A Miracle!

Paul Mather paul at GROMIT.DLIB.VT.EDU
Wed Apr 4 07:09:56 EDT 2007


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.

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? :-)

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

>> 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.  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..." :-)

Cheers,

Paul.

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
  deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
         --- Frank Vincent Zappa



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