[NA-Discuss] The societal harm of domaining, episode 413

[Evan Leibovitch]

Hi David,

I didn't see your original email, but I did see the response and your
followup.

There are significant differences between ticket scalping and domaining,
mainly arising from the finite number of seats and hard expiry dates that
make unused event tickets worthless once the event is over. However IMO the
two share a fundamental characteristic broadly known in economics as "rent
seeking": wealth obtained through manipulative use of resources without any
associated increase in productivity.

Being in a queue early to buy a ticket/domain (without intent to use it)
inflates the price without adding any value. I am fascinated by speculators
who claim what they're doing is innovation, and even more by those who
peddle themselves as branding experts to try to give some veneer of added
value. Nobody is fooled by this. Nor does anyone shed any tears when the
primary sellers (ie, Ticketmaster/Godaddy) see the greed and then seek to
compete with them. The losers are the end-users in both cases.

Cheers,

Evan Leibovitch, Toronto Canada
@evanleibovitch / @el56
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