is without the not immediately tangible benefits like increased awareness and fan base, increasing CD and memorabilia sales.
It would save them the effort of living in a bus for four months, eliminate the overhead associated with touring, and they'd still likely see as much if not more revenue than they would if they actually toured. But that's not the point of live shows.
They're still down $175 million with the 'high priced single showing'. Besides, they can do the exclusive showing, then go out and tour, collecting up the lesser money from the poorer fans.
Hmm... That reads a lot like a dutch auction, just modified to be revenue maximizing when the material to be auctioned is unlimited.
.01 price difference, $200 ticket, $1Million vs. $999,849.99. Better to sell all 5k seats. 10 cent difference would make it worth it, by a whole $299.90. Heck, if you do that, make the extra seats a 'reserve' for at the door ticketing, killing even more scalper potential revenue.
You could do that at least a bit with a regular dutch auction. If you see that selling 99 out of a 100 items would raise the price by a dollar each, say $20 to $21 dollars. The seller could place an extra 'bid' at $21, buying the last one, increasing the price from $2079 rather than $2000 for an extra profit of $79, plus having the item available.
Still, when you're talking about a dutch auction of the magnitude a concert would have, any given seat is unlikely to make much of a price difference.
5k seats,
Your proposed solution might work because it makes sure the high profits go the venue/artist, not the scalpers, but it only works if you can design such a system that can keep out/identify the scalpers.
Doesn't have to identify the scalpers - If you remove the potential profit from scalping, scalpers can't make any money, they cease being scalpers in favor of some other occupation that actually makes money.
These technical hurdles is what caused the problem in the first place: if Ticketwhatever made a system with all security features working as intended, then there would be much less of a problem. The same technical hurdles would need to be taken for your proposed auction system.
These technical hurdles appear because artists/venues decide to charge less than the market will bear. You don't see scalpers buying all the vehicles in dealerships to resell at higher prices, do you? Why not? Because vehicles are already priced pretty much where the market will bear.
But the reason scalpers can make a living is because they can manipulate the market. By buying up all tickets, they create an artificial scarecity which enables them to ask what the mark will bear. Selling at a lower than facevalue price is just the cost of obtaining market dominance.
You don't appear to recognize how a dutch auction works. I want to attend concert X. Artist/venue is irrelevant. I'm willing to pay $200 to attend the concert. I bid $200. Meanwhile other people bid anything from $1000 to $20. They have 4k seats. They determine that the 'Magic number' is $160 to sell all 4k seats. That means that everybody who bid $160+ gets their ticket. I get my ticket for $160(as does everybody else), so there's no hard feelings as I don't feel ripped off for overpaying, or feel missed out because I underbid hoping to score a deal. Dutch auctions work by encouraging everybody to bid their highest, confident that they'll most likely pay less.
Now, ask yourself, in such a scheme where can the scalpers make money? Everybody who entered the auction like they should already got tickets at the minimum price the scalpers can get them at. Everybody willing to pay more already got them. People who didn't get tickets didn't get them because they weren't willing to pay the final price(maybe they bid $150). It'd cost the scalpers to sell them tickets in most cases, as the most they'd be willing to pay would be that $150. Could the scalpers buy a venue out? Quite possibly - but it'd ruin them to do it.
Perhaps more importantly - it removes the ability for scalpers to use the fact that they can afford to use methods to get in first , be right there when selling starts to get all the tickets. In a dutch auction a scalper's bids are in the list with all the others. If he gets tickets, it's because he outbid the people who weren't willing to pay more. Thus, almost by definition, they wouldn't be willing to pay the scalper more, removing his profit potential(those willing to pay more already have tickets).
John Hurliman is right - excepting people who were lazy and missed the auction or came into money later(IE they're willing to pay more than they bid), there just wouldn't be any money in scalping. You could even handle that by having a small reserve of seats so some people could buy their tickets 'at the door'. IE you pay in person and enter, non-transferable tickets.
Undercover agents with a licence to kill scalpers would be a good solution, but just realising that intervening in a free market is contrary to the US' capitalist ideals, would be an even better solution. Then the only problem is for the venues that don't get all the profits.
Who said anything about killing scalpers? Spammers, sure, but scalpers? There's plenty of nonviolent ways to deal with them - you simply have to eliminate their profit.
Seriously, where in my post did you read any call for government intervention? I'm talking about ticketmaster or the venue changing the way they sell tickets.
Check out one of the other postings about baseball games where swaths of seats are empty because someone has done just this.
Then offer 'oversell' tickets at standard prices starting 10 minutes before the game/show starts. 5 minutes or start, start discounting. Adjust times as necessary to handle crowds.
Suddenly the supply isn't artificially constrained any more, and the consumers know this. They can simply wait until then, when your tickets become useless.
Finally, if the show's charging enough in the first place, scalpers won't be able to buy large blocks of seating, and won't be able to get enough people willing to pay 5x-10x the sticker price.
Take the $20 ticket. Sure, there'll be people willing to pay $200, if limited. A block of 100 seats will cost $2k, you'll have to sell 10 at $200 to break even. Increase the price to $40, it'd cost you $4k for that block, and you'd have to sell 10 tickets at $400 to break even. Much more difficult.
To put it another way: The contract for the tickets say that you're to be the one using it; that they aren't to be bought for deliberate resale; you're limited to X tickets, etc...
They put some anti-fraud measures in place.
The Scalpers deliberately bypass or defraud the measures.
In a libertarian society they could be sued for breach of contract, fraud, etc...
Or, in later audits the company could revoke the tickets - and neither the scalpers or the people who bought tickets from the scalpers would have a leg to stand on. Though, depending, the people who bought the tickets could sue the scalpers for sale of defective goods.
The simplest solution would be that you, as the purchaser, have to go to the show*. The tickets would note: swampa + 3 - IE you bought four tickets, so you're allowed to bring three others in. You just have to be there to get the tickets validated on entry.
And no, it's not handy, much like DRM it ends up being more annoying to the honest customers than it does to the scalpers.
*or your predesignated alternate, set during purchase.
That'd delay them for all of ten minutes in most probability.
For example, I have 3 separate credit cards and a debit card in my wallet.
That's 20 tickets.
Next, add in a wife's card, a few coworker's cards, etc... Heck, if the scalper has good credit, he could quickly have dozens or hundreds of separate cards. In slightly different names, with slightly different addresses(a couple PO boxes, for example).
Heck, various credit card companies offer temporary numbers - just build a hook into that to get around the limit.
It's a lot like DRM and spam blocking - no matter how hard you try, some still break through.
Then you get scalpers, as the rich may be willing to pay dramatically more for the ticket. To the point that a poorer fan who got lucky starts wondering 'Sure, I love X band, but this dude's waving 10x the ticket price in my face, I could make a couple car payments off of that!'.
ProTonk addressed most of it, but the easiest way to get what you want would be to have the band hold more concerts. Lots of concerts.
Eventually those $400 tickets would drop to $150 after everybody willing to pay more has already attended as many concerts as they were willing to pay for at the higher prices.
Other options would be to find larger venues - if you can play to 10k people rather than 5k, that'll lower the price a bit. Sectioned seating can help as well (nosebleed seats are cheap).
Law of supply and demand - if demand is high compared to supply, prices rise. If demand is static for a given price, and you want to lower prices, the easiest way is to increase supply.
Of course, I've haven't been to a concert in years due to their tendency to play stuff so loud that it hurts my ears. Wearing earplugs tends to wipe out the higher sounds first, so I end up with an unbalanced experience.
*IE you aren't going to run a smear campaign against the band or have the band release a crap album to drive fans away...
No, of course not. Scalpers introduce all sorts of negative externalities, but they are making mutually beneficial transactions occur, they are pretty irrepresable in that regard.
You think about it, they're actually pretty calm compared to other black marketeers- which tend to spring up when prices are fixed.
When prices are fixed artificially low, supplies tend to disappear and black markets spring up to service people willing to pay more.
Bingo - If you can sell out concerts at $400 per ticket, why sell tickets at $100 per ticket. Sure, you get the excuse 'but legions of my fans can't afford $400'. So what? They can buy the CD/music video DVD when it comes out. If nothing else, it's an incentive for various fans to get better paying jobs, save up, etc...
If they really want to let the people who can only scrounge up $100 attend a show, then hold more concerts. Eventually even the rich fans will run out of money for multiple concerts.
But yeah, I agree with you - I seriously doubt that 'yuppies' will attend many concerts of shows they aren't fans of.
My economic solution, that would also ensure that scalping is minimized would be to hold a dutch auction - everybody bids what they're willing to pay, then the tickets are all sold at the highest price that ensures a sellout.
If that doesn't work, start up with sky-high prices, then gradually drop them until a sellout is achieved - it would minimize scalping because in order to get large numbers of tickets you'd have to buy early, at the higher price.
Though making the tickets non-transferable works at least a little bit.
Besides, scalpers don't always make out - I've heard of them selling tickets at half the price they paid for them on the day of the show because they just can't move them.
We're not going to get a significant fraction of humanity off this planet in our lifetime, much less all of it. Therefore we need to look into living here; and keeping the planet up is part of keeping our lives here good.
Though I do believe that spreading out to the stars is necessary and I'll be researching long term survival in space and on various other orbital bodies such as the moon and mars a lot more than we are now.
Personally, I like not having to go out and catch my dinner every day.
As for fewer people, just move to North Dakota or something.
1. The transition is already happening without banning, and enviromentalists are already whining about the mercury present in CFLs. LED bulbs are still too expensive to be economical.
2. Raise CAFE to 40MPG and watch people stream to even less efficient trucks and SUVs. If you eliminate the exception for trucks, watch out for the trailoring crowd and farmers and other such workers to scream.
3. Already done. Seriously, I haven't seen one below 90% for sale in quite a while. Going above that does start marginalizing gains though. You'd save more going to heatpumps, preferably geothermal where possible. Other than that, increasing the SEER rating for AC systems would save quite a bit, as would additional insulation.
4. Believe it or not, depending on your usage tankless heaters don't automatically save energy over a modern, properly sized tanked one. Especially if they're electric. You lose ~5% efficiency going to a tankless design, even though you reduce heat losses during non-usage periods.
By just switching every bulb in the US to a CFL, we'd save $600 million a year).
Are you talking every bulb, or just the 'conventional' ones - excluding the ones in things like EZ-Bake ovens, refridgerators, outside lights, and ovens where the enviroment isn't suitable for them?
Wouldn't save much money in my house - you'd replace a total of 2 lights, both in the basement, which are turned on for ~2 minutes once a month so I can check my water meter. Haven't bothered to put a CFL in yet because they haven't blown.
I don't accept your weaseling. It's not the job of climatologists to perform ANY economic analysis: most of them haven't taken a single class in the field. Sure, they could learn, but what for? That's what, you know, actual economists are for, and it just takes time away from their actual field of expertise.
With some very rare exceptions, humans are generalists. I'm not talking about complicated analysis here - but they need to know enough to be able to talk to the economists, just like the economists should be able to understand the climatologists enough to understand why something is bad.
Better communication can lead to better solutions.
What a remarkably dumb statement.
Insulting me gets you nowhere. I consider being able to balance at least a household budget to be a basic skill needed for anybody graduating high school. As I'd assume a qualified climatologist to have graduated HS, he or she should be able to balance their budgets. Hiring an accountant to help in large projects is allowed, but they should still know how to use resources effectivly, and money is a resource.