100 replies
18h40m
The FTC and DoJ have been hitting it out of the park recently, unfortunately, there are a lot of judges out there that think corps should be able to do anything they want.
37 replies
19h16m
If Live Nation-Ticketmaster is not a monopoly then there is no such thing as a monopoly.
18 replies
18h51m
But monopolies are not illegal.
Violating antitrust law is illegal.
---
You don't violate federal law just by being the only company to sell canine banana hammocks.
11 replies
18h38m
Are you arguing that they aren't hurting consumers? Just look at ticket prices over the years as more and more competition was eliminated, as well as the tactics they use to control artists. You aren't going to have much luck I suspect.
6 replies
18h11m
I was just looking at that last night.
[Artist that was super popular in 2006ish] tickets when we went at the absolute height of his popularity were $40 for lawn seats at a local venue
[Same artist] at the same venue in the same lawn seating is now $380.
What's the difference? Guess who bought the venue.
1 replies
15h45m
Can also be an instance of Baumol’s cost disease.
0 replies
5h38m
It might be a factor (thanks for introducing me to this concept!) but I doubt it accounts for all of it
1 replies
17h54m
Don't forget 2024 you probably has a much higher disposable income than 2006 you... And might be willing to pay to feel young again for a few hours.
Off to buy some late 90s band tickets!
0 replies
17h31m
Wow. This hurts.
1 replies
17h33m
What's the difference?
Disposable income of target audience.
Greater number of people in target audience.
Fewer shows.
Technology enabling more accurate pricing so each customer is able to be targeted to pay as much as they can afford (price discrimination).
Etc.
0 replies
16h16m
Also, artists can no longer make money by selling music, so the majority of their income comes from performances now.
1 replies
17h57m
Yet nobody seems to ever ask whether or not the merger is a question of survival - would TM or LN poof out of existence if they didn't have this release valve? - or simply just another attempt to stifle existing competition in the market.
People who are really opposed to this will probably think this is wildly off base, but if it came to pass...isn't that worse than one company absorbing the other because although the endgame is similar, it's messier and doesn't necessarily improve the overall situation.
An example: Barclays acquisition of Lehman Brothers business in North America in 2008 after the latter imploded. They had an agreement in principle, but the government balked, so it happened after the fact...bringing an even larger crisis along with it.
0 replies
16h48m
If the company is in such a bad state that the only thing keeping it alive is a monopolistic control of the market and much hated business practices, do we really want it running a significant chunk of the economy? Or is it better to watch it burn to allow better companies to emerge?
Personally, I think that if a company can’t survive with competition, it shouldn’t survive. That is a fundamental and necessary tenant of capitalism. It may cause pain in the short term, but it will eventually lead to a healthier market.
As was often repeated back in the Great Recession, if a company is too big to fail, then maybe it’s too big to exist.
0 replies
18h31m
No.
I am pointing out that being a monopoly (i.e. the only business choosing to offer a product/service) is not illegal.
Engaging in anticompetive behavior is illegal. And the Justice Dept has accused Ticketmaster of doing that.
0 replies
18h4m
Doesn't ticket master sell most tickets for far below market value? How does this hurt consumers? Are they forcing artists to sell below market value or something?
2 replies
18h40m
I agree that is what is the law is and even that that is what the law should be. It is also important to note however that the actual title of the Sherman Antitrust Act is "An Act to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies." So it isn't fair to say that anti-competitive practices and monopolies are completely orthogonal (although strictly speaking they are) because monopolies are a perfect tool with which to engage in anti-competitive practices. In my opinion I don't think protecting entertainment from anti-competitive practices even matters that much anyway though. Your ability to watch your favorite singer live is really not the same as something like oil or trains which are actually important to the economy.
1 replies
18h30m
Your quote itself presents the question of lawful monopoly vs unlawful monopoly.
0 replies
18h27m
I don't think I implied otherwise.
0 replies
18h12m
technically you are correct but this isn't a thread of lawyers/attorneys, this is a thread with higher than average autism. Cleaving words and being clever with 'harmless' misdirection and turn of phrase is not welcome.
0 replies
17h40m
If LiveNation/TicketMaster aren’t violating antitrust law, there is no antitrust law.
0 replies
17h29m
As I understand it, a wrinkle with this distinction is that having a monopoly through sheer competitive goodness isn't illegal, but actively trying to construct a monopoly almost always is illegal. And with the benefit of hindsight, I don't see how Ticketmaster's acquisition of Live Nation can be construed in good faith as anything but the latter.
10 replies
18h12m
The monopoly is really the artists, who then delegate to the venues. Like, Bruce Springsteen ticket prices are high because only he is Bruce Springsteen and nobody else is. The real monopoly is on being Bruce Springsteen. Prices are high because of supply and demand for that artist; Bruce Springsteen can only put on so many shows for so many seats and there is far more demand than that, no matter who is selling the tickets.
Live Nation-Ticketmaster only gets the monopoly power delegated from the artists and venues. If you break that up into competing ticket providers, that doesn't do anything to the underlying prices, tickets will still be resold on secondary markets until the prices reach supply-demand equilibrium.
Busting LN-TM hypothetically doesn't even do anything to the fees. The market is set by what customers will pay, and it doesn't matter to them what the breakdown is between going to the middlemen or going to the artist. At most, busting LN-TM does create competition for lower fees, so that the artist gets more of the revenue. But it's not clear at all that that's a matter for courts to forcibly impose.
(I see the downvotes. The Internet hivemind will always think it's entitled to ignore the laws of supply and demand, even on HN. Ticket prices are high because demand exceeds supply and customers choose to pay it, not because of a monopolistic reseller entity.)
3 replies
17h16m
I can't believe that when a company owns the venues and the tickets, mandates buying tickets from themselves then adds a huge markup to every ticket someone would actually blame the entertainers for having name recognition.
2 replies
16h52m
Surely Bruce Springsteen can simply build dozens of venues around the United States if he wants an alternative to Live Nation.
1 replies
11h39m
Bruce is probably an investor in Live Nation and Ticketmaster. Many of them probably are.
0 replies
4h30m
Do you have a source for that or are you making things up?
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bruce-springst...
2 replies
15h38m
The market is set by what customers will pay [...] The Internet hivemind will always think it's entitled to ignore the laws of supply and demand
And this is why "the market" isn't perfect, and flat-out sucks for some things. It doesn't have to be this way. Springsteen should be able to say "I want to charge $40 per ticket so my loyal fans, no matter what their financial situation, can see me perform", without having to deal with the scum of the earth buying up those tickets and reselling them for $300 each. (Whether or not he would want to do this is another question.)
The funny thing is that this setup is perfectly possible now that we have all this digital infrastructure. Back when tickets were just a piece of paper that people bought anonymously from a box office, it was damn near impossible to stop people from scalping them. Today we can tie a ticket to a person's real name, and check IDs at the venue. We can prohibit ticket transfers, or at least require that they be done via the same marketplace where they were purchased, so they can only be resold for the amount they were originally paid for.
Supply and demand are only laws when you allow a market to set prices, instead of letting a the seller price how they want, and sell directly to only their final end customers.
1 replies
13h24m
If this were the case, you'd have a hundred million people wanting to pay that to see Springsteen but only a hundred thousand seats exist. How do you decide which of them gets the seats?
0 replies
40m
- First come, first served
- Auction
- Lottery system
- A combination of all 3
None of these are perfect, especially if demand greatly exceeds supply, but there's plenty of flexibility in how an artist could sell tickets to their fans, if it weren't for monopolies like TM/LN. The "Market" would still be in play here, as an artist could decide to cater to specific people (i.e. the rich) via bids, or be more accessible but elusive via ticket lotteries.
2 replies
18h7m
You're really missing the point.
The issue here isn't that top artists can't sell their tickets at a high price. It's that venues have exclusivity deals w/ ticketmaster/livenation and ticketmaster/livenation ultimately charge outrageous fees to consumers no matter what. Then often their own reselling arm is involved in the scalping behavior.
