Touting the Veg!
It caught my eye in the press not so long ago that the Government is trying to crack down on ticket touts. Ticket touting has, of course, moved on considerably since the arrival of the internet, and particularly eBay. In my day ticket touting amounted to no more than a man sidling up beside you whilst you stood in the gig queue in an attempt to either buy your ticket, or sell you one from his wad. It was usually a man as the potential for a spot of inter-thug growling always seemed to put the ladies off this particular profession.
My only transactive experience with one of these honourable gentlemen was when I wanted to swap my ticket for another sector in the stadium to be with my mates. This was when The Who played Wembley Stadium in 1981 (I think) with Nils Lofgren on the bill. The tout's instant response was "certainly, swaps are are £1 today". With that kind of speed he was obviously ready to anticipate all permutations of request.
Nowadays we all have the potential to be a ticket tout from the comfort of our armchairs. You can go online to Ticketmaster, buy four Bruce Springsteen tickets and immediately sell them on eBay at three times their face value, and ordinary people are doing this everyday of the week. You can even pull this off months before you have got your hands on the actual tickets.
Of course we are dealing with a hefty portion of Governmental hypocrisy here. Isn't this capitalism at work? Isn't this the stuff of rich nations? The underlying principle the Government wants to implement is that the ticket retailer should be the only person that profits from the ticket sale, ie the ticket should not then be sold on for a further profit. We, the public, are not allowed to treat concert tickets as a commodity. For some reason tickets are to be treated as some kind of sacred passage to an evening of culture. Why is this? Everything else on the planet is treated as a commodity.
Take the stock market. That is just one great big multi billion pound second hand market. People throughout the globe are buying shares in the expectation that their purchase will give them a wonderful return - which is why they tend to go up in value - people are a buying a dream. Isn't this the same with the Bruce Springsteen tickets? I'm happy to pay more than the original face value because of the return I expect to receive - a great night out. However, I may lose faith in that night out, so why can't I sell them on to someone who still holds the faith?
What options does this leave me for the produce on my allotment? If I can't consume everything why shouldn't I sell it on at a profit? Of course nobody cares about this as carrots are in great abundance, and are low value. This is another important point. There is a scarcity of Bruce Springsteen tickets, and the high demand leads to a profit. Isn't there a scarcity of houses, and didn't we used to make excessive profits on these?
Why is the Government picking on ticket touts?
By the way, allotment rules prevent the use of an allotment for commercial gain. The allotment is surely the last bastion of communistic economics in this country. A microcosm of restrictive practices. Long may it reign.
I thank you.
My only transactive experience with one of these honourable gentlemen was when I wanted to swap my ticket for another sector in the stadium to be with my mates. This was when The Who played Wembley Stadium in 1981 (I think) with Nils Lofgren on the bill. The tout's instant response was "certainly, swaps are are £1 today". With that kind of speed he was obviously ready to anticipate all permutations of request.
Nowadays we all have the potential to be a ticket tout from the comfort of our armchairs. You can go online to Ticketmaster, buy four Bruce Springsteen tickets and immediately sell them on eBay at three times their face value, and ordinary people are doing this everyday of the week. You can even pull this off months before you have got your hands on the actual tickets.
Of course we are dealing with a hefty portion of Governmental hypocrisy here. Isn't this capitalism at work? Isn't this the stuff of rich nations? The underlying principle the Government wants to implement is that the ticket retailer should be the only person that profits from the ticket sale, ie the ticket should not then be sold on for a further profit. We, the public, are not allowed to treat concert tickets as a commodity. For some reason tickets are to be treated as some kind of sacred passage to an evening of culture. Why is this? Everything else on the planet is treated as a commodity.
Take the stock market. That is just one great big multi billion pound second hand market. People throughout the globe are buying shares in the expectation that their purchase will give them a wonderful return - which is why they tend to go up in value - people are a buying a dream. Isn't this the same with the Bruce Springsteen tickets? I'm happy to pay more than the original face value because of the return I expect to receive - a great night out. However, I may lose faith in that night out, so why can't I sell them on to someone who still holds the faith?
What options does this leave me for the produce on my allotment? If I can't consume everything why shouldn't I sell it on at a profit? Of course nobody cares about this as carrots are in great abundance, and are low value. This is another important point. There is a scarcity of Bruce Springsteen tickets, and the high demand leads to a profit. Isn't there a scarcity of houses, and didn't we used to make excessive profits on these?
Why is the Government picking on ticket touts?
By the way, allotment rules prevent the use of an allotment for commercial gain. The allotment is surely the last bastion of communistic economics in this country. A microcosm of restrictive practices. Long may it reign.
I thank you.
Labels: Tout