A very popular artist is going on tour. Fans try to buy tickets only for the shows to sell out in seconds. Moments later piles of tickets become available on the secondary market at grossly inflated prices. While overpaying for tickets or missing a concert are not anywhere near the level of a human rights violation, this is still a plainly unjust state of affairs. It makes people quite angry, and it should.

People instinctively direct this anger at the resellers themselves. If only somehow those people could be shut down, then real customers would be able to get the things they want for face value. Those evil resellers are taking advantage of people’s desires in order to enrich themselves without meaningfully contributing to society. Yes, more often than not, the people engaging in that business are shady and vile characters who deserve retribution.

People need to accept that policies which target resellers directly will never get them the object of their desire. Resellers are not the source of the issue, they are a natural consequence of systemic failure. Creating the environment in which this can happen is a choice. As much as people despise the resellers, changes that would prevent them from thriving are even more unpopular.

Transferrability

Perhaps this doesn’t need to be said, but something can not be resold if it is literally impossible to transfer ownership. Sadly, due to the laws of the universe, most things are naturally transferrable. Too bad we can’t have legendary magical items like Mjölnir or Excalibur which can only be lifted by the worthy.

For intangible goods and services it may be possible to eliminate transferrability. Sadly, this is not viable for the majority of cases. Logistical concerns often require the creation of tangible proxies. Additionally, most customers will become irate if they find they are unable to execute transfers when they have legitimate reasons to do so.

Nobody will tolerate being unable to transfer concert tickets to their friends and family. Nor can we have long and slow lines before every concert where staff thoroughly verify each and every ticket holder is also the original ticket purchaser. Eliminating transferrability is only a good solution for things like restaurant reservations.

Artificial Scarcity

Another way to stop resellers is to eliminate scarcity. Reselling will only occur when demand exceeds supply. Far too many businesses are intentionally producing things in limited quantities. Of course there are cases where real constraints prevent manufacturing from meeting demand, which I discuss in the next section. But nothing other than greed prevents Wizards of the Coast from printing all Magic: The Gathering cards in equal quantities.

We can eliminate resale significantly by outlawing false scarcity. Mandate all companies produce enough product to meet demand whenever possible. No more limited runs of just few hundred items. Take a pre-order to count exactly how many people want something, and then produce at least that many.

Of course there’s always a catch. A lot of the demand for these items is a consequence of their limited nature. People will line up to buy a hot new pair of sneakers when there are only a hundred pairs in the world. If that same exact shoe were on the shelves in every store, it is feasible that they would sell fewer pairs overall.

A certain class of draconic people bind their self-worth to their material wealth. Rare and unique items that other people can not possess are the strongest possible foundation for their self-esteem. Those materialists are perfectly willing to wait in lines and deal with resellers to feel special. If artificial scarcity were removed, they would riot while the businesses that serve their interests collapse.

True Scarcity

Many things in this universe are unavoidably rare. Any handcrafted work of art will always be one of one. A celebrity can only be asked to autograph so much memorabilia. Every entertainment venue has a limited capacity. There are only so many atoms of platinum on our planet. If demand exceeds supply, and someone is willing to sell below market rate, arbitrage is inevitable. The only answer to this is what people hate most. The face value must be increased to meet the market.

If retail prices rise to eliminate the margins, the secondary market will vanish. Of course, few people have the courage to raise their prices because it would be a public relations disaster. If an artist keeps their prices sustainably low, they can maintain good will. If they raise them, their fans will revolt.

With the current system a non-zero number of legitimate buyers will be able to purchase at the lower price. That seems good, but at what cost? Should we enrich these vile leeches just for the sake of a lucky few? Raising prices would eliminate any chance of paying a lower price, but the upside would be the destruction of the secondary market.

We must accept that most people will be paying the higher price either way. It is preferable for the rightful party to be able to capture the full value of their labor than to make space for parasites in the system.