The artists aren't reaping these fees. Ticketmaster/livenation is capturing the entirety of the profit and artists don't really have a choice in using a different ticketing vendor in most cases (since it's common for every major venue in a city to have strong-armed exclusivity contracts w/ ticketmaster/livenation).
0 replies
14h16m
>The artists aren't reaping these fees
This is not true. The fees are just there to mask the cost of the ticket:
>According to Ticketmaster, the fees are determined “in collaboration” with its clients, all of whom receive a cut from the charges.
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/national-international/ho...
0 replies
16h36m
ultimately charge outrageous fees to consumers
By and large, it is the venues and promoters that set large fees. The reason they like TM is because TM will take the blame for charging those fees when in reality, they're kicked back.
Of course, the problem is that in many cases now, Live Nation owns the venues and acts as the promoters, so those kickbacks started going, ultimately, to the company charging them.
5 replies
15h46m
Merely being a monopoly is not sufficient to warrant antitrust action.
3 replies
15h36m
Live Nation / Ticketmaster is also an excellent example of a bad for consumers monopoly.
2 replies
14h11m
Pardon my ignorance here, as I don't actually attend concerts, but to play something of devil's advocate...
Isn't the secondary market for tickets- scalpers and such- significantly more expensive than what Ticketmaster is selling the tickets for? Which is to say, aren't the tickets sold below market value?
I'm not entirely clear on how there being more competition would help consumers.
0 replies
5h11m
Keep in mind that effectively TM/LN sells tickets on the secondary market.
Just because tickets are on the "resale" market doesn't mean they were bought by Jane Doe and she can't go anymore so she's re-listing them. For some concerts only 8% of the tickets are actually available at the listed price, the remaining 92% are all available either as a special offer (credit cards) or given to various individuals associated with the event (such as the headliner) who can then immediately put them up for resale.
0 replies
13h35m
Ticketmaster enables "scalping" by offering a secondary market on their own platform. They have a vested interest in this, and due to a lack of real competition they have no reason to realign incentives. Meaningful competitors could do all sorts of things that make a difference in this area.
Consumers are also the people running the concerts themselves (performers and whatnot) who have bad experiences with Ticketmaster but don't really have an alternative. Lower fees, non-exclusivity terms, etc.
0 replies
14h54m
I certainly don’t want Ticketmaster to be a monopoly. Why should consumers be forced to buy tickets from them?
0 replies
16h28m
Isn't it an open secret that large venues contracted Ticketmaster expressly to do price fixing? It's collusion as much as monopolism. They run operations and absorb all the bad press.
25 replies
19h32m
What's the typical turn time for a case like this from the time it is filed to the time it is actually in front of a judge/jury? This particular administration only has a guaranteed relevance of about 7 months. It could get extended, or it could get replaced and then cases like this would most likely get dropped.
So, why bring it now?
14 replies
19h30m
I'm theory, prosecutions are a civil service function, not a political function. Changes in administration might change the leadership and what areas are prioritized, but once you have a case, it really shouldn't matter who is in office.
In theory.
13 replies
19h2m
What theory is this from, some sort of administrative state theory? This has never been the case in any executive branch that I'm aware of.
4 replies
18h50m
The vast majority of cases aren’t dropped when you move from one administration to another. However, there’s a great deal of correlation between cases people care about and politics so you’re more likely to hear about the kinds of cases that get dropped.
3 replies
18h27m
I agree that most political factions actually agree on most policies, but that doesn’t mean the decision as to whether to proceed is ‘civil service’ rather than ‘political’.
1 replies
18h16m
Political sure, but I don’t think you can call something politics without there being some debate.
Should we build a road is a classic political choice because people disagree even if it’s generally a net positive. Should we prosecute a murderer may qualify if there’s some twist (ex stand your ground) but not in the general case.
0 replies
15h49m
Should we build a road is a classic political choice because people disagree even if it’s generally a net positive. Should we prosecute a murderer may qualify if there’s some twist (ex stand your ground) but not in the general case.
What laws get passed/repealed are decided on by people elected to office. Policies and priorities for departments are decided upon by political appointees. Decisions on cases though? Those are generally delegated to the civil service.
Now, from a practical standpoint, there's obviously ways you can muck with policies and priorities that can impact a particular case, just like there are ways that you can change the laws to muck with a particular case (you may recall when Florida went after Disney, they had to bend over backwards to draw up the law such that they could claim they weren't explicitly going after one company), but that's exactly the kind of stuff that draws criticism (and there are rules against it). There is absolutely a principle of independence & impartiality of the DOJ that's been the norm, even if recently that norm has been eroded.
0 replies
15h55m
Agreed. It largely immaterial to the issue. I'm curious though, what political appointees in the DOJ do you see evidence of making decisions to drop or pick up specific cases?
3 replies
18h53m
Exactly this. The first few days in office, a new POTUS will typically use executive orders specifically to reverse policies the previous administration put in place.
1 replies
15h38m
EO cannot be used to drop pending litigation. It would require a different mechanism
0 replies
14h5m
different mechanism
POTUS: Mr Attorney General, it is this administrations agenda to no longer pursue these specific cases: anything with me as the defendant.
AG: Understood Mr POTUS, we'll back burner everything that cannot just be stopped or dropped.
<end scene>
0 replies
16h10m
Yes, the administration can change policies, but dropping cases is another matter. Certainly policy changes can have an effect on cases, but it's not like cases get dropped at some dramatic rate when a new administration comes in.
2 replies
18h31m
"I want you to make sure this case goes nowhere, can you do that?"
"No!"
Fires leadership
"I want you to make sure this case goes nowhere, can you do that?"
"You got it!"
Hires
There certainly is some of this every administrative change over.
0 replies
15h38m
How well did that work out for Nixon?
0 replies
16h14m
The political leadership generally can't fire civil servants for that reason. When Trump was in office, he complained about it a lot, and key part of Project 2025's policy plans are to get the rules on that changed: https://www.project2025.org/.
0 replies
15h58m
The independence of the DOJ has always been perceived as important. A lot of ink was spilt about this during the Trump administration, as they attempted to undermine these norms (e.g.: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/restoring-integrity...), with some degree of success. You may recall Trump's various battles to get the DOJ to do things that the DOJ didn't want to do (and unfortunately, in some cases, he did get his way, but a lot of the time, he did not). One of the key objectives of Project 2025 is to claim control of the operations of the DOJ from the "unaccountable bureaucratic managerial class and radical Left ideologues who have embedded themselves throughout its offices and components": https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_CHA...
2 replies
18h52m
This particular administration only has a guaranteed relevance of about 7 months.
That is a deeply cynical view on the nature of politics.
So, why bring it now?
Why help anyone else if you can't score political points off the back of it? Possibly because it's the right thing to do and ideologically motivated people actually do successfully exist in government.
1 replies
18h19m
That is a deeply cynical view on the nature of politics.
How? If the bid for re-election is lost, they leave office Jan 20th. That's not cynical. That's being able to read a calendar.
If you think a new administration, specifically the one that would be coming in, will not immediately reverse a lot of things, then you just have not been paying attention.
0 replies
18h0m
Then they just handed them that victory without extracting any sort of price.
The incoming challenger is riding on a "populist" base. These polices are legitimate "populist" policies. The strategy here is obvious.
1 replies
19h12m
One of the signature policies Biden is running on is his fight against junk fees. That's why this is will overlap the election. And why no one would be surprised if nothing happened if Biden lost.
0 replies
19h1m
He's against junk fees, malarkey, and airing Matlock later than 7pm so he has my vote.
1 replies
17h34m
relevance of about 7 months
Okay, buddy.
Regardless of your political leanings, Biden himself extended a deeply reviled policy on handling border refugees. I think the “cooler” view is that they’re just figureheads.
