What Will The Market Bear?

I have, on several occasions, used this space to wax rhapsodic about my experiences buying tickets to various concerts at venues from here to there and back again. I have already made a fuss about the relative nobility of standing, and when necessary, sleeping in line for those shows that I considered the most significant and important. The sense of community and camaraderie engendered by lying down with a group of like-minded strangers is, or was, powerful and inspiring. We were all in it together.
I can remember being huddled in my sleeping bag late into the night and hearing the jaded voices of those who ridiculed our efforts: "What are you guys sleeping out for?" Back in those days, we would invariably answer "Zeppelin." It was the group that we figured would get the best response. Every so often, one of the passersby would stop and goggle, "Really?" And we would all chuckle our private line chuckle and go back to the task of trying to stay comfortable and warm.
As recent as my move to California, way back in the Clinton years (Bill, not Hillary), it was of vital importance to me to know where my local ticket outlet was. When I was going to be out town and tickets were going on sale, I phoned ahead to find the closest record store or box office. That was about the time they started selling tickets over the phone. This offended my hunter-gatherer instincts. I wanted to see them print my tickets and hand them to me on the spot. If it was a toll-free number, what would keep morons in other states from calling up and snagging my tickets out from under me? Then Al Gore got into the act.
Al Gore's Internet made it possible for me to sleep in my own bed, wake up at a reasonable hour and wander in to my computer just before ten o'clock and be just a click away from the best seats in the house. Only that has never happened for me. Even when I used to subject myself to the indignities of standing in line for days at a time, I have never managed to score the tickets that are worth all that fuss.
So imagine my chagrin when Ticketmaster made a "voluntary agreement" with the attorney general of New Jersey to stop redirecting customers from their main site to TicketsNow, a subsidiary that resells those same tickets at exponentially inflated prices. I have never purchased a "scalped" ticket, nor would I "scalp" tickets that I bought myself. I have sold them at face value, and accepted anyone's generous offer to buy their unused tickets at face value. This is a code of honor that I have taken on ever since the time I was fourth in line to buy DEVO tickets back in 1982. A guy came by in the early morning hours before the box office opened and offered the first three guys in line a piece of the wad of cash he was carrying to buy their tickets. When he got to me, I was tired, sore, and grumpy enough to tell him where to put his roll of bills. I had earned these seats, after all.
Sure enough, when the window went up, two of the first three guys turned right around and handed their hard-won gems right over to the evil scalper. I got seats in the tenth row, on the side for me and my friends. We went and had a great time. Ticketmaster has agreed to pay three hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the state of New Jersey, without admitting any wrongdoing. For them it's all a part of the business. Maybe if we were all still camping out in front of the arena there would be more outrage. TicketsNow was selling some of those Springsteen tickets for fifty times their face value. I wouldn't pay that much to see Zeppelin.