theCryptofishist wrote:Theme camps getting 1/3 the tickets they need is not the same as 2/3 of the tickets ended up wiht newbies. The inference I'd draw is that 1/3 of the virgins got the tickets they need as well. And that 80,000 (or two thirds of the total requested) got no ticket at all. And the number of "proxy buyers" (through couples with different names, or friends, or reletives) remains unknown. I find the idea that 120,000 people were trying to buy tickets to be astonishing. I'm guessing that we can't see the terrain for the dust storm, but I'm a minority opinion in the boards these days.
Crypto: I agree 1/3 of newbies probably got the tickets they wanted. The question is, mathematically speaking, how big is the newbie pool? I'm assuming the theme camps are a big enough sample to indicate the entire experience, which is that for every 3 tickets requested, one was received. 43,000 x 3 is 129,000, and if you parse the wording of the Burning Blog item
"As a result, there are a lot more tickets being requested than there are tickets available — an inordinately large number, in fact, and far more than we projected even after last year’s sold-out event."
then 129,000 doesn't seem all that hard to believe.
Newbies are fine, they're part of Burning Man and should be welcomed, though I'd like to see some preference given to Burners, especially from long-running theme camps that provide the services and entertainment that make the trip so worthwhile.
What I really think happened, and I know Trilo disagrees with this (btw, I know him, he's one of the coolest people at Burning Man), is that scalpers overwhelmed the system, especially at the $240 and $360 levels. Those tix carry no risk, it would be the easiest thing in the world to resell them for close to $390, and, given the way things are going, probably for a lot more. I don't believe the system could be 'scrubbed' for scalpers, if that were possible scalpers would have gone out of business long ago.