[joezydeco]

C'mon, let's have a little reality here.

Anyone that has tried to deal with buying tickets (either in today's system or even back in the old days where you had to stand in line) knows that there are people with large sums of cash willing to pay people to stand in line or bombard ticketmaster.com with requests to land tickets for a show they have no intention of seeing. They resell those tickets immediately for a profit to the people that really wanted to see the show. Go look at StubHub.com 30 minutes after a popular rock concert goes on sale. Did every single one of those sellers have a sick grandmother pop up?

No, the world doesn't owe anyone anything, and this isn't a white whine. It's an example of how people with more time and resources than you can jump ahead of you in line and, as a result either deny you an experience or make you pay more out of pocket for it...all in the name of profit.

[larrys]

"more time and resources than you can jump ahead of you in line and, as a result either deny you an experience or make you pay more out of pocket for it."

Isn't that the way the world works? We aren't talking about access to food, education, or healthcare here. We're talking about entertainment. Is there a particular reason why someone with more time or money shouldn't have an edge and be able to spend their money to do something someone with less money can't do?

If you fly enough you also can get upgraded to first class cabin. Is there something not fair about that as well?

[shinratdr]

> Is there a particular reason why someone with more time or money shouldn't have an edge and be able to spend their money to do something someone with less money can't do?

Because the performer wants them to be able to?

[mattgreenrocks]

Scalping is asshole behavior. It is that simple. Don't sugarcoat it in talk of 'smoothing' markets. The scalpers do not add any value to the transaction. They merely inflate the price.

I'm so sick of HN over-intellectualizing topics in order to avoid the difficult discussions of ethics. I'm guessing they're avoided because (gasp) it isn't objective. The horror!

[dagw]

The ability to buy a ticket for a popular show at short notice on (or close to) the day of the show has real value to me, and is a service I'm occasionally willing to pay for.

For example last time I was in London I just happened to see that a band I liked was playing that evening. Having no other plans I wandered up to the venue a couple of hours before opening and a kind gentleman outside was happy to sell me a ticket. Sure I paid roughly double the value printed on the ticket, but to me it was worth it for the service and convenience.

Now I'm not saying that scalping is the best solution to this problem, but there is definitely a market here (for tickets on short notice in my case) and money to be made and value to be added.

[Resident_Geek]

If I'm a person who's willing to pay above face value for a ticket but didn't get in line fast enough, the scalpers provide tremendous value to me.

[joezydeco]

...unless the scalpers were the reason you weren't in line fast enough.

[vacri]

How does being upgraded to the first-class cabin deprive a poorer person of flying?

And no, it's not a blanket statement of the way the world works. There's plenty of things like copyright that prevent a gorilla just coming along and taking your toys for themselves.