0 replies
15h37m
Theory of the median voter and all that
1 replies
18h57m
In the article, they mention both the Trump and Biden administrations initiating investigations. Only since Obama, has this been “approved”.
What leads you to believe it would most likely be dropped?
0 replies
18h16m
Because the next admin has already declared their policy will be of reversing anything and everything the current admin has done. Out of spite for the most part, but this one also happens to be something that hurts business so it'll be ripe for them to want to remove limiting a corp.
0 replies
19h28m
I would assume that like most of these kinds of very public cases, they spent a significant amount of time building their case internally before committing to filing suit.
Trying to guess at the internal machinations for how a bureaucracy sets priorities and budgets is a bit of a fools errand though
21 replies
19h3m
I would like to fund the justice department’s GoFundMe
20 replies
18h58m
Here is their site - treasurydirect.gov
16 replies
18h51m
Treasury Direct is for stuff like savings bonds. If you want to donate, it's https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.h..., but they're not directed donations.
9 replies
18h42m
It would be pretty interesting if certain departments in the government could get direct payments. For example if the last $100 on your taxes you could choose any department to allocate to.
7 replies
18h27m
I've always wondered what government funding would look like if taxpayers could allocate their tax dollars at their own discretion. I don't think it would be all that functional in practice, but the idea of it seems interesting.
3 replies
18h10m
That would be an absolute shit show. But it would genuinely be interesting to see what people value. Right before the inevitable collapse.
0 replies
17h13m
Healthcare is already a huge fraction of the government budget. The lack of free universal healthcare in the U.S. isn’t due to cost.
0 replies
16h48m
I saw a study where they asked people to estimate the budget and discussed how wrong they got it.
We do have a tiny bit of say with the presidential election fund.
0 replies
17h56m
Those that want free healthcare could easily fund it. Honestly I think it would work far better than anyone imagines.
1 replies
15h53m
Sounds like any government with little to no taxes to me. Do you want anything? Pay for it. No subsidized social services. No nothing. Pay up.
0 replies
15h34m
I think the idea would be that the government would collect the same amount of taxes, but the taxpayers would get to directly allocate their portion where they want it to go. They couldn't decide to not pay taxes at all, or even pay less.
0 replies
14h34m
The amount of money going towards advertisement for specific government bodies would explode. Maybe good for civics education, probably not good for the government's budget.
0 replies
18h29m
I am a huge fan of hypothecation, and the fact that no politician wants to even consider it says a lot about the world we live in.
3 replies
18h33m
Pardon me but I'm laughing out loud here. Who is this for?
2 replies
18h19m
People who buy into the idea of government being a societal good, and aren't bitter old cynics.
1 replies
18h0m
I suppose someone could submit a foia request and get a list of the people who donated and how much. I suspect that either nobody is donating to them, or that lots of interesting people/companies are regularly donating large amounts to them.
0 replies
16h59m
It’s not broken out per donation, but https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/gift-contributions-... has the monthly totals.
1 replies
18h24m
Too bad you can't write conditionals in the memo area:
Not for war, over-criminalization, or tax breaks for megacorps, REITs, or billionaires.
0 replies
17h35m
Heh, a statement probably most people agree with, but which would render a large amount of "business as usual" unfunded :-D
2 replies
18h18m
The treasurydirect.gov website needs a GoFundMe. That site is awful.
0 replies
18h0m
They fixed up the worst part a while back. It used to be that you had to "type" your password by using an onscreen keyboard (to prevent keylogging?). Now it's a normal password field at least.
0 replies
18h9m
What's wrong with it? It seems pretty straight forward on my phone.
18 replies
19h38m
Finally. As someone who is active in the local music scene, I’ve spent thousands on junk fees over the years. Not sure why it has taken this long.
10 replies
19h36m
Because we all but entirely stopped enforcing anti-trust in the 80s :-(
8 replies
19h34m
Because we all but entirely stopped enforcing anti-trust in the 80s
My kids have never known a time without the DoJ rubber-stamping every monopoly-building merger it could.
4 replies
19h32m
Yeah, it’s not just failing to break up monopolies, it’s allowing mergers to go through that would’ve been laughably doomed to fail to pass regulatory muster in earlier decades.
2 replies
18h57m
Well, there was arguably a point to be had in the 90s for relaxing standards.
The web was new.
It was allowing over the top and disruption of a lot of legacy businesses.
It wasn't clear what constituted a market in those times.
However, by 2009, standards should have been reimposed. That largely didn't happen. Regulators simply got used to letting things go through, and so they kept doing that.
1 replies
18h38m
If that was the reason, they should have restricted it to tech companies. Instead, things like traditional media and food became harmfully consolidated over the same time.
0 replies
17h27m
The thinking was, and IMHO there's some merit to this, "giant new tech companies are going to be created by this thing called the web, so maybe legacy companies need to divest / merge to meet the competition."
And I'd argue a lot of non-defense government philosophy was also following DoD's "the Cold War is over, budgets will shrink, so defense companies need to merge to survive."
0 replies
18h55m
Stock buybacks didn't used to be allowed either, but trillions of dollars have been pulled out of companies to pump stocks in the last several years.
1 replies
18h59m
Would the Adobe + Figma merge failure count?
0 replies
18h47m
Sources familiar with the matter said that while the two companies had been in constant touch with antitrust agencies in the UK, EU, and United States to work out a path to close the deal, the UK regulators have in recent weeks indicated that it would require remedies for Adobe to divest Figma design, a core asset of the acquisition.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/adobe-figma-terminate-20-...
On December 18, 2023, Figma and Adobe both announced they were mutually agreeing to abandon their merger,[17][18] with Adobe citing that there was "no clear path to receive necessary regulatory approvals from the European Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figma#Attempted_acquisition_by...
Only if you count UK/EU regulators.
0 replies
19h31m
I can offer this napkin to wipe off the trickle down if you need it
0 replies
18h1m
here's one landmark case in 1992. There have been more since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Kodak_Co._v._Image_Tec....
3 replies
19h30m
if( $Voters_Apathetic && ( $Political_Donations_From_Monopolists > $Political_Donations_From_Antimonopolists ) )
then {
...0 replies
15h35m
It’s true but that first condition does have a lot of weight behind it
0 replies
19h27m
Honestly, I don’t think they had to do a lot of political maneuvering. They were just allowed to grow unchecked, and no one was bothered. Until now.
0 replies
19h13m
LYV has grown enough, politicians are ready to short and harvest it.
2 replies
19h28m
Particularly for the local music scene, where Live Nation usually isn't the promoter, the junk fees aren't coming from them.
Gotta remember Ticketmaster's margins are actually pretty thin.
1 replies
19h8m
In Live Nation's latest 10-Q filing they listed the operating margin of their ticketing segment at 32%, with a non-GAAP AOI margin of 39%.
[1] https://investors.livenationentertainment.com/sec-filings/al...
0 replies
16h21m
Which is on the low side for an entertainment software company. Also worth noting that most of their Ticketing growth is coming from international markets, where they aren't at all a monopoly, and yet the margins there are the same... and it is even more misleading than that, the denominator for that margin isn't including the bulk of the price people are paying for the ticket, which flows through to venues (where the margins are even lower). Per said same report, if you add Ticketing & Converts --and Ticketmaster sells tickets for a lot of other customers who aren't Live Nation, so if anything that is under-counting the total value of the tickets sold by Ticketmaster-- the combined margin is around 8%. So that's ~8% of the money you spend on a ticket that is going to Live Nation.
In fairness though, I did misspeak. The margins on ticket resale are quite big (and that's a driver of much of the profit margin in that report). That's usually not what people are referring to when they say "junk fees".
When people refer to "junk fees", they're normally talking about the fees associated with primary ticket sales, which have much lower margins (closer to 7-8%), because most of the money for those fees flows through to the other parties involved in the event. This has all been documented on several occasions. TM's blog actually recently put out a decent article walking people through it: https://blog.ticketmaster.com/the-truth-about-ticket-prices/.
