Vaniver comments on Rationality Quotes February 2012 - Less Wrong

5 [deleted] 01 February 2012 09:03PM

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Comment author: gwern 15 February 2012 12:25:26AM 11 points [-]

You're missing the unstated corollary to this, or any other discussion of scalpers: 'and prices have to be "reasonable" for whatever demographic we claim to serve or would prefer to serve'.

Hence, you get discussions of young girl singers unhappy that all these icky old men are paying hundreds of dollars for the tickets to her concert, even though the market doesn't clear at the $40 or $60 her preteen fans can spare. (And if an organization does let the price float to its natural level of hundreds of dollars, then you get shocked articles in the newspaper on 'ticket inflation' and angry letters to the editor about how in their day you could get in for a nickel...)

Comment author: Vaniver 15 February 2012 12:37:29AM 5 points [-]

I agree that ticketing is a difficult problem, but getting rid of scalping is easy if that's your primary objective. Pricing the externalities of event-goers is tough, especially when anti-discrimination legislation means you generally can't be upfront about it.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 16 February 2012 12:11:37AM 12 points [-]

So there is the problem: The ideal of non-discrimination is not compatible with cases where the demographics of event-goers is itself a strong influence on the quality of the event for everyone involved.

Comment author: NancyLebovitz 15 February 2012 05:29:16AM 0 points [-]

I don't get the impression that getting rid of scalping is easy at all. What do you have in mind?

Comment author: Vaniver 15 February 2012 07:06:02AM 3 points [-]

In the ancestral post, I recommend auctioning off the tickets. This ensures that the people who are willing to pay the most get the tickets, dramatically reducing the demand and increasing the risk for scalpers (if I buy a $20 ticket to a show I expect to sell out, a price decline is unlikely, and even if it happens it's probably only a few bucks per ticket. If I buy a $500 ticket to a show I expect to sell out, a price decline could wipe me out).

Now, you could still have people buying tickets at auction to sell at the door to people who weren't prepared, but that won't be a moral issue since you've already established that the tickets go to the highest bidder.

gwern rightly points out that this doesn't always deliver the best experience. The good first approaches to diversity are quotas and subsidies. They might offer burning man attendance at historical prices to people who have come previously, and then auction off a batch of tickets to new attendees, or give previous attendees vouchers which increase their bids by a set amount or a multiplier. (Content providers could even be paid for their trouble.) Whatever you decide you want to encourage, though, you're better off working with the price system than against the price system.