Utopia Talk / Politics / AOC is right for once

Habebe Member	Wed Nov 16 09:24:50 http://www...t-sale-controversy-2022-11?amp I mean, the justification seems a little trivial here, but ticketmaster needs to be broken up via anti trust action. They abuse their monopoly powers and IMHO have broken the agreements they agreed to when Obama allowed the merger even.
Sam Adams Member	Wed Nov 16 09:30:59 Ya ticketmaster is a huge scam.
Habebe Member	Wed Nov 16 09:37:00 http://youtu.be/rTVji-feVOo This short news video really breaks it down how ticketmaster scams consumers AND artists. Then they routinely sell out to scalpers and they even scalp the scalpers! WTF! This is why event pricing has gone up so much. Breaking them up is good for everyone except TM, but fuck them.
kargen Member	Wed Nov 16 11:04:51 Cracks me up that some idiot compared this to the student loan program processing eight million applications in 30 hours. Did all those applications come in within the first 15 minutes of opening? People are starved for live entertainment. Taylor Swift occupied the top ten slots on the Billboard top 100 list. Of course there was going to be an overwhelming number of people trying for tickets. My cousins daughter had all kinds of people trying to get into the queue for her. I'm sure others did the same. Add in all the people just wanting to flip tickets and that is a hell of a lot of people trying to get tickets all at the same time. I don't like Ticket Master but pointing at this as a reason to break them up is wrong. Maybe we need to go back to the days when you paid some unemployed friend or a homeless person to stand in line for you. Do away with online sales and make people camp for their tickets.
Habebe Member	Wed Nov 16 11:09:17 Kargen, The issue really came about when they bought out their competitor. Now it's almost impossible for artists to sell tickets without them because they have deals with the event locations, so they have been known to use that leverage against locations that if they start selling tickets separately for some artists they cut them off, or threaten to. Its abuse of monopoly power. The merger should be revoked.
Habebe Member	Wed Nov 16 11:24:00 Or maybe ban exclusive venue deals.
kargen Member	Wed Nov 16 12:03:59 I agree something needs to change. Banning exclusive venue deals seems appropriate. I'm just saying using this event as the excuse isn't being honest about what the problem is. On a tangent it cracks me up that people complain that prices are to high and also complain tickets are hard to get. Kind of like people complaining how much it costs to go to Disney World and then complain how crowded it is. Prices are high because demand is high. Fans have no problem spending $400 or more on Blink 182 tickets. Gone are the days where the alcohol you sneak in cost more than the ticket did.
Habebe Member	Wed Nov 16 12:09:27 "I'm just saying using this event as the excuse isn't being honest about what the problem is." Agreed.
kargen Member	Wed Nov 16 13:44:36 A bit of an update. My cousins daughter finally got onto the site and tried to buy some $800 tickets but they were selling faster than she could click on them.
Habebe Member	Wed Nov 16 13:55:44 Kargen, Yeah, they scam alot to artificially do that shit. IE Mariah Carey concert only sold 7% of tickets to the public, he rest went to "scalpers"/2ndary markets who then get charged a 2nd TM fee or are also at times subsidiaries of TM (crazy) They have also been known to release tickets in smaller and smaller batches like having 2 pre sales, so they sell out quicker and do what is called "dynamic pricing" which means they up thenprice because of demand they heloed artificially boost.
nhill Member	Wed Nov 16 15:35:35 I don't care about the details. Ticketmaster should have been broken up and put in the dumpster fire 20+ years ago. Go AOC!
nhill Member	Wed Nov 16 15:36:22 This is one area where I agree with Seb. EU would never let this travesty of a terrible user experience coupled with a monopoly and overpriced tickets fly.
kargen Member	Wed Nov 16 22:32:49 Well she finally got her tickets. Lives in Kansas and got tickets to a show in California. Fifth row $499. Thirty percent of that was added fees for Ticket Master.
murder Member	Wed Nov 16 23:58:42 "This is one area where I agree with Seb. EU would never let this travesty of a terrible user experience coupled with a monopoly and overpriced tickets fly. " This is probably one issue that would get near universal public approval. Congress should just spend the next 2 years breaking up monopolies.
murder Member	Thu Nov 17 00:02:24 "Well she finally got her tickets. Lives in Kansas and got tickets to a show in California. Fifth row $499. Thirty percent of that was added fees for Ticket Master." She couldn't get tickets to something closer?
Seb Member	Thu Nov 17 01:22:55 The Biden admin earlier this year published an anti-trust handbook reminding various agencies of the dormant powers that they already have. It really is a particularly "Reaganism" problem - the whole "govt regulation is bad mmmkay"
Habebe Member	Thu Nov 17 02:28:44 Yeah, Obama was such a reaganite.
