Vitalik Buterin pfp
Vