New system will facilitate a secondary market

[A Jester]

I see my predictions were SPOT ON!

people registering for 2 tix even when they only need 1, people using friends / family to improve their chances and BMOrg seeing what happened decided to establish an official secondary market.

Your predictions were in fact spot on (I had to double check your posting date). Well played, sir.

However, the secondary market was announced in November. The Org expected the need for a secondary market.

The one thing I think might come up is that people overbuy tickets but can't sell them quick enough... maybe instead of prices going up, we find they dip down a bit because of burners with 4 extra tickets they don't want.

Who knows.. maybe the secondary market will scare away all the scalpers from next year. Everyone in a rush to get rid of their extra tickets at face value would leave scalpers waiting even longer to see if they might make a profit.

I'm very interested in seeing how this plays out. My guess is that the last few weeks before the event, ticket prices will plummet. Hoarding will become a liability, and people might even start selling for less than face.

In a way, it might facilitate new people going.

This is all guesswork, though. If I could accurately predict these sort of things, I'd fly in to BM with the private jet I bought with all my stock market earnings.

[A Jester]

So, Santa Cruz burners suck?

The really friendly ones do....

[Roberto Dobbisano]

[BBadger]

I predicted people would buy more than they needed mostly because that was my plan as well. However, I don't see anything wrong with it especially as most of those excess tickets will get recycled back into the system after the lottery has ended.

The goofy part of the response to the JRS is that people all of a sudden are claiming the lottery has failed because people are employing such tactics. They miss the fact that the lottery was never to discourage hoarding. It is employed to discourage scalping by taking direct control over the majority of purchases out of the hands of people so the system could not be directly gamed.

[CapnJoe]

What if the hoarders are also SCALPERS!!!

[theCryptofishist]

Then the "scalping" label is the more important.

[Mofessor]

BMORG's plan will eliminate most scalping. And we will be greeted as liberators in Iraq. The war will be quick and pay for itself. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

[BetaBox]

[quote="AntiM"]So, Santa Cruz burners suck?[/quote]

No, but very prepared for scarcity. And, it seems most people had this mentality. Way bait with with "suck?"

[Mofessor]

By the way, people are already talking about how to game the system for next year by registering for serious amounts of tickets, using credit and home equity lines, knowing they won't lose any money and would easily make 20% without even trying (think how many burners would pay $500 to get a ticket).

Of course, some will be surprised that burners would act like this, just like some Christians are surprised that followers don't live by the principles of Christ. Hopefully changes occur to prevent this.

[Saguache]

I stand corrected and take my lumps!

I still say that the scarcity IS an issue, and it's more than in the hundreds.

I imagine that if many organized burners felt the scarcity (which JRS hints at) that hoarding behavior might exasperate any scarcity inherent in the supply. This is a secondary effect of the scarcity market (which is caused by the Federal cap on BRC's population, not by the method of ticket sales). Behavioral Economics covers this situation really well, and I'm sort of wondering why I didnt think about it last November like the author of this thread. There are even statistical models which will correctly predict how badly people will hoard tickets and how they might behave after the sales are closed; generally not benign behavior.

[AntiM]

So, Santa Cruz burners suck?

No, but very prepared for scarcity. And, it seems most people had this mentality. Way bait with with "suck?"

It is a lovely word. Prepared for scarcity should not equal screw over those who choose to play by the rules, but in my mind, it does. Perhaps I should have added an emoticon to indicate playfulness, which seems to be in short supply also.

If you enable your BBCode, either in your profile, or below each post, your quote function will work.

[Mofessor]

so if putting a name on the ticket is a problem because it (supposedly) slows down entry to the event, why not go entirely to will call tickets, but instead of people picking them up on the playa, have them pick them up at a Reno location starting three days before the burn/early entry/whatever. Specifically:

1. BMORG could rent out a Reno location (I suppose you could do Fernley as well, if that worked better).
2. Location should be at the university, somewhere in downtown Reno, or out by the Nugget in Sparks so there would be plenty of parking accommodations.
3. Burners would not be able to pick up tickets until three days (or whatever) before the event to help prevent scalping.
4. You would need to show ID to pick up your tickets. Multiple registrations under the same name would not be allowed.

Positives:
A) it would somewhat discourage people from doing multiple entries under family and friends names, although it would not completely discourage people from hoarding
B) it would still allow gifting of tickets
C) it would discourage people registering for multiple tickets believing they would make their money back, one way or the other, on the resale market

[Sham]

Let's not over complicate things. That would only make people angry. We don't want that.

[unjonharley]

Don't think I'm into driving an extra 300 miles to Reno and back