Perfect is the enemy of good. If a law can end the easier parts of the problem then the overwhelming majority of the issues go away.
For example, the UK banned the private ownership of 'short guns' in 1997 and there hasn't been a mass shooting since. The second order effect of that was an increase in knife crime, but that's OK (in the sense that it's another problem to deal with). Trading fighting gun crime for fighting knife crime is a huge win if it removes a problem like random mass shootings.
In this case, removing all of the incentives for legal ticket scalping at source would mean people can mostly benefit from access to tickets. The second order effects are likely to be an increase in ticket prices because now people with more money will be willing to pay more at source, and an increase in 'sniping' services that automate buying as fast as possible. Those are acceptable downsides if it removes people from the market who only skim profits by scalping and offer no useful additions.
The UK has done amazingly well at removing short guns from society. It was perhaps erroneous of me to include that.
But do you really think that selling/having illicitly overpriced concert tickets will have the same domestic ire as illicitly selling/having a short gun does? Will the incentive really be gone?
Or do you think that perhaps it will be seen ~the same as selling/having some weed is, instead?
The incentive will remain, but doing it at scale will be much harder. That automatically reduces the scale of the problem to what individuals (or small groups) can do. Essentially the law is stopping the mechanisation of scalping rather than scalping itself. That's probably good enough.
Perfect is the enemy of good. If a law can end the easier parts of the problem then the overwhelming majority of the issues go away.
For example, the UK banned the private ownership of 'short guns' in 1997 and there hasn't been a mass shooting since. The second order effect of that was an increase in knife crime, but that's OK (in the sense that it's another problem to deal with). Trading fighting gun crime for fighting knife crime is a huge win if it removes a problem like random mass shootings.
In this case, removing all of the incentives for legal ticket scalping at source would mean people can mostly benefit from access to tickets. The second order effects are likely to be an increase in ticket prices because now people with more money will be willing to pay more at source, and an increase in 'sniping' services that automate buying as fast as possible. Those are acceptable downsides if it removes people from the market who only skim profits by scalping and offer no useful additions.
The UK has done amazingly well at removing short guns from society. It was perhaps erroneous of me to include that.
But do you really think that selling/having illicitly overpriced concert tickets will have the same domestic ire as illicitly selling/having a short gun does? Will the incentive really be gone?
Or do you think that perhaps it will be seen ~the same as selling/having some weed is, instead?
Will the incentive really be gone?
The incentive will remain, but doing it at scale will be much harder. That automatically reduces the scale of the problem to what individuals (or small groups) can do. Essentially the law is stopping the mechanisation of scalping rather than scalping itself. That's probably good enough.
This seems unnecessarily cynical.
It may be the case that your perspective differs from my own. I've gambled, and bought drugs, and done all kinds of other illegal things in my life.
I knew that it was illegal. I did it anyway.
I haven't bought or sold any illegally-overpriced concert tickets yet, but I'm not yet done living my life, either.
Good example. In the U.K. many guns are illegal and schools don’t get shot up. In the us they are legal and school frequently get shot up.