The primary ticket sales service game is largely about volume. You've got an absurd amount of money being exchanged, so taking a small bit of it can work out to significant revenue, but it doesn't dramatically change the price people end up paying for their tickets.
To me, worse than the fees, is all the crap "promotions" that Ticketmaster tries to get you in on after you decide to buy your ticket from the venue... and it's a pretty good signal about the low margins on those sales. It's super annoying, but it makes sense for them to do it because any lost sales at the end of the funnel there are comparatively a small price to pay for the money they're getting from the promotions (which generate about half as much revenue for Live Nation as ticketing, but at less than a third of the cost).
No question that people are getting a raw deal when they buy tickets on Ticketmaster, but the perception of the problem is really different from the reality.
[For transparency: I spent 7 years in the live events industry. I now have nothing to do with it.]
14 replies
17h54m
This is great news but: Please also stop giving Ticketmaster your money. Every dollar you voluntarily give them (for a totally optional product, I might add) encourages them to continue their horrible practices.
"Ticketmaster is such a terrible company!" he says as he buys more concert tickets from them.
8 replies
17h20m
What's the alternative? There's no competition.
7 replies
16h49m
Not going to live music, at least in the US.
6 replies
16h44m
That's just not feasible for people who don't have the means to simply fly to Europe to see a band. Sometimes it's a once in a lifetime chance that your favorite band happens to be in your city
4 replies
16h10m
Of course it's feasible. Nobody is saying "go to Europe", they are saying to not go to concerts. To effect change, you have to make sacrifices.
2 replies
15h58m
Exactly. This is not a food company. We're talking about a product (live event tickets) that is totally optional and which nobody has to buy. This should be the simplest "vote with your wallet" scenario ever. If everyone collectively stopped buying the tickets, they'd either be out of business or be forced to change their practices. People like their bands more than they dislike Ticketmaster, so TM is not going to voluntarily change.
0 replies
15h40m
Talk is cheap but no one actually wants to make any real (if very minor) sacrifice. Not really surprising…
0 replies
15h23m
Yeah and this is why I think this will amount to zero changes in ticket prices. People have demonstrated that they will pay. Venues sell out at the current prices. Why would they take less?
0 replies
12h30m
Bah! Live performance is one of life's greatest joys (and has been for over 2,500 years). So we grin and bear the ticketmaster extortion.
0 replies
16h43m
I didn’t say you should do it or that it’s ideal, it’s just the reality of the circumstance.
3 replies
16h46m
It's easy to say that but a lot of the venues Exclusively use Ticketmaster as the official way to buy tickets for their shows. I called one, and they said to go online or pay at the door and hope There are seats left.
2 replies
15h40m
No one is forced to go see a concert. Somehow millions of people survive without doing it.
1 replies
14h16m
Agree. Somehow environmentalist have not picked on this. I imagine popular concerts would have huge carbon footprint.
0 replies
7h31m
I feel many modern environmentalists are selective on what they want to ban; it's typically stuff that wouldn't burden their lives. Case in point, I'll bet most environmentalists drink plastic bottled water.
Next up, replies with reasons why drinking bottled water is ok for environmentalists.
0 replies
15h48m
Internet boycotts of megacorps never work but people keep trying
9 replies
19h2m
Jeez, How did Govt take this long to break up Live Nation. How?
6 replies
18h55m
The Administration is bound by the Due Care clause, but that's a huge window, so you can just intentionally create a dysfunctional and incompetent group of people and give them the responsibility for enforcing this nations laws.
This Administration, although it would hate to actually admit it out loud, actually put someone competent in charge of the agency with this enforcement responsibility and then.. to everyone's absolute surprise.. let them do their job effectively.
4 replies
18h48m
It’s been noted by a few folks that anything the administration says out loud immediately becomes gristle for the Fox News-o-verse and therefore something for Congress to yell loudly at and try to block. The Biden administration has consequently become very good at being very quiet about the things it’s doing well, with the distinct drawback in an election year that everyone seems to be quite surprised when they discover the administration has been rather good, actually.
3 replies
18h29m
The Biden administration is a textbook example of how to not control any narratives whatsoever and never be able to get any credit. They lost the narrative after Kabul and then just never got it back, despite being one of the most legislatively successful and executively impactful administrations in the last 50 years. Case in point - recent poll that had 50% of voters that listed "climate" as their top priority didn't think this administration has done anything on climate change.
1 replies
15h42m
According to Gallop only 2% of Americans list climate as the top priority. by far the most important priority is the economy. For non economic issues immigration ranks #1, climate being #11.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.asp...
Or maybe being out of touch with what people want is the biggest issue
0 replies
2h39m
Again, my statement was referring to ignorance among those 2%, not the general population.
However, if you are interested in the economy, it seems the American people are aggressively misinformed about the quantitative state of the economy too [0]. Seems like many people are out of touch with the reality of a booming economy.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/22/poll....
0 replies
17h11m
Yes. It's _incredibly_ frustrating. I was not a Biden supporter, but he's gotten some absolutely incredible things accomplished - the IRA alone is so far outside what I thought would've been possible. The word from the actual people actually doing climate work is that, as far as they're concerned, the IRA solves the financing problem and the rest is implementation now, but the average voter apparently has no idea what's been done in that space. Antitrust is another area where the administration is reshaping how the economy works - they're getting a bit more credit here, but it's still widely underappreciated.
I think there was strategic value in keeping things close to the vest, and I'm not sure how much is in their hands and how much is how the media's reporting on all of this, but you're right, their inability to do messaging is going to lead the most economically progressive administration in half a century to be a one-term affair because their own voters haven't updated their priors.
0 replies
15h7m
Effectiveness is debatable, because they’re not winning cases. I like the targets they’re aiming at, but trying and failing prevents someone more competent from winning the case in the future. Results matter.
0 replies
18h28m
It's so freaking infuriating.
I worked in the ticketing industry in 2007-2010. I remember when the CEO of our small org told us that he talked to the FTC as an industry expert when they were approving the deal. He said he didn't think it would harm competition.
Everyone else, including myself, could see where this was going. I don't know how folks could be that bone-headed even back then.
0 replies
18h30m
Had to wait until the election was coming up so they could trade it for the youth vote
7 replies
16h16m
Let's however not get too caught up in feel-goodism that somehow breaking up Ticketmaster is ridding the live entertainment industry of some external leech that everyone hated.
You should realize that venues and artists are equally beneficiaries of what Ticketmaster enables. In a sense they enjoy having Ticketmaster be the hated scapegoat for high prices that they then also enjoy the benefits of.
Without Ticketmaster who knows how much less tickets would sell for. And venues get paid a cut by Ticketmaster. Artists get paid a cut by Ticketmaster. Sometimes those parties are glad for that value extraction from the concertgoer to be done on their behalf, and to be blamed on an entity that diverts attention from the fact that they want more $ too.
Ticketmaster did not just emerge to prey on an unwilling helpless industry. They occupy a niche that is part of a semi willing ecosystem.
2 replies
15h50m
the huge upcharge on tickets is usually from scalpers that are allowed to buy and resell on the platform. are artists and venues somehow in on the scalping? I have suspected as much, but I have no evidence.
0 replies
14h11m
Yes, good seats are now put to auction to capture scalper profit beforehand.
0 replies
13h17m
A large part of this is there are several companies that are effectively the modernized scalpers using very high dollar pay-per click advertising, and incredibly complex optimization methods to charge the maximum markup they can. Most of them use each other as well, in cooperation via affiliate kickbacks more than competition.
Then, add in ticket brokers, with pre-reserved sets and blocks of tickets, feeding into that, and everyone is getting a cut. Not a small cut either. I do have evidence, as I worked for two of the companies for a while.
2 replies
15h25m
A lot of artists are not happy about this. Selling seats to the highest bidder to maximize revenue of a given show is not necessarily in the long-term interests of an artist.
