I see your point. I'm not sure you're objectively wrong. But it feels wrong. :)
Where there is sufficient demand for things to sell out to people who want the product, but are unable to get it because someone has used a bot to scoop them up at superhuman speeds... that doesn't feel exactly like the moral equivalent of other forms of arbitrage.
_Especially_ when the sellers themselves would prefer that not happen. The bands want the tickets to go to the fans at no higher than the price the venue sets. Sony wants more gamers to have PS5s at the price they set.
It feels like the marketplace would function perfectly fine, and the true seller and the final buyer want it to work one way, but third party interlopers are taking advantage of other aspects of the scale and technological basis of our marketplace.
Market makers provide value; scalpers rent seek. I think that's a valid moral distinction.
I can see where you're coming from, but I have pretty bad news, which is that the last line just doesn't match reality, at least not in the United States. It might make sense in theory, but it just isn't true:
> Market makers provide value; scalpers rent seek.
In the United States, event tickets are functionally a monopoly. In practice, Ticketmaster/Live Nation is a rent-seeking market maker which crushes small events and blocks value from being created.
Here's a deep dive on that, just under 20 minutes:
This doesn't mean that scalpers can't also be rent-seekers, but given that scalpers are highly competitive and Ticketmaster is a monopoly, I think the scalpers aren't in a position to seek rent.
This part has a similar flaw:
> someone has used a bot to scoop them up at superhuman speeds... that doesn't feel exactly like the moral equivalent of other forms of arbitrage.
High-speed trading is all about bots and arbitrage. This isn't the first time those two things have been combined. There are corners of New York where they're practically synonymous.
This one has factual issues also:
> The bands want the tickets to go to the fans at no higher than the price the venue sets.
It's only true of _some_ bands. There's evidence (in that deep dive video) that Justin Bieber has probably scalped tickets to his own shows, at scale.
I'm not saying that if Justin Bieber does it, it automatically can't be scummy. That seems like a very very hard argument to make. I'm a musician and I would not want to have that kind of relationship with my fans (if I had any, beyond a few repeat listeners on Spotify).
I'm just saying, there's a lot in this comment which makes intuitive sense but doesn't actually line up with the reality of the situation.
Where there is sufficient demand for things to sell out to people who want the product, but are unable to get it because someone has used a bot to scoop them up at superhuman speeds... that doesn't feel exactly like the moral equivalent of other forms of arbitrage.
_Especially_ when the sellers themselves would prefer that not happen. The bands want the tickets to go to the fans at no higher than the price the venue sets. Sony wants more gamers to have PS5s at the price they set.
It feels like the marketplace would function perfectly fine, and the true seller and the final buyer want it to work one way, but third party interlopers are taking advantage of other aspects of the scale and technological basis of our marketplace.
Market makers provide value; scalpers rent seek. I think that's a valid moral distinction.