YES, ticket MASTER
Interesting NPR discussion of concert ticket prices a few days ago. The speaker observed that many artists deliberately sell tickets for less than market value, primarily to maintain a good relationship with the fans. Ticket services and internet scalpers add to the actual prices paid for the most valuable tickets - and as long as the tickets continue to sell, it's clear that their real value is reflected in the higher prices.
This suggests that the scalpers and ticket services are performing an odd service - not by providing "convenience", but by accepting the blame for the difference between the face value of the tickets and their actual market value.
The word used to describe this behavior is usually greed. But it's one of those useless words, like "slut", used to judge some characteristic shared to some degree by everybody and clearly defined by nobody. Greed becomes a problem when it leads to a downfall: the goose stops laying the golden eggs when it's cut open by the impatient farmer. But accusations of greed are often launched by the same people who push up the value of a commodity in the first place. Everyone wants to see the concert, but nobody wants to admit that the tickets have become as valuable as they are. Paying a scalper for valuable tickets seems like a private transaction, as if the extra cost reflects not the publicly recognized value of the experience, but the buyer's secret desire to be included in it. For an artist to ask the real value of an experience in the original ticket price would be to admit to the gulf that separates the artist from the public, and the public from each other. So we're willing to pay one amount in public, and a higher amount in private. Weird thing, economics.
This suggests that the scalpers and ticket services are performing an odd service - not by providing "convenience", but by accepting the blame for the difference between the face value of the tickets and their actual market value.
The word used to describe this behavior is usually greed. But it's one of those useless words, like "slut", used to judge some characteristic shared to some degree by everybody and clearly defined by nobody. Greed becomes a problem when it leads to a downfall: the goose stops laying the golden eggs when it's cut open by the impatient farmer. But accusations of greed are often launched by the same people who push up the value of a commodity in the first place. Everyone wants to see the concert, but nobody wants to admit that the tickets have become as valuable as they are. Paying a scalper for valuable tickets seems like a private transaction, as if the extra cost reflects not the publicly recognized value of the experience, but the buyer's secret desire to be included in it. For an artist to ask the real value of an experience in the original ticket price would be to admit to the gulf that separates the artist from the public, and the public from each other. So we're willing to pay one amount in public, and a higher amount in private. Weird thing, economics.