Cherub Cow Member	Thu Nov 17 04:17:13 AOC is a piece of shit propagandist and useful idiot for the Marxist-Malthusian totalitarian state who should do her constituents a favor by taking a handful of pills and slashing her wrists in a hot bathtub. That said, I wrote this about StubHub and TicketMaster in *2011*, when Ticketmaster/LiveNation were already fucking people by creating systems which "just happened" to favor scalpers: "The Evil of StubHub (or other mass ticket touts)" http://www...hub-or-other-mass-ticket-touts There have been only a few big artists who have figured out ways around it, and it's mostly because their acts are large enough or small enough that they can bypass the venue-monopolies and TicketMaster/LiveNation (the middle-zone is screwed). NIИ, for instance, will sell a large amount of tickets in-person *only* with individual purchase-limits per buyer, they'll often play two shows at one location, and they'll try to book venues with floor-space instead of chairs/seating. Multiple shows drives down the demand incentive of resale, in-person cuts into the resale market because the logistics of getting that many people to resell is a bit difficult (especially with physical tickets), and general-admission places are less able to gouge people for one ticket versus another — and they're also less likely to be corporate-owned. The catch is that that means that TicketMaster/LiveNation will downgrade advertisement for the concert (naturally), and the venue may charge the band more to cover the incentives that TicketMaster/LiveNation offer them. So, like that BP video points out, more often than not, bands that attempt to get tickets out of the scalpers' hands end up having difficulty finding venues. Which is the bigger issue for me: a lot of venues have monopolies also. Personally, this is why I do not go to concerts at places with a corporation in their name. Seeing a big band in person doesn't even matter at those places, since those big venues put you in folding chairs instead of giving general admission standing room. (Sitting down is for the decadent bourgeoisie. Concerts demand riotous violence.) I've even flown to other cities to see bands when they play at open fields or smaller venues just to avoid paying the TicketMaster/LiveNation costs (i.e., it's cheaper to fly to another city to see bands at better venues). That said, this monopoly is not limited to just price-gouging. Keep in mind that these same mega-venues and TicketMaster were behind COVID enforcement as well (i.e., venues that did not allow bands to book without requiring masks/shots). This is why it's ironic that AOC, who supported those totalitarian policies, is in a strange position by going after them now. Probably the total-state DNC will tell her to drop the issue and she'll fall in line like the coward that she is.
Seb Member	Thu Nov 17 04:52:39 Habebe: The economic consensus the neo-liberals set in the US (and UK) has not been revisited in most policy areas - not to any great degree. Obama was not out of line with any of his predecessors in terms of approach to anti-trust. He might not be what you would call a reaganite, but the anti-trust policy his administration pursued was in the vein of that set back in the 80's.
nhill Member	Thu Nov 17 07:41:11 You know it’s bad when CC, murder, and Seb are on the same page.
nhill Member	Thu Nov 17 07:41:50 > This is probably one issue that would get near universal public approval. Indeed
Habebe Member	Thu Nov 17 07:46:27 Nhill, It's shit like this that baffles me. If your a politician, why not push for the low hanging fruit? Want to be popular? Legal weed, break up ticketmaster, support ending Truckers pay exemptions etc. Very popular shit, the last one might seem sort of niche, but I don't know that it is.
nhill Member	Thu Nov 17 07:53:45 Lot of money under the table somewhere is preventing this
Seb Member	Thu Nov 17 08:21:01 Habebe: Like I said, Biden has been the first performs in years to get serious on anti trust using the powers the admin has. The pro monopoly stuff is normally on the republican side: they tend to confuse being good for business as being good for the economy.
Habebe Member	Thu Nov 17 10:20:14 What monopolies has he broken up?
Seb Member	Thu Nov 17 15:18:17 The power to actually break up monopolies is actually really hard to exercise due to the "consumer welfare" doctrine that the supreme court accepted. Part of the Chicago school and pushed by Bork in the 80's. They are using other mechanisms to crack down on anti-competitive practice because the SC in rulings in the late 70's or early 80's effectively neutered anti-trust law citing Bork's consumer welfare doctrine. http://www...ition-in-the-american-economy/
Seb Member	Thu Nov 17 15:18:46 Remember all those EU cases you used to get mad about where Google and Apple and Microsoft get massive fines?
Habebe Member	Thu Nov 17 17:29:28 So he didn't really do much of anything.
murder Member	Thu Nov 17 20:26:05 In office less than 2 years. "Why hasn't he fixed everything yet?" -- Habebe
kargen Member	Fri Nov 18 00:23:35 I believe that is "why hasn't he fixed anything yet?"
murder Member	Fri Nov 18 05:40:50 He fixed Trump. ;o)
Habebe Member	Fri Nov 18 11:51:59 Murder, Well, in response to Seb saying how much he has done, apparently he passed out pamphlets.
kargen Member	Fri Nov 18 16:18:08 I'll give you the fix was in. Not sure Biden really had much to do other than hide from the public. Credit due though, he hid well.
murder Member	Fri Nov 18 19:20:28 He could have hid better. We found him.
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