0 replies
2h48m
Yet they are not unhappy to the point that they refuse the money coming from this.
0 replies
14h13m
Indeed, been going to a lot fewer concerts now that good seats start at $400.
There’s still small independent venues with realistic prices but they are being bought up.
0 replies
5h13m
Gervaise: "Oh, poor artists.
5 replies
19h35m
I am so hopeful that this happens. I was comparing the fees to see a band in the US or EU recently based on their tour dates and it was insane what US ticket prices came out to be. It was ~$54 for a ticket in the US because of all the junk fees and just 8 euros for other places in the EU.
4 replies
19h13m
Recently, I bought tickets through their web page, and the seat hold timed out prematurely, making me reselect seats.
The tickets had been on sale for weeks, but in that 60 second window, scalpers just happened to buy the exact block I wanted out of 100’s of available seats.
Of course, ticket master owns some of the scalper companies.
Despite the blatant false advertising / auction fixing, I have no way to prove the above happened.
Anyway, a breakup of that company can’t come soon enough.
1 replies
19h3m
"Ticketmaster and Stubhub Caught Colluding With Scalpers" https://kslnewsradio.com/1891544/opinion-ticketmaster-isnt-c...
"Ticketmaster Has Secretly Been Cheating You With Its Own Scalpers" https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/ticketmaster-cheating-...
0 replies
18h22m
I’ve posted this before but I was fooled by a StubHub setup that looked like it was the venue itself - and not accidentally. So when I bought a ticket I was shocked to get an email from StubHub.
When I double checked and found the venue I had overpaid by 100% and StubHub refused to refund me.
0 replies
18h47m
I can't speak to your particular case, but my ticketmaster transactions often fail to complete for various reasons. After one falls through, if I wish to purchase the same seats again, they're often unavailable. This isn't because some scalper swooped in and bought them, the person who has dibs on them is me, in my previous defunct transaction. I usually find that if I wait ~ 15 minutes the hold will be released, and the tickets will be available for me to try again.
0 replies
16h8m
I think there's a non-zero chance that scalpers are watching the list of available ticket blocks, comparing frequently to find when a block becomes unavailable (because it's in a cart), and then monitoring and automatically buying any "missing" ticket blocks as soon as they reappear. That's what I would do, anyways.
That said, I would not be surprised in the least if this was being aided by ticketmaster or they were straight up doing it themselves. I just think there is a possible explanation where they are ignorant rather than malicious.
4 replies
17h2m
If they don’t my wife and I are just going to stop going to shows that use TicketMaster/Live Nation. Any more a third of the ticket price is fees. Not worth it.
3 replies
15h37m
Why haven’t you stopped already then?
1 replies
14h12m
A step like this can change the course of history. So it need to be taken with lot of due diligence.
0 replies
10h41m
No need to make snide remarks just because someone is expressing their opinion and consumer choices, that’s the point of message boards.
0 replies
10h43m
Over the course of the pandemic we didn’t go to a lot of shows (really any) and we had to deal with some job losses. Now that we have the money we’re re-evaluating.
4 replies
19h13m
What are the distortions of the market they hope to correct by performing a 'Ma Bell of Live Entertainment' to coalesce into a new 'At&t' a few decades down the line?
2 replies
19h8m
Agreements forcing artists to only use LN locations and TM ticketing in markets where possible.
Ticketing is relatively easy since the early days so competition should help. We also need better laws defining what can and cannot be a fee. Fees should only be for things which are truly optional and declinable.
1 replies
18h13m
The AT&T breakup was a lie. Dividing the country into regions so as to not compete is what collusion looks like. Hopefully they don't do that this time.
0 replies
18h3m
No doubt but land ownership doesn’t have the same network effects as telecom. Assuming there is a clean cut between ticketing and venues it would also be helpful to see breakups of LN property between regions.
0 replies
19h11m
A few decades of things being slightly less shitty?
3 replies
17h30m
PLEASE make this happen Uncle Sam! i am a lover of music, my friends are lovers of music, the circles i run in on the internet are lovers of music. i cannot express in words how much Live Nation sucks. they are ruining concerts. not only do they have a strangle-hold on venues, but why the hell are they "allowed" to run some in-house scalping ops? i cannot wait for the day i see their demise. i will not pour out a beer for them! sorry for the rant HN. Pearl Jam was right decades ago man.
1 replies
12h44m
but why the hell are they "allowed" to run some in-house scalping ops?
Because the promoters, talent, and talent management are all in on it, TM just agrees to take the heat for its cut.
That is not to say that separating TM from the venues will not help concert goers, but maybe not as much as you might think.
0 replies
6h47m
This.
I was a fly on the wall for a conversation with someone who runs a 12k seat venue. They guaranteed Harry Styles $5 million for 2 nights and made it work because.... "secondary". Even the venues are in on the scalping.
0 replies
11h51m
Note that this follows on the heels of the recent (near?) death of California Senate Bill 829 [0] - which is taking aim at the vertical integration of live performance by Live Nation. If you’re in CA, call your representatives!
With this in mind, to continue your rant…
The anticompetitive behavior of Live Nation is toxic to the music and performing arts industries. It’s the Walmart effect, except consumers end up paying way more because exclusivity contracts prevent competition. Artists sign exclusivity contracts with Live Nation, and onlt play Live Nation Venues. Venues purchased by live nation outbid independent venues until those venues sign exclusivity agreements with Live Nation or die, and then Live Nation pushes up the price.
2 replies
19h2m
Did DOJ make a shout-out to Pearl Jam?
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pearl-jam-taki... (1995)
0 replies
18h21m
https://donotcall.gov does inadvertently.
0 replies
18h50m
DOJ agrees to settle suit in exchange for Live Nation no longer referring to Merrick Garland as 'daughter'.
2 replies
16h43m
I don’t have a dog in this fight but I’m curious why Live Nation-Ticketmaster and not Meta, Google, or Amazon?
0 replies
15h45m
Meta, Google, and Amazon have all been sued for illegally maintaining monopolies. [1] [2] [3]
[1] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2020/12/...
[2] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-googl...
[3] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/...
0 replies
16h23m
We boil the ocean one pot at a time.
1 replies
17h43m
It would be nice to have competition among sellers within a given venue. Even give the venue the option to sell single seats (rather than large blocks at some bulk rate).
For security reasons the ticket format should probably be the venue's choice, the bulk/block rate would probably include a specific time window for the bulk buyer to have their bonded agent print off the tickets on the venue's hardware.
0 replies
17h10m
I'm very interested to see what that kind of competition would do to ticket prices. I've often seen Ticketmaster painted as the "designated fall-guy" for consumers to hate instead of the venues and acts which are (according to this argument) the source of a lot of the junk fees. This is also the position that Ticketmaster claims as a defense [1], so it's hard to know what to believe in the absence of competition.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/ticketmaster-taylor-s...
1 replies
17h33m
"Listen, if this doesn't make you happy, nothing will." - the DoJ under Biden over the last few months.
0 replies
5h9m
I replaced Biden's name with any other politician - still works.
1 replies
17h43m
I can't wait for the Taylor Swift Arena where TS Inc. hires the staff, the security, the concessions, and with a TS Radio station broadcasting nearby. Not being sarcastic! :-)
0 replies
16h57m
You forgot the on-site accommodation!
1 replies
18h56m
There are plenty of web sites where you can (legally) scalp tickets. I don't see how you can argue that Ticketmaster is a monopoly when you can also buy tickets on StubHub, SeatGeek, Vivid Seats and several other sites I don't remember off the top of my head. All of them use the same shady pricing practices as far as I know.
If Ticketmaster is the original seller, you do have to go through them to transfer the digital ticket but many venues still have physical ticket options.