Shifting Demand

Demand can never be perfectly predicted, and it can shift rapidly. A publisher might print so many copies of a book, only to be surprised when it becomes a viral sensation. A delay before they are able to manufacture and distribute more copies is inevitable. An unpopular artist may be performing in a small theater, and then have their song become a hit overnight. They can’t cancel the show, and changing venues or adding performances before their next tour will pose a significant challenge.

Such a mismatch can be corrected in the long-term, but in the short-term it creates room for arbitrage. What’s more, there is almost nothing that can be done to avoid it. As long as people are time-sensitive, they may have to choose between paying and waiting.

Culturally I would like to see us downplay the significance of timing. A movie is the same on opening night as it is weeks or years later. The words of a book will be the same no matter when it is read. A Broadway show in its third year may no longer star the original cast, but the performers are still incredible talents who will not fail to entertain. This is my attitude. If others share it, we will all benefit from lower prices.

Wealth Inequality

Unsurprisingly, as with most problems in society right now, wealth inequality lies at the heart of the matter. As the middle class erodes in the K-shaped economy, businesses naturally change strategy to serve an unequal populace. Attempts to produce quality goods at reasonable prices will fail. The only viable strategies are to provide preposterous luxury or to mass produce garbage.

Truly wealthy people are not price-conscious. The consequence of this is rising prices across our entire society as they bid everything up. Although they are a minority of the population, there are still enough rich people to fill every seat in an arena, claim an entire run of limited edition clothing, or to catch all the best Pokémon cards. As long as wealth inequality continues, scarce goods will become the exclusive domain of the wealthy, with or without resellers getting in the middle.

To reduce inequality we must reverse the transfer of wealth. That means taxing the rich. If the middle class is restored, the wealthy will regain price-consciousness. Prices of everything, even things that are scarce, will come down. Then people will be able to charge prices that are not offensive to customers, but are still high enough to keep away speculators.

Most of all, if people have good jobs and a strong social safety net, they will be less likely to resort to shady businesses to keep food on their tables.

Other Good Ideas

All that being said, there are additional moderately effective techniques which will not necessarily lower prices or eliminate reselling, but will still help to ease the frustrations of honest consumers. These are far more palatable to most people, but provide a much smaller amount of relief than the kind of revolutionary changes I propose.

First and foremost, when supplies are limited companies should be barred from distributing using any method that causes undue suffering. It’s immensely disrespectful, and ableist, to require a person to wait outside in line for long periods, or to make them furiously refresh their web browsers at an arbitrary time. A brick and mortar store can hand out numbered tickets, allowing buyers to leave and come back at any convenient time in the future. Lotteries can be used to reduce stress and the impact of purchasing bots. These procedures should be commonplace, but are implemented far too rarely.

I learned another strategy from a game store which would cut the shrink wrap on boxes before handing over collectible cards to the customer. I can imagine similar techniques could be employed for other product categories like opening boxes or removing tags. This in no way devalues the items for customers who actually intend to use them, but it could potentially reduce the value for resellers who need everything to be mint condition.

One of the best ideas is a very old one, which are the lotteries used by Broadway theaters. They have a fundamental belief that the arts must not be purely the domain of the wealthy. People of lesser means must have some means to access the theater. To accomplish this they withhold a small portion of the tickets from each performance. These tickets are heavily discounted, and are distributed in a lottery held just prior to showtime. Winners immediately enter the theater. It is not possible to resell the tickets.

No Perfect Answers

Even in the most equitable society, there will be people who are more and less fortunate than others. There will always be things that are only available in limited quantities. There will always be people who miss out on something they want because they lack the means.

Before we can solve the problem, we must be at peace with this. There are going to be times in life where we can’t get something we want at a price we can afford, or at all. It’s too easy to believe the lie that if somehow all the resellers were struck by lightning that everything would be great. This leads us to advocate for policies that satisfy our sense of justice, but do little to change the system.

I don’t want to say we should reduce or redirect any of the anger we hold towards the resellers. They are still scum who deserve everything that is coming to them. But if we sincerely wish for them to go away, we may have to do the unthinkable and ask our favorite creators to change their distribution methods and raise their prices.