Monkey Wash, Donkey Rinse?

There aren't enough parking spaces.

People drive around looking for parking spaces.  They waste lots of time, gas, and atmosphere doing it.

Is there a more efficient way to do it?

Monkey App thinks so.

San Francisco thinks that that is illegal, and since San Francisco has guns (and tanks, actually, a large private army with enough force to take over some countries), San Francisco can prevent Monkey App from operating.

Some questions:

1.  Can I hold a parking space for someone else?  That is, can I park, wait until other person arrives, and then move out of parking space?

2.  Suppose it's an hour before my friend arrives.  Can I pay for three hours, and allow my friend to use the remaining two hours when she arrives and I pull out?

3.   Would it be acceptable for my friend to pay me for the two hours?  At the rate I paid for it, that is, the parking meter rate?

4.  Could my friend pay me for the time I spent waiting? 

5.  Suppose someone pulled up and just wanted to park for 15 minutes, during the hour I was waiting.  Would it be okay for me to let THAT person use the space?  Could the person pay me to pull out so that person could use the space?

If you answer "yes" to number 1, you are saying that deadweight loss is okay in allocation, because I am "wasting" an hour of parking by holding the space, when in fact I don't want to park there.  I just want my friend to be able to park there, when she arrives.  Someone else would have parked there if I had not taken the space.

The counterargument is that people will go into the business of staking out parking spaces.  It's exactly the same problem as ticket scalping.  People who don't want the asset will hire folks with low opp cost of time to wait in line and buy up the asset.  Then it will be resold.  Much of the value of the rent (the scarce resource) will go to the scalper.

The difficulty is that I think the answer to questions 1 and 2 above are "yes."  The only problem is if I get paid.  I can donate the "favor."  But making money on the deal makes it illegal.  Euvoluntary?

Duke UNC Tix: Fungible?

So, this kid was tenting (ie, waiting in line for WEEKS as a rationing mechanism for basketball tickets at Duke.  "Tenting" is queuing), and realized that he could sell his ticket for $1000, or more.  The story.  He may get punished pretty severely.

The Duke-UNC game in Cameron is famously hot, noisy, and exciting.  I got to see one once, and it was something else.

Here's the thing:  the ticket is "free" to the student, and the student owns the ticket, except that (a) because it's free the student has to pay three weeks of time in a tent in January, and (b) the student cannot sell the ticket.

But lots of people sell their tickets to the Duke-UNC game.  Check any web site; there are PLENTY of tickets for sale.  They aren't cheap.  But they are available.  In fact....they are available PRECISELY because they are NOT CHEAP.

Should students be able to sell their tickets, if everybody else can?  I think the answer is "no," it's different.  And if you want, I'll even tell you why, in a future post.

The Two-Part Episode With the Ducks in Season 2 Was Really Touching

It looks like Louis CK has hitched his boxcar to the anti-Ticketmaster train.

This is the second time I've posted on this and I now that I think about it more, I admit that I'm puzzled why there isn't more chipping away at Ticketmaster's business. By my ill-informed reckoning, I'd figure that small venues with mostly will-call patronage could get away with dodging their services and so could big-name draws like Louis CK or Pearl Jam.

Once you recognize the underlying function a ticket seller performs (they're market makers, no different from the dudes at the NYSE in front of the computer stations), it sort of seems weird that more creative destruction hasn't come along. Are there big network externalities to ticket sales? There might be.

Suppose a band is doing a national tour. Ticketmaster has exclusive contracts with all the big arena venues nationwide, so if one goes rogue, that whole city gets cut out of every monster truck pull, traveling rodeo and exhibition hockey event for the next t years. Ticketmaster can Axelrod them right in the wallet. For the acts themselves and their promoters, it's considerably easier to write a contract with one organization than to haggle with each venue individually.

Before the advent of home Internet connections, Ticketmaster provided a massively useful service. Today, you might easily imagine an online clearinghouse where consumers can browse and bid on tickets. Similarly, promoters or the entertainers themselves can register events and set reserve prices.

Someone should invent that website. Bidding could nip secondary scalping markets right smack dab in the bud.

Hm. Maybe I should invent that website. Seems like there would be some money in it. Provided I could successfully uproot the entrenched interests, that is.

Scalp Thyself!

Another story from the NY Times, this time about a band that decided to scalp its own tickets. Money (no pun intended) quote:

“I would argue that on some level they are our tickets,” Mr. Luba said. “If people in a free market find that Ticketmaster’s service is easier and more effective, by all means go for it. But we have found a group of people who are used to buying tickets directly from the band’s Web site.”

The sales model for concert tickets is interesting. Ticketmaster is a de facto monopoly, but I'm afraid I don't know enough about the history of the firm to say much about how they got there. Nor do I know if their position is enforced by legislative fiat. It seems as if instances like this could put some pressure on  Ticketmaster to rein in costs. What do you think? Are standard ticket sales euvoluntary? What is the BATNA? Is Cournot competition alive and well?