0 replies
18h55m
don't see how you can argue that Ticketmaster is a monopoly
The monopoly is on the supply side. "Obama’s Justice Department reviewed the [Live Nation-Ticketmaster merger] and allowed it to move forward as part of a settlement in which the company promised it wouldn’t retaliate against concert venues that opted against using Ticketmaster."
Most (all?) large venues in the country are exclusively contracted to use Live Nation, which means performers are locked into using Live Nation, which means fans are obligated to pay its fees, directly or indirectly.
1 replies
15h18m
Twice this year, I've paid the highest prices I've ever paid for tickets to shows. First, I paid something like $300 each for tickets to see the band Air. Sure, they're popular (among people who like their genre, at least) and from France and rarely tour. I could justify it cause I've only seen them once and might not get another chance, but holy smokes. Then I bought tickets to see comedian David Cross. Who is American. Playing in America. To get in the tenth row cost over $1000 for four tickets.
I know that Ticketmaster's role is to play the bad guys and most artists are in on the scam because they get some of the "fees" without the blame. But this is ridiculous. I found some old tickets that I saved as mementos and some were as low as $20. I saw someone posted pics from a show in the 80s that was $5. This is just absurd.
Take them down. As one of my favorite bands would say (Floyd) "cut them into little pieces."
0 replies
46m
For comparison, Air's next concert with tickets available is in Zurich, for CHF 96.50. About $105.
There's a concert in Monaco for about the same price.
Neither is using Ticket master.
0 replies
18h50m
How long until JD green lights the re-re-merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster?
0 replies
18h52m
As someone who predominately works in music and has for two and half decades… Please and hurry up and do it too totality!
I’ve watched the rise, domination and effects first hand as to what live nation has done. Hell, I’ve lived it! It’s an utter disaster hell scape. Only lessoned because its “entertainment.” Regardless if it was a more strategically important industry it would have already been broken up standard oil style.
Once upon a time payolla was a crime. Live nation is worse than payolla ever was and I don’t say that lightly. At least with payolla it was a simple quid pro quo pay to play. Live nation has the radio stations, it has the venues, it has the ticketing, it has the booking agents, it has the labels, it has the artists, and it has the vast majority of the personal. When theyre in a city they region lock it , which is to say if you’re not live nation you’re priced out or just playing black listed. Think the opposite of net-neutrality only physical and literally every facet of the industry up and down.
The ticket prices may be what triggered the doj because it effects the public, behind the scenes its even worse.
0 replies
19h43m
0 replies
18h30m
Jay Zzzzzzzz
0 replies
17h18m
Good.
0 replies
12h9m
What punishment will the executives receive?
This will not prevent any future execs from aggressively building another such monopoly, causing years of financial and other harm.
They still walk away with their bags of cash. Their names won't even be tarnished so they can go right back to doing the same thing.
0 replies
18h37m
Finally. This will be great for indie artists and venues. Hopefully all the local older venues we have here in the US can have a cheaper option to help them flourish.
0 replies
18h34m
I hope they can break the stranglehold they have on the venues as well, open up the market to other ticket sellers, kill the exclusivity deals between Ticketmaster and the venues.
0 replies
14h22m
Also would like to see Ticketmaster broken up itself, not just the LN part.
0 replies
19h19m
Seems like high public interest – the (snarky) Adam Conover half-hour lay-person overview of the Live Nation-Ticketmaster background has 1.6 million views and over 8,000 comments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayrVYwoe-DY
0 replies
16h42m
I'm against most of these government "breakup" actions but there is an exception for every rule. I believe we can all agree that it's okay to disintegrate a company that simultaneously occupies every circle of hell.
0 replies
7h37m
Wants to break up of ticket master/live Nation.
Won't break up Google, telecoms, banks ,agriciltural behemoths, and a myriad of other monster corporates that control prices.
Color me not surprised.
0 replies
17h25m
Do T-Mobile and Sprint next. T-Mobile just announced it's jacking rates up. It's a direct result of the merger.
0 replies
16h7m
Recent and related:
Justice Department to file antitrust suit against Live Nation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40047094 - April 2024 (378 comments)
0 replies
13h32m
0 replies
16h44m
Thank fucking god
0 replies
16h55m
They should make it illegal for large venues to have exclusivity requirements for these companies. Big stadiums and venues usually had some public assistance, either directly or the public paying for e.g. a train station at the venue - there should be requirements as conditions to that
0 replies
16h59m
Why aren't concert tickets sold similar to hotel rooms or airline seats? You can buy an airline seat or hotel room through dozens of online marketplaces because they cooperate via a common and fair system.
It's an election year, don't hold your breath.
Election year is 25% of a single administration's term, why should events be ignored 25% of the time?
In this case, because I don't expect Biden to win another term and I expect the prosecution of this case to take longer than a year. The last several administrations have opened their term by tearing down everything that the prior administration had done. To be specific: I'm not confident the prosecutor behind this will have a job at the end of the year.
I genuinely think that if Biden does not win another term there are far larger problems for the American project than Ticketmaster, including democracy existing as we know it today.
Weren't there similar predictions back in 2016? How is it different this time? Or to back up a bit, what exactly does "democracy existing as we know it today" mean? It could mean anything between "US becomes North Korea" and "the whitehouse revoked the press credentials of someone who said something mean about trump".
I think if he comes back he won't leave. There's a reason why many of the people that worked with him most closely believe he's dangerous and unfit.
So to confirm you're predicting that if he gets elected he'll stay in power beyond 2025?
Yes, I think he'll try with a much higher likelihood of succeeding than when he tried last time.
That's typically how coups go, as far as history go.
It wasn't wrong in 2016 either, what's your point?
That the coup failed and Congress wasn't murdered doesn't mean they didn't try.
Of course "it wasn't wrong" if claims are vague like "democracy as we know it", which means they can be used in a motte-and-bailey manner to initially imply that the US is going to turn into China/North Korea or whatever, but then later be walked back on to whatever the predictions don't really pan out.
Was the claim back then that they'll "try" (however poorly planned/executed), or that they'll actually succeed?
The general feeling was that a simpleton business monkey who was used to ordering people around and not accepting "no" for an answer would expect to operate that way even as the leader of a democratic bureaucracy.
There was a lot of equivocating that it was all some campaign schtick. "4D chess" and all that.
It turned out that the straightforward analysis was the correct one. Sometimes a spade really is a spade.
This round he's playing for double or nothing - having broken a bunch of laws is slowly catching up with him. He continues playing the victim while indignantly expressing a desire for outright revenge. We've already seen the mechanisms by which this will happen (paralysis of federal law enforcement, mobilization of goon squads into the power vacuum, and political reality distortion field justifying everything as if President is equivalent to Dictator). So yeah by any reasoned analysis, 2024 is really Trump xor America - you decide.
(Once again, standard disclaimer - unaligned libertarian here. I'd never voted for a major party candidate before 2020. Specifically, I considered a 2016 a toss up between two differently-bad options, and still have no regrets there. But now that we've got a concrete track record as opposed to mere vacuous campaigning, it would be utterly foolish to ignore it)
On your opposite side, they think if Biden wins babies will die horrible deaths.
American politics are full of superlatives, and very devoid of any real actions. Once the hero or the devil gets elected, nothing happens much.
Yeah except for Roe v. Wade which you might consider a bellwether event for anti-contraceptive activists. But other than that yeah nothing much happened.
Unified Reich of America. It's just one letter aways from USA.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/05/22/t...
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-69045271
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/21/politics/trump-nazi-allus...
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/after-backlash-trump-pulls-...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/21/dona...
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/21/trump-unified-reich...
https://apnews.com/article/trump-election-2024-rhetoric-germ...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/20/us/donald-trump-reich-vid...
Once there is backslash, just blame a junior staffer instead of making the head honcho resign for not controlling what goes into an important PR stream.
I'm pretty sure that if the incumbent conservative President loses to the radical reactionaries, that incoming administration will be tearing down much more than merely the prior administration - more like two hundred years of the painstaking progress we now take for granted.
