FishFace

Buying a CD or streaming is not “the same” but it is still participating in culture. As is “going to a cheaper concert by a less popular artist” which you didn’t mention. As are all the million other cultural outlets that are much cheaper or free: a museum visit, seeing a film, watching an amateur theatre company perform, heck, watching TV or going to a pub quiz is participating in culture - you obviously mean something very specific but unless you can explain why it is uniquely served by these big-name events like instant sell-out concerts and sports games there is just no reason to prioritise them. In general no two cultural experiences are “the same” but that doesn’t mean the government needs to step in to enable every single kind. Watching TV is not “the same” as watching The Proms in the Royal Box - no doubt an amazing cultural experience - but we’re not saying the government needs to enable that, are we? So we all understand that it’s not important to enable everyone to participate in any bit of culture that they might want to.

In a nutshell: how is it more - not just different - “participating in culture” to see Taylor Swift than to see Heriot (random band I picked off AllMusic… not the same genre) at a local venue? Why is it important enough that the government gets involved with keeping prices down, when it doesn’t do the same for million more important things?

My point is not the best seat but a seat.

So for you, the government should step in to regulate the price of concert tickets for basic seats, but not for the best seats. How many regular seats should be sold at below market value at each venue? All of them? What about when the venue upgrades 90% of their seats to “premium” seats and takes those out of the lottery sale and sells those for market value - is that OK? Are you satisfied if just two seats per performance are lotteried? Per tour?

These are all political decisions now. Some civil servant is being paid to make them as a full-time job, and everyone’s taxes are paying for it. Why is that a good use of public money? Shouldn’t we instead put that money towards paying a civil servant in the department of health, or the foreign office, or justice? Or towards paying a nurse or police officer? All so that the correct number of people can experience Taylor Swift in a concert instead of on spotify, and watch a football match in a stadium instead of at the pub?

but then explain why you would.

I think I’ve been clear that there is no line in entertainment where the government should be involved in price regulation. What line do you think I have drawn?

The U.S. is a great example of why. It is cheaper to get 2 tickets to Ireland plus concert tickets and board then to see the same group in L.A., CA. There are every few regulations stopping ticketmaster from scalping the ticket on stubhub, a ticketmaster subsidiary.

How is that different from Ticketmaster selling the ticket for a higher price in the first place?

You didn’t reply properly. I explained the alternatives which all seem reasonable to me, which you didn’t respond to at all, and I asked you a question which you didn’t answer. I’ll answer, and explain again, but if you reply in the same dismissive way without answering properly, you’re not worth trying to hold a discussion with.

you think it’s good that bots can automatically buy every single ticket, only to resell it at extortionate prices?

I don’t think it matters. It’s like asking if I think it’s good that diamonds are expensive due to supply-side uncompetitiveness; if you can’t afford it, you can just not buy it. Nobody needs a diamond. There’s no communist utopia where we’re handing out diamonds or Taylor Swift tickets to all citizens, right? There’s a limited number of tickets, and the people running the show can decide whether to hand them out by selling them for what people are willing to pay, by lottery, or by the current hybrid system: well below market value, but with a lottery to decide who gets to pay the suppressed price.

If the sellers’ lottery system is not working, or if they’re pretending it’s a lottery system when in fact all the tickets go to “resellers”, then that’s their problem. It’s not causing societal harm; the same number of people get to see Taylor Swift either way, and getting to see her isn’t important enough for the government to step in and say that Taytay tickets must be delivered by lottery system.

It was never about the bots; you’d be complaining if the sellers sold at market value as well; so it’s really about prices.

The government getting involved in enforcing prices is risky business and can introduce very bad unintended consequences. If nothing else, it’s just something that the government then has to do, which costs money. So it should be done in situations where the consequences of not doing so are clearly bad. The consequences of the prices of the following getting really high are really bad for society:

• Food
• Water
• Sanitation
• Healthcare
• Heating
• Electricity
• Transport
• Internet

Where does tickets to the biggest music superstars come on this list? Waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy down. It is not worth spending taxes on making sure that Taylor Swift’s ticket delivery lottery remains a true lottery.

Guess you agree that this isn’t something the law should be involved with. Cool chat.

Live Nation’s annual profit is under a billion dollars, on a revenue of about 23 billion, which is a profit margin of about 4%. I agree they should have to play by some rules, and having an effective monopoly on ticket sales risks abuse of that monopoly, but it is not currently happening to any great degree, and it has nothing to do with the high cost of tickets. Also their business practices in general, with predatory pricing, should be legal, but again, this has nothing to do with whether, in principle, there needs to be government intervention to enforce artificially cheap ticket prices.

“Making sure there is an unattainable area” is a weird way of putting. It’s fine that some experiences (whether to do with art and entertainment or other things) that are out of reach of almost everyone - there always will be. Almost no-one can have the experience of sitting in the best box in the best opera house. Almost no-one can experience going to space. Does the government need to regulate prices of those experiences?

You ask “where is the line” as if you are not drawing one. But you are, you just don’t even see it; there are still experiences you think should receive free market prices, you just haven’t thought much about them. I’m not drawing a line - I’m saying the government should keep out of enforcing prices in entertainment and can’t think of a scenario where it would be necessary.

The only thing I have to fuck around with like that is the setting for Windows Update itself. It’s pretty annoying but also pretty different from an AI feature (because the modification I want to make delays updates, which is less secure). Maybe you’re thinking of something specific?

Anyway, yes, if they add an AI agent that you can’t turn off without hacks, that would be bad. But given that they haven’t done that, complaining about the law (without saying what the law is lacking) is silly. What would the law say - “don’t add features to software if any user doesn’t want it?” there is no way to make what the commenter above said make sense.

And I’m saying you can just choose not to buy the tickets at that price. That’s the free market in action.

There are lots of cases where the free market is clearly inappropriate. For example, I can’t just choose not to have basic utilities like water and heating, so there needs to be an appropriately regulated market to prevent price gouging. But if prices get gouged on tickets for Taylor Swift or whatever, then who cares? So only rich people can go to her concert - big deal, people who can’t afford it can:

• go to a cheaper concert by a less popular artist
• buy her album for much less
• stream her album for even less

What are the consequences if we had this model?

But the Steam Machine is also likely to be positioned as a console competitor on some level, just like the Steam Deck - sure the Deck is just a PC in a handheld form factor, but it’s designed to be a handheld console.

“Those who care about the freedom PC gaming affords” surely aren’t in the market for a pre-built machine whose main attractiveness will be convenience and support, either. I play PC games because it’s what I grew up playing, where I’m most comfortable, and it gives me better access to a wide variety of games at good prices than console games do. I can play in higher fidelity than an equivalent-generation console, and I can play games which are poorly suited to controllers (ironically: like Call of Duty. Which I haven’t played since Black Ops 4, but I have played other games with restrictive anti-cheat) For me, it’s not about some abstract concept of freedom at all. I also use Linux for everything except gaming for concrete reasons.

Saying the Steam Machine sucks because of this is idiotic. But saying it will limit its reach, or is a reason to not buy it, or whatever, is totally legit. My PC plays as broad a gamut of games as possible, and while I’ll look into it, I’ll take a lot of convincing to potentially have to put up with the Linux desktop issues I put up with routinely on my main (non-gaming) computer. Not being able to play my friends’ flavour of the month would be a big red flag.

I’m sorry, are you complaining that prices are kept artificially low?

Because I thought the question was about consumer freedom to buy something instead of the expensive ticket, not seller freedom to make as much money as possible.

Just don’t turn it on?

I’m sure there’s a grey area somewhere, but concert and football tickets are not it. There are many affordable ways to experience art, what we’re talking about is tickets to see the most popular entertainers in the country. Tickets to see your local band or Sunday league club play are free or cheap.

Completely?

I honestly feel like the free market is fine for setting the price of luxuries like concert tickets…

It is a mistake to judge policy based on whether the people you don’t like (dis)agree with it.

You know, that might the best suggestion I’ve heard actually. Thanks for your perspective.

Seems unlikely, with a quick look at YouGov. 47% of 18-24 year olds thought immigration was generally a little or much too high, with 28% don’t know. This is by far the most favourable towards immigration of any age segment. But 57% think the rich are not being made to pay enough in tax - in line with the general population.

That’s the orthodoxy but noone ever bothers to actually back it up. If I write an encyclopedia and refer extensively to external sources it’s not a derivative work, and that seems to be the closest obvious example.

I think the extractive setup can be resolved without clearing the existing debt, so there’s a half way house where we don’t do anything to spook the banks.

The tradeoff there is in the one hand deterring investment and in the other not having massive debt on the public books. And you could argue that the principle is that banks should be reluctant to lend to such exploitative profit extractors. But I don’t think the banks will learn that lesson, because they’re not set up to work that out (and it won’t always be obvious) so I think the “temporary squeeze” would last for a long time…

Well, and with good reason, right? If the government goes writing off debts, it makes lending less attractive, and lending fuels the economy by increasing the money supply.