To first point. Bit more complicated imo. The venue would have to tier pricing (which many do via vip) to not exclude the m people who won't pay $100. But does require more effort on venue part.
I simplified it so the example would fit in a single sentence. there are also more entities than just the artist+label organizing the tour/show. the fundamental point remains though: if scalping is a profitable business, the seller is seriously mispricing their product. I'm sure there's a good bit of variance in ticket demand show-to-show, but in total it looks like they are leaving a huge amount of money on the table. I'm not sure why, but I suspect they feel it is "uncool" to have very expensive tickets and worry that it might hurt the artist's image. maybe so, but the pricing is the original problem that is hurting fans and limiting the proceeds. arbitrage is merely a symptom, and the tickets would still be just as scarce without them.
There are many things in life where the main objective is not to extract the maximum possible level of profit.
The artists/bookers/venues choose ticket price levels based on a number of factors. They want to fill the venue and be profitable, but they also want to maintain a relationship with fans, which is going to get soured if the fans feel ripped off. There is also the factor of drinks sales, if you pay a ton for the ticket, you'll probably buy fewer drinks, and venues make a lot of money on drinks.
If they priced the tickets as high as the market could possibly bear, only the people with enough disposable income could go. That makes all of the fans who cannot afford the tickets angry that they cannot go, you really don't want to do that if you want to maintain a fan base.
Scalping is illegal in many countries for good reason. Here in Denmark, you can resell tickets all you like, but only at or below face value. It works and the artists/venues get to set the prices at levels that match their fan bases. Scalpers who don't care about the bands, but only about profit, don't get a say, because they they shouldn't have one.
And so you've answered your own misunderstanding of the problem.
It's not a symptom. It's necessary to have those lower prices to keep your image and your fans and impacts your long-term earnings, and so we're back to scalpers being nothing more than parasites and a net loss.
It's the same thing with the shoes, if they prices the shoes at their 'true' value, they alienate their customer base and the shoes lose value. The scalpers are actively harming the market.
I guess my concern is I don't think simplifications are terribly useful, since it's not a simple topic, and can change wildly depending on the specific circumstance.
Which is why we have people who are experts in marketing and economy, and specialize in specific product areas.
price discovery is price discovery, secondary market is telling you if you mispriced something. mispriced doesn't mean "we should have maximized profits", it just means something was underpriced, its simply acknowledging that the market would have paid more, its just simply the term for it. it seems like that's been lost in the "rebuttals" here, as in I don't think you even need to react or give counterpoints but for some reason you and others feel wired to.
the next thing is overweighing an idea of "artists don't want to piss off their poor fans over the long run". huge assumption. it doesn't matter how an artist stops filling venues eventually. if it happens it happens. "ack! its because I priced my Red Rocks performance too high on April 30th 2016" mmmm, no.
When an artist/booker/venue says "this is how much we want to charge people to attend this event", that is the price they want to charge. They make this choice based on wanting to draw fans in, fill the venue (for drinks sales) and not be seen as fleecing their fans.
The artist/fan relationship is everything.
For a scalper to jump in and say "I can extract more profit by buying all your tickets and fleecing your fans" is parasitic, it is rent-seeking provides literally no value to anyone besides the scalper. And the scalper doesn't care about the artists or the fans, just rent-seeking profit.
There are laws against scalping in many countries for good reasons.