(Just for context here, lest the postmodern fence-sitters write me off as some rabid partisan - I'm an unaligned libertarian who had never voted for a major candidate in a national election before 2020)
It's also not like they're not campaigning for the other 3 years of the term.
Yes, but the public memory is increasingly short.
Hell, anymore it’s more like 50%.
well at least 50%. I guess everybody forgot there are mid term elections which affect what the administration can do with help of congress.
Because they've had the entire term to take action and the only reason anything is happening now it to attempt to build some momentum going into the election itself. Soon as it's over, everything most likely goes away.
It takes time and work to put together cases like this. I look at it the other way: they've only had three years, and have already done some impressive things.
How dare politicians implement popular policies to appeal to voters!
I think the objection is the timing. If the administration truly cared about such things, they'd do them in non-election years. But they seem to save up these things for election years so people feel listened to.
I’m confused about why you’re so opposed to the biggest climate legislation package ever signed into law.
Inflation.
I think your perspective might be...tainted. I kid, I kid. But typically it's spelled "perineum" just fyi. I'd be interested in seeing a non-crank source for your assertion. Everything I've read suggests that it'll likely be inflation-neutral or slightly reduce inflation over the next 10 years. Even if spending on it gets up to a trillion dollars over a ten year span, you're still talking about one tenth of what gets spent on defense contractors and the military every year.
It's a very old mispelling that I'm sticking with.
Over the next 10 years, maybe. But circulating money that didn't exist before (that's what happens when the government increases the debt) devalues existing currency proportionally. It is, by definition, inflation. It's effectively a flat tax which disproportionately affects the poor (as all flat taxes do).
The result is an _immediate_ spike in inflation that _maybe_ cools if the projected revenue is real (it often isn't). That inflation had been staved off for the last... two decades or so by lowering interest rates, encouraging people to spend money they wouldn't otherwise (or borrow it themselves) thereby increasing their buying power and offsetting their devalued currency.
Unfortunately, you can't lower interest rates forever and so, when they reach rock bottom, all your inflation chickens come home to roost.
Spending more money you don't have is worse than spending less money you don't have.
Back to that though... The reason why the government is spending the way it is recently is because of Modern Monetary Theory[1]. Politicians love it because it says they can spend as much money as they want and debt doesn't matter. They don't really believe it though because they only implement the part where they get to spend all the money you want and the debt doesn't matter. I don't think it's very controversial to consider the "mainstream" (in quotes because the reason they are mainstream is because politicians and political think tanks love them, they aren't actually mainstream among economists) MMT sources to be the cranks.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_monetary_theory
Yes. I think that is the objection. But it's absurd. It's not like the FTC has been sitting on its hands the past 3 years. Last year, for example, they sued Amazon for illegally maintaining a monopoly. In 2022, they sued Walmart for facilitating money-transfer fraud, Harley Davidson for illegally restricting customers' rights to repair, countless health insurers to block illegal mergers. In 2021 they sued Frontier Communications for advertising false internet speeds, Lockheed Martin from illegally acquiring Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, Nvidia from acquiring Arm Ltd, etc. There are hundreds of cases this FTC has brought in the past 3 years. Cynically saying "LOL ELECTION YEAR" at this case, because it's the first case you've paid attention to is just... so comically predictable.
If Fox News lies to them enough times it becomes the truth :P
Right, right, right. So what we really need is for politicians to be consistent and never do anything at all, including during election years, because they don’t really mean any of it (as we wise folk all know).
Biden held significant sway in the country as VP from 2009-2016 and now again from 2021-2024. The fact that he chose to do the bare minimum on the last possible year 12 years into the job with less of a majority than he’s had in the past right as his election polls are starting to tank certainly seems telling.
If one party's election-year pandering is legalizing marijuana and enforcing antitrust law, I'll take it.
Rescheduling is not descheduling.
It's better but it's still a half measure and far away from the blanket pardons that the President (any president) needs to be signing asap.
I get the whole "progress is slow thing" but this is a case of politicians being the only slow ones. A supermajority of the public supports alcohol/marijuana parity.
Rescheduling marijuana is a multistep regulatory process set out in law that Biden initiated with an executive order the month before the 2022 midterm election, so its kind of weird to call it election year pandering.
FTC has been aggressively pursuing antitrust since pretty much day one of the admin. You just weren’t paying attention.
To the contrary, I've been paying very close attention. I'm just not confident that the DoJ can pull this off before the end of the Biden administration.
Ah I see. You’re saying that you don’t expect this to complete, not that this is cynically political/false… sorry!
But we have Taylor Swift to thank for this one and she's not running for office.
What? Because she set her ticket prices so high?
Pearl Jam
Their literal job is to perform based on what made/makes them desirable to the electorate.
Election year.
They know the judges won't let anything bad happen to their friends so they can pretend to act tough every four years (when the billionaire class's preferred candidate/party is in office of course).
I don't understand people like you. A government agency does something material to help the consumer and you just shit talk and resort to base cynicism. Nothing would ever change if everyone was as apathetic as you are.
Cynicism helps people feel smart, when in many cases it actually just reveals their immense ignorance (such as this case).
This is actually supported by evidence: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167218783195
So is my theory for what its worth: https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba
The US as a democracy isn't supported by evidence.
Giving up on your democratic representation is not going to make things better.
What democratic representation?
This defeatist attitude is unhelpful. Are you prepared to lose nearly everything come November? What will you do when the dictatorship looms over you, will you accept your dwindling freedoms? What would cause you to actually stand up for yourself and fight for a better future? I see this attitude espoused a lot and I wonder if any of the people who say so will just roll over and accept a creeping totalitarianism with a shrug. Is there literally anything at all that you'd be proactive about?
If you have causes you are passionate about but you refuse to participate in the (hard won, bloodily won) civic right of voting, then your ability to affect those causes will evaporate. No matter how much you think your government doesn't care now, they will care even less when it is truly, wholly, dictatorially unaccountable to you. And then what? What was your anti-voting stance for?
A substantial chunk of the electorate seems to prefer losing and then whining about outcomes as long as it allows them to pat themselves on the back for 'staying above it all and seeing the futility all along'. I implore you instead to care, hold your officials accountable, and vote. A bad future is not inevitable.
Dictators can actually get something done for you, I'd prefer that to our current anarcho-tyranny.
"Francis's term "anarcho-tyranny" refers to armed dictatorship without rule of law, or a Hegelian synthesis when the state tyrannically or oppressively regulates citizens' lives yet is unable or unwilling to enforce fundamental protective law."
Given that you chose to quote from a noted white supremacist scholar, it is likely fair to assume that you fall on the same side as the hypothetical impending dictatorship. In that case, sure, the dictatorship will get something done for you. Until of course the leopard comes to eat your face as well. Also in that case, I can see why you promote your narrative of helplessness, since it will hasten the arrival of your glorious new era.
Can you describe precisely why you think the US meets this definition? Given that these terms are meaningful only in a relative sense, it’d be useful to hear your explanation as a comparison between e.g. Mexico, Somalia, Russia, or whatever other comparisons you find salient.
the historical track record of that sentiment is both plenty long and plenty awful. Are you ignorant of that history or dispute it or think it’ll be different this time or what?
Democracy doesn’t mean “every voter gets what they want,” it means every voter gets a fair opportunity to compromise with every other voter.
The primary thing that causes drift from fairness is lack of voter turnout.
Yeah that's what happens when over 40% of the voting public gives up like you. No representation.
Yet the authors of that study recommend increased voter turnout.
Or, they've lived on enough to see the impact of regulation go wrong.
Like good design, good regulation becomes invisible. Actual wisdom is recognizing and counteracting that bias.
All regulation has a cost. And if based on the track record of the US government, it tends to be high and even potentially introduce weird incentives that solve one problem but create two more.
