it's like you having a good relationship with a restaurant owner, and because you're a frequent client he cuts you a deal on your check to maintain or reward your loyalty. imagine if someone stood up and said "well the restaurant didn't charge you full cost, so i'm going to get between the two of you and make sure you pay the full amount - fork over the difference." if this happens, you can expect the restaurant owner to eventually not give any discounts (which is what concert promoters are doing by jacking up prices to scalper's levels). it's not a perfect analogy but it illustrates my point of needless and unproductive interference.
A more fitting analogy is a regular customer going to a restaurant where he regularly orders Eggplant Parmesan for $12 only to be told the kitchen has run out of Eggplant Parmesan because its very late in the evening and the regular customer didn't call ahead or show up earlier in the dinner hour. The regular customer, unwilling to go without his beloved dish, sees another customer just getting served the last Eggplant Parmesan of the evening and runs over to that persons table beseeching them to sell them their Eggplant Parmesan. Startled, the customer who got their earlier in the dinner service goes "what? are you crazy? I'm sorry but I'm very hungry." Still unwilling to go without, the regular customer offers $50 for the Eggplant Parmesan. Unable to resist such a sum for a mere Eggplant Parmesan dinner, the customer agrees to the sale and tells others of his good fortune. The restaurant owner neither raises his prices for Eggplant Parmesan because he realizes, as a not-idiotic businessman, that the vast majority of his customers would never pay $50 for Eggplant Parmesan nor decides to tear down his restaurant and build one with a much larger kitchen and freezer because running out of Eggplant Parmesan at the end of the night is a rare occurrence and doing otherwise would potentially cause him to throw out excessive foods he'd order. Everyone goes home a winner: the restauranteur who got his stated asking price for Eggplant Parmesan which was specifically designed to maximize his customer base yet make him a healthy profit, the customer who was willing to be inconvenienced to make $38 profit on selling his food, the (somewhat lazy and definitely overly-attached) regular customer who got to enjoy his beloved meal, and the Eggplant Parmesan itself who -- had it somehow been sentient -- would have felt extremely appreciated to know he was so valued.
then again, it's just a concert.
This is what annoys me. If someone wanted to take this moral outrage and direct it at, say, people making huge profits selling food to starving Africans that price many out of eating, Progressive Julian would be somewhat on board with that viewpoint. It's a discussion worth having, at least. When the argument is only made when one does not get a face value ticket to a concert, it's hard not to wish a lot of people had more perspective.
