A Miracle!

[M Holmes]

Paul Mather writes:

> On 4 Apr 2007, at 11:16 AM, M Holmes wrote:

> > Gordon Hundley writes:

> >> On Apr 3, 2007, at 12:10 PM, M Holmes wrote:

> >>> In fact, Eavis only needs to offer one ticket for sale and then
> >>> take the
> >>> X highest bids.

> >> I don't see that its necessarily more fair to allocate tickets to the
> >> N highest bidders than to allocate them to the N luckiest from a
> >> lottery or the N most persistent about hitting refresh.

> > Different folks have different ideas about what's fair.  The problem
> > with the refresh concept though is that we all get poorer because so
> > many man-hours are wasted instead of going into productive use. 
> > It's the equivalent of having people dig holes that others fill in. 

> That's not strictly true.  It just biases the unit of currency towards
> time rather than pounds sterling and thus favours a different subset
> of ticket buyers.  So, some will get "richer" by such a scheme and
> some will get "poorer." Those with little money but lots of free time
> to hang around hitting refresh will quibble with you that such time is
> not productive when it lets them net the ticket they crave. 

The fault in that reasoning lies with the folks who hit refresh for
hours and do not get tickets. Their man-hours have been wasted when they
could have earned more Jollies Points working, or generated Jollies
directly by watching reruns of Buffy or just having a wank. The two
situations would only be equivalenced were Eavis to get to keep the
money from all losing bidders too.

Cut it how you like: Eavis's Hippy Dippiness is making the country poorer.

> Of course, those with little time but lots of money can always tip the
> playing field back in their favour by paying someone to hang around
> and hit refresh as a proxy.  After all, isn't this what the ticket
> touts do? :-)

Ooooh. You do score a point with that one, but of course this is merely
conceding that the current system sets up the same perverse incentives
as selling the tickets below market value, only with the added loss of
wealth due to wasted man-hours.

> >> There are people willing to pay the costs Eavis requires to profit
> >> from his festival but who would never get tickets again under a
> >> bidding war. 

> > Those folks could volunteer to work for the festival and get tickets
> > for nothing.  The advantage of bidding is that people pay what the
> > festival is worth to them and thus the tickets go to those who value
> > it most (in the economic sense of being willing to sacrifice
> > something else of value for it).  That maximises economic
> > efficiency.  The trouble with a lottery is that some folks who value
> > it less will get tickets in preference to some folks who value it
> > more. 

> It depends whether you consider "value" to be an absolute or a
> relative quantity. 

No. That's my very point. It doesn't require this. What we know from
human psychology is that different people value different things in
different ways. If it weren't so then free trade (where each person
thinks they come out of the trade better) could never happen.

In that we know that people value things diffeerently, and we're not
telepathic, wwe need some way to establish how differeent people might
value particular things. The easiest, and so far only reliable way to do
this is to have the person offer something equal to the value of the
object they desire. this is accomplished in certain sorts of auctions
where, if successful, they will in fact be required to sacrifice
precisely what they claim the object is worth.

If you can think of a better way to discover the actual value someone
ascribes to something, then I'd like to act as your agent...

> If the value of a ticket to me is such that I am
> willing to spend 150% of my assets to obtain it, but billionaire Joe
> Trustfund considers a ticket worth only 1% of his assets, Joe
> Trustfund is still going to beat me in a bidding auction (where
> absolute values win). 

That's because he *still* values it more than you do. He's willing to
sacrifice more Jollies Points to get it. The fact that he has more of
them to spare is neither here nor there. This is why beer is sold at a
price rather than at a fixed percentage of someone's total assets.

If two people were bidding for you're employment. One had assets of ten
Pounds and one had assets of 100 billion Pounds. Would you choose to
work for the one bidding ten Pounds rather than the one bidding a
million because you thought the ten Pounds was worth more in some sort
of relative terms? 

Should bands be any different?

> Under your definition, the ticket is worth more
> to Mr.  Trustfund, who "values" it more than me, even though he was
> prepared to sacrifice less to obtain it.

No. He's prepared to sacrifice more.

>  We'll have to agree to disagree on "worth" and "value," then. 

As I said, if you have a better way to discover the worth of something...

> >> I doubt you'd be happy to be in such a position, though maybe your
> >> tolerance for being the fiscal underdog is higher than your
> >> tolerance for pressing 'refresh'.  :)

> > I'm in that position as regards a trip to the international space
> > station inasmuch as I find it difficult to bid the necessary 14
> > million.  I can live with it.  Of course if I could get there for a
> > weekend by manning the gate for one third of the time, I'd be there
> > on Friday... 

> Of course then you'd get people crying foul that you were allowed to
> jump the queue by not paying your way. 

Perhaps.

> With massively oversubscribed
> pay-to-play ventures, there'll usually be some spoiler that comes
> along saying, "I'll man the gate for one third of the time *and* pay
> one million quid to boot, so get out of my queue spot and be on your
> way, Holmes..." :-)

Heh. I wonder if that happens for stewarding at Glastonbuury?

FoFP