Lack of regulation has costs too. I’m open to your argument if you can demonstrate somehow what “tends” to be true. I suspect you can’t, and neither can I, which is why we should assess regulations on a case by case basis of their own merits instead of totally unsupportable “regulation good” or “regulation bad” maxims.
In this case ticketmaster is a scape goat by design so artists can charge whatever they want.
And what bearing does that have on the discussion at hand?
When it comes to holding corporations accountable for their actions, very little actually does ever change. Our entire system treats business/corporations with kid gloves, and it's not a partisan issue that will change with a different party in control.
Remember your paycheck likely comes from one of those companies being profitable.
Nothing will change if you do nothing.
No one is doing anything to help the consumer.
Artists set their ticket prices, tickmaster is a middleman/scape goat. Pretending to go after the scapegoat is just for show.
Guys, I found the Ticketmaster shareholder!
Nah ticket master is legitimately terrible.
That's the trick. What material thing happened?
Over the years, hundreds of thousands (?) of people have been ripped off.
If I did that I'd be in jail.
Anti-trust has a proven record of making things less shit. It doesn't work if you don't use it, obviously. Courts are unfortunately not built for your instant gratification.
DOJ has been filing aggressive antitrust cases throughout the Biden administration’s tenure. If you want to be conspiratorial, you can point to their losing record in court and argue they know the cases will fail, but “it’s an election year” doesn’t make sense. I think the realistic take is the people at DOJ are legitimately enacting the strongest antitrust enforcement they can get away with (and then some).
The FTC leadership has made a number of strange (and in my opinion poor) decisions, beginning with insulting and alienating the agency staff, which had experience that the political appointees lacked. They then proceeded to act without regard to previous agency experience. At this point, it seems like they’re just trying to get their political goals back on track, though it seems a bit late, given that administrations are generally most effective at their beginnings.
What are you referring to here?
https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-j...
There is a great deal of documentation and discussion, but this document covers some of it, here are a couple of on-topic quotes:
This is a document with an overt political agenda and should be taken with a bucketful of salt.
There are a number of other sources which describe the issues, if you care to look for them https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4520745
I wouldn't read too much into this document. It's written by one of the most egregious political hacks on the planet: Jim Jordan. Even in this report, he can't resist using the classic "Democrat" epithet at the tippy-top of page 5 [1]. Jordan also subpoenaed Khan after the FTC took action against Elon Musk—Republicans' second-favorite billionaire they'll defend at all costs.
This document reads like political theater because it is political theater.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(epithet)
Jim Jordan dunking on Democratic political appointees? Gee, there's a big surprise.
Apparently career staffers don’t like Khan. You know; the career staffers that, checks notes, have been at a largely ineffectual FTC for decades. Oh well, at least she’s trying.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-apple...
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-googl...
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/...
It's been nonstop for the whole duration of the admin.
Going after ticket master makes no sense and would accomplish nothing. Artist set the price of their tickets, ticketmaster is a middleman/scapegoat. Seems it whole scheme worked perfectly if most think they're to blame.
Live Nation-Ticketmaster’s monopoly and colluding practices are what’s enabling them. Going after them definitely accomplishes a whole lot.
Additionally, if artists were to continue the high prices in a more transparent manner without them, then that’s fine - it’s a free country and a free market.
Anyone who goes to concerts understands this.
This is exactly why this board is a waste of time. Half of what you read on here are people talking about things they have no idea about and/or no vested interest in the outcome.
Just a large collection of wankers.
Live Nation owns a significant swathe of venues in America, and requires that artists use Ticketmaster if they want to be able to play those venues. And they continue to buy up more and more venues. Not sure how you can say this integration is just them being 'scapegoated'.
And it's the promoters, on behalf of the artists, who helped secure all those exclusive deals.
Taylor Swift didn't become a billionaire because of Ticketmaster fees.
Unfortunately, anti-trust is all case law.
The Sherman Antitrust Act is one paragraph long.
9 constitutional amendments are only one sentence long, not even a paragraph!
It's all case law.
But judges care way more about constitutional amendments than Sherman Antitrust Act. Most have limited intellectual interest in the problems it tackles.
And really, who cares about the price of concert tickets, online ads and in-app purchase fees? These guys went to law school not business school.
They. Just. Don't. Care.
Could the DoJ and FTC make them care as much about antitrust as like, at least 2 amendments? Yes.
I have no idea how the DoJ and FTC have failed to drum up excitement about this stuff. Nobody is going to rule against the status quo without passionate feelings about it.
That is by design, no? Sherman act does not address a lot of modern anti-trust, as you mentioned. We need new legislation.
Judges can just as easily find pet causes that don’t align with your interests, I don’t think that’s the mechanism you or I want our country to rely on.
All three of the main US federal antitrust laws (Sherman Act, Clayton Act, and FTC Act) have neen amended since originally adopted, and the FTC act also creates regulatory authority which the FTC has regularly exercised. Even ignoring case law evolution, US antitrust law hasn't been static.
I suggest you look at the supreme courts actual docket.[0] It's a misnomer to think that the Supreme Court only cares about the first and second amendments, that's just what's interesting to Americans. Nobody cares about some random government employee who was furloughed in 2013,[1] for example, but the court reviewed that anyway. Law school is not just about the first amendment. In fact business law is actually a pretty common field to go into.
[0] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/slipopinion/23
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-21_3e04.pdf
The original Sherman Act has 7 sections (one additional was later added) one of which has two subsections, none of which have multiple paragraphs, for a total of 8 paragraphs.
More to the point, US antitrust law isn't just the Sherman Act and case law, because:
1. There are two other main antitrust-related statutes, the Clayton Act and the Federal Trade Commission Act, and
2. The FTC Act as well as its direct mandates also creates regulatory authority for the FTC,
3. In addition to federal antitrust law in the US, there is also state antitrust law.
I'm not sure what the bases for your intuition about how much judges care about those things are; there is certainly a sense in which Constitutional provisions definitionally have priority over statute and administrative law, but its hardly as if antitrust law isn't an area that has gotten extremely detailed judicial attention.
Corporate America is certainly not a fan of FTC chair Lina Khan. She's been subjected to a barrage of attacks from places like the Wall Street journal so she must be doing something right. Jon Stewart revealed when interviewing her, that Apple executives had asked him not to have her on his podcast.
https://youtu.be/CnC9JV5YtBY?feature=shared
I mean mostly people make fun of her for losing every important case she picks up.
They're a little rusty after sitting on their hands for several decades, they'll get better with practice.
any examples for the uninitiated?
Most stuff not easy to describe in a few blurbs, imho.
Here’s an article (gift link, so no paywall) that describes the whole situation:
https://wapo.st/4dNEf0z
Good interview with Jon Stewart:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM
Simple examples are:
- Kroger and Albertson’s (grocery stores)
- Illumina and Grail (cancer detection)
- Amazon for dark patterns regarding signing up for prime, and for privacy violations with Alexa and Ring
- Lost challenge to Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard (good to look into, not sure about the specific case)
- FTC released a framework for anti-trust that should be a regulatory win.
I wouldn't say they're hitting it out of the park; I'd say they've been doing what they were supposed to be doing but haven't in the last 20+ years. Having said that, it's nice to see they've finally woken up after all these years.
I want to see them go after the credit card companies. They can start by passing usury laws that cap interest at 10%.
I'd be more interested in capping processing fees.
Or at any rate starting to catch up on the backlog from the past forty years.
I couldn’t find a single major case that has brought meaningful change in the last 3 years since Biden was elected.
That’s not meant to be a political statement about Biden. But I’m assuming you are talking about the current DOJ/FTC.
Yeah not allowing 2 crappy, low margin, and low combined market share grocers who have to compete with Walmart and Amazon to not merge was really knocking it out of the park. /s
They’ve been swinging around a bat a while lot, I haven’t seen them hit the ball much less knock out of the park. At most they’re scaring the pitcher with erratic behaviour.