Mick Jagger is Smarter than Bruce Springsteen

Terence Corcoran has a good column in the Financial Post about how the Internet is transforming ticket sales and the predictable complaints emanating from all the usual suspects--governments and ignorant rock stars who seem pathologically incapable of understanding basic economics. Typical of this mentality, tired old lefty Bruce Springsteen is apparently very unhappy that tickets for his concerts are being resold at much higher prices on the Internet than he would like.

Here's the problem, Brucie. You are very, very popular. People like your music. A lot of people. Heck, even I like your music and would consider paying to see you live, and I think you are a jerk. Unfortunately, you are in short supply. There is only one of you, but lots of us, and only so much time in your life to devote to playing concerts and a limited number of venues in which to stage those concerts. To put all this in economic terms, you are a scarce resource for which demand is high; as a result, the price of a ticket to see you will be relatively high no matter what you do. Try as you might, there is nothing you can do about this short of (a) producing crappy music so that no one wants to listen to you anymore; or (b) refusing to go on tour at all. You've already tried to set the price of your tickets at between $90 and $250 and look what happened. People started reselling them on the Internet at their true market value, which was much higher. You could go on tour for free, but even that wouldn't help, because the venues in which you perform cannot handle all of the people who will want to attend, so they will have to be weeded out in some manner. So instead of buying tickets, they will end up standing in line for hours and probably even days to be admitted to your concerts, meaning they will pay with their time, rather than their money. Free concerts and plays are held in Central Park in New York City every summer and this is exactly what happens. People are forced to get in line usually a day in advance to wait for a "free" ticket. Many people pay others, often homeless people, to stand in line for them. It might be a good way to generate jobs for homeless people, but it's silly to claim that the tickets are "free" unless you consider people's time to be worthless. You could tell everyone that you will put on free concerts for the next ten years, non-stop, and it still would not prevent people from paying the market price for your tickets, because people will want to see you now and in the venue of their choice.

You see, Bruce, prices simply reflect the value people place on different goods and services, not just the goods and services that they actually purchase, but the goods and services that they forgo by spending their money on some things and not others. When people buy your tickets, it means they believe that the tickets are more valuable than all the other things on which they could have spent that money. If it makes you feel better, the free market is the the fairest, most "democratic" means of allocating resources ever devised. And the real beauty of it is that you don't have to do a damn thing to make it work; all you have to do is shut up and sing.

Bruce, if you really want to be the "man of the people" that you seem to think you are, then stop complaining and let the people freely choose to pay whatever they want for your tickets. They are big boys and girls; why not treat them like adults rather than the numb-skulled proletarians you seem to think they are. Learn a lesson from your fellow rock star, Mick Jagger, who, when confronted with fact that Rolling Stones tickets were selling on the open market for thousands of dollars, just said, “They’re like fish ... market price.”