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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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I agree with everything here but if you're looking for an answer to the outrage it's very simple. They want something they can't have and are upset about it. There isn't some coherent and well thought out world view behind the outrage. They are simply covetous and they channel it into moral outrage because it's cathartic.

When it didn't rain this season and your tribe needed to raid the tribe next door or starve it is handy to be able to channel covetousness into murderous rage. Accusing them of hexing your fields isn't a claim Antje is going to bother formalizing.

I agree with everything here but if you're looking for an answer to the outrage it's very simple. They want something they can't have and are upset about it. There isn't some coherent and well thought out world view behind the outrage. They are simply covetous and they channel it into moral outrage because it's cathartic.

This is not at all true. People don't like scalpers because they are jerks, plain and simple. They are reducing the available supply at the original price and selling it at a higher price just to gouge people. I hate scalpers who scalp things I don't want just as much as I hate scalpers who scalp things I do want.

The original supply at the original price was already too small for most people to get a ticket. The scalpers are redistributing tickets among the group who would've originally bought tickets, and extracting some surplus for the redistribution, but the same number of people still end up with tickets.

Right, but at higher prices than they would have otherwise had to pay. That sounds like a jerk thing to me.

If it weren't for scalpers reselling tickets, assuming prices were kept artificially low, I would pretty much never get to go to a concert because I can't block time in my schedule far enough ahead of time to buy tickets the millisecond they release. Reselling is a reasonable service that makes people like me who buy at the last minute pay a premium that we're willing to pay, if the original sellers are giving them an unreasonable amount of market that's the original seller's fault.

No, it's still the fault of scalpers for choosing to scalp. Giving someone opportunity, even incentive, to do something does not make it your fault if they do it.

aquota is claiming they provide a useful service that they are incentivized for (making it possible to buy tickets over a long period of time by increasing price), which makes it no longer 'their fault' for doing something bad

First, it's not a useful service. It's just skimming off the top because they can.

Second, even if it were useful, that wouldn't actually matter. It's still their fault for the actions they take.

The counter argument is that you wouldn't need to book time to buy the tickets the millisecond they came out if scalpers weren't all doing exactly that with the intention of reselling them down the line.

If the scalpers are able to up sell as much as they do that implies to me these venues would sell out quite quickly, and buying single tickets of people who had their plans change is an awful experience compared to a relatively reputable reseller.