A previous posting, “Lining
Up or Paying,”[1]
cites a dilemma in capitalist
economies. That is, in distributing goods and services,
should the provider institute a queue system – first come, first served – or a competitive
pricing system in which a price is set at a level for which the seller draws
the highest profit possible.
The first option does usually allow people from
varied income groups to be able to attain the goods or services but leads to
various practices – like scalping – undermining such an outcome. The second, from the outset, excludes those
who cannot afford the price, usually lower income people.
Now,
for most goods and services, competitive pricing leads to more efficient production
and distribution strategies. Yet,
especially when one is speaking of essential goods and services, the inability
of the poor or the not so rich to afford necessary goods and services is a
problem. Enough of that and one creates
a disruptive social landscape – one might ask:
how much of that is responsible for the nation’s current turbulent
politics?
The
end of the earlier posting referred to above left readers with the following
paragraph:
This posting is not an argument for
dismissing markets and pricing options in general. Many advantages are derived from applying
that approach to most products. … And
one can readily identify how many (most) aspects of life are better with
markets than without. But as with most
things, there are limits and one should be able to acknowledge where and when
markets fall short.
Here, the work of Michael J. Sandel is seen to
be helpful. He asks which products
should be provided by a queue (or other) system and which ones should be
provided by a market system. He claims
that to answer which products should be sold one way or the other, one should consider
what sort of product it is. How should
it be valued?
To
address this concern, he writes:
Figuring this out is not always easy. Consider three examples of “underpriced”
goods that have recently given rise to ticket scalping: campsites at Yosemite National Park, open-air
masses conducted by Pope Benedict XVI [the reigning pope of this citation], and
live concerts by Bruce Springsteen.[2]
Each of these cases demonstrates a different
aspect of this basic question – which form of availability should be
employed? And by reviewing them, Sandel
sheds light on an aspect of American (of capitalist) life which affects how meaningfully
a nation can promote a partnership sense – i.e., a federated sense – among that
nation’s citizenry.
Yosemite
Park is a popular place. As a national
park, its policies, such as setting an admission price, are a government
operation. Since the park belongs to the
nation’s public and the nation claims equality as a central value, the
admission fee is set low and that includes fees for campsites.
As of the publishing date of Sandel’s cited book,
the fee was $20 a night. Yet for the
common family, the chances of gaining a site at that price are near zero. Why?
Well, as soon as the sites are made available, they are booked in a
matter of minutes. Is this “first family
come; first family served”?
Here
is another bit of information: by visiting
an online site, one can secure that campsite for $100 or $150 a night. Why?
The sights were purchased by scalpers in large numbers (at the $20
figure) and then offered online at the inflated figure. These entrepreneurs, due to their access to
cash, have undermined the rationale for the initial pricing policy of the
government. Sandel writes:
Underlying the hostility to scalping campsites
at Yosemite are actually two objections – one about fairness, the other about
the proper way of valuing a national park.
The first objection worries that scalping is unfair to people of modest
means, who can’t afford to pay $150 a night for a campsite. The second objection, implied by the [referred
to] editorial’s rhetorical question (“Is nothing sacred?”) draws on the idea
that some things should not be up for sale. … [N]ational parks are not merely
objects of use or sources of social utility.
They are places of natural wonder and beauty, worthy of appreciation,
even awe. For scalpers to auction access
to such places seems a kind of sacrilege.[3]
And this sort of “sacrilege” is not limited to
national parks.
Another
example was seen when Pope Benedict visited the US in 2008. Then, it was arranged that the Pope would
hold mass gatherings, in the form of masses at two stadiums, one in New York
City (Yankee Stadium) and the other in Washington, D.C. There, the tickets were distributed for free
by the respective Catholic dioceses. But
after the scalpers got their hands on the tickets, and they did in large
numbers, they drove the price up to $200.
Again, given the religious nature of this example, the term sacrilege is
an apt one to describe what happened.
Are
purely commercial events immune from such practices? Springsteen concerts prove that they are
not. In 2009, as a sort of payback to
his home state, New Jersy, Springsteen put on two concerts and charged a modest
fee (modest in terms of the demand) of $95.
One can guess what happened; the scalpers moved in and getting a ticket
for the concerts could cost a great deal more than the initial price. How much more? Well, a Rolling Stone concert was able to
charge $450 a ticket.
Why
not charge the market price, Mr. Springsteen?
Sandel supposes that in that case the singer and his group wanted to pay
respect to the challenges of the group’s working-class fan base. Yes, it was a commercial event; surely the
group made a profit, but a more modest profit than the market allowed. Instead, the scalpers made the difference
between the market price and the initial selling price. Does the word sacrilege describe this
case? Perhaps not, but its qualities overlap
with what is sacrilegious.
Let
this blog leave readers with these three examples to give the issue – queuing
or marketing – some thought and invite them to the next posting. It will share Sandel’s thoughts on the ethic
of the queue. Or stated differently, is queuing
good or bad, right or wrong, as the practice calls on people to wait or should
they pay – as in a regular pricing arrangement?
This question is more important than just having
to pay hundreds of dollars more for an experience or item. Some of those occasions are considered
reflective of what sort of a people Americans are. Therefore, before ending this posting,
consider this claim: federated nations –
where the citizenry shares a sense of partnership – should be concerned over the
true value of some assets or products.
They should be held as more than marketable items – they should be
considered sacred.
[1] Robert Gutierrez, “Lining Up or Paying,” Gravitas: A Voice for Civics, accessed December 9,
2023, URL: https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2019_09_08_archive.html.
[2] Michael J. Sandel, What
Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of
Markets (New York, NY: Farrar,
Straus, and Giroux, 2012), 35. The
factual claims of this posting are based on what this source reports.
[3] Ibid., 36-37.
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