[fennecfoxen]

> It artificially inflates ticket prices

On the contrary, it naturally inflates the price.

Tickets that can be scalped were priced at below what you might naively consider "market" prices. The purchasers gain some value from this, and usually the sellers do too — often in the form of hype, perennially useful for promotional purposes. Someone who scored a hard-to-get ticket for a good price is likely quite excited about it.

But the difference means there is a strong incentive to turn the difference into cash, and even with inefficient processes in the middle, that incentive is substantial.

You can of course spend all day saying it's "wrong" and it's a position you are welcome to take; there are interesting questions we could ask about who should rightly "own" abstractions like the hype, and why, but it is not protected by normal property law, and if property rights don't exist or aren't enforced then you know that the necessary conditions for free-market efficiency do not exist.

But again, it's as natural as any other economic effect.

[bun_at_work]

How is the price inflation natural? The supply-demand relationship is unnaturally muddled with when someone restricts supply by purchasing all the tickets at once, especially with automated tools average consumers don't have/use. They then just resell the tickets - not at some supply-demand balanced value, but at their determined value, often 200%+ the original price.

Supply is already fixed on things like tickets anyway, due to venue sizes, so this is just further restriction. It's not natural.

[FireBeyond]

I'm not a particularly big fan of Kid Rock, for a number of reasons. But he and a few artists had started doing things to thwart scalpers.

Namely, he'd announce tours slowly. And basically the strategy was that as scalpers bought out shows, he'd add another show in the same city. And keep doing that until there was no demand, no resale market, so scalpers were forced to sell at face or near face value. "I can keep throwing dates at you, and you're paying for the seats, so it doesn't hurt me, but no-one will buy them from you".

Eventually the scalpers learned to not, or minimally resell his tickets.

[Malician]

I mean, the enabling principle behind scalping is that demand is more than supply but supply does not increase to match. More people want the tickets than there are tickets, scalping means it's based on cost instead of who you know or how much time you're willing to spend or how lucky you get.

This doesn't just solve scalping, this fixes the lack of supply of tickets which allows scalping to exist

edit: I'm not sure I completely stand by this. There are various good reasons to sell tickets for cheaper than the maximum price you could and still sell out. Still, it's a harder problem to solve than it looks

[hughrr]

That’s pretty funny actually.

[orangecat]

They then just resell the tickets - not at some supply-demand balanced value

It is the supply-demand balanced value. If it wasn't, they wouldn't be able to sell them.

[bravura]

Playing devil's advocate: In a market where value is signalled by scarcity, creating artificial scarcity creates artificial value.

[phkahler]

>> Tickets that can be scalped were priced at below what you might naively consider "market" prices.

Maybe. The scalpers are taking a risk buying tickets they may not sell, so it might serve as a mechanism to find the market price for the tickets. OTOH it also creates artificial scarcity which artificially raises the price.

In the end, the scalper is inserting themself into a transaction between two parties that didn't ask for them to do so and were mutually satisfied with the situation prior to that (nothing changed for the seller, and I think most buyers would appreciate the lower price).

[ska]

> But again, it's as natural as any other economic effect.

Often I hear people supporting scalping as an example of a free market working, and I get that argument.

The problem is the market that actually exists is anything but free, and largely based on deceptive practices and even outright collusion, which is I think what is what a lot of people really object to.