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When Scarcity Passes For Value

Oct 19, 2017
by Caroline Miller
Bruce Springsteen, Hamiliton show, Hot Tickets and Wall Street Marks, Taylor Swift, ticket huscksters, when scarcity equals value
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Springsteen courtesy of google.com

How does a ticket priced at $75 to a live theater performance end up costing $1400 on the street?  The answer is  scarcity. 

Being a miser, I think $75 for 1 to 2 hours of entertainment is pricy enough.  I don’t pay that much to the woman who cleans my apartment and her service benefits me more than a seat at a performance of Hamilton.  Worse, no dancer, singer, wardrobe assistant, usher, artistic director sees a dime of that street money.  The hucksters take it all.

Like Wall Street day traders, these mercenaries are people who insert themselves between the seller and the buyer without contributing a dime to value. Using bots to scoop up tickets by the thousands, they resell them on the secondary market and profit from demand. (“Hot Tickets and Wall Street Marks,” Bloomberg Businessweek, October 2, 2017, pg. 33.)   When an item is scarce, buyers can lose perspective and a good deal of money.

Gouging fans with outrageous ticket prices is illegal, of course.  In New York,  six companies have paid fines of 44.2 million for violating state law.  But given the  huge potential for profit, the fines aren’t much of a deterrent.  Worse, some of these sellers don’t have tickets.  They dangle promises to an unwitting public, take the money and leave the consumer with air.   

Some artists have tried to protect their fans.  “Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift are working with Ticketmaster on a Verified Fan program, which limits ticket sales to fans who’ve been vetted to confirm they’re real people,” not bots.  (Ibid pg. 33.) 

Still, like drug trafficking, consumers create the market.  If we stopped paying fraudsters outrageous prices to see Hamilton, the prices would come down fast.  In the world of commerce, it’s the law of supply and demand.

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Contact Caroline at

carolinemiller11@yahoo.com

Portland, Oregon author Caroline Miller had distinguished careers as an educator, union president, elected official and artist/advocate.

Her play, Woman on the Scarlet Beast, was performed at the Post5 Theatre, Portland, OR, January/February 2015

Caroline published a serialized novelette, Marie Eau-Claire, on the website, The Colored Lens.  She also published the story Gustav Pavel,  a parable about ordinary lives, choice and alternate potential, on the website Fixional.co.

Caroline has published four novels

  • Ballet Noir
  • Trompe l’Oeil
  • Gothic Spring
  • Heart Land

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