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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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Companies, brands and individuals can face substantial PR backlash when they charge a true market price for something in exceptionally high demand. For example, in your airline-and-hotel-prices-around-the-holidays example, it's possible that the airlines could charge even more of a premium for that Wednesday-before-Thanksgiving ticket than they do, but they figure the extra profit for one day isn't worth the negative publicity.

That's more true with flying during Thanksgiving because of the sentimentality around seeing family, but not so much if we're talking about taking a nonstop first class flight from LAX to JFK that gets you home by 8pm. I'd place a sold-out Taylor Swift concert closer to the latter than the former.

You're certainly right that people still irrationally feel what they want to feel, but my response here then is it's up to the industry and its stars to correct such misconceptions. Music fans should be taught that it's natural to self-sort their exposure to their stars based on what they can afford: if you have $10, buy CDs or stream. If you have $100, buy nosebleed seats. If you have a $1000, come on back stage. This really isn't some kind of awful dystopia. Just look at movie stars! The masses get to see them in movie theaters or streaming for a handful of dollars. You don't have some kind of claim to be able to see them perform live for $50. If you want to hobnob with them in person (appearing in promotional panels doesn't count because they are PR events with immediate costs in hopes of recuping long term returns, whereas concerts are meant to be fundamentally profitable and sustainably so), you'd need to shell out a lot more, perhaps by buying your way through some kind of charity gala.

I also argue it's a bit simplistic to think that just because TS is rich, she should forget about maximizing profit. If that same mentality applied broadly to the economy, perhaps consumers would be better off very briefly, but in the long run we suffer collectively as innovation grinds to a halt and capital is deployed inefficiently.

I mean, what you listed, with some modifications, was working, and most people were fine with. The issue is, now those nosebleeds are $300 with another $100 of "fees" tacked on, if you can get to the tickets before some scalper buys 5,000 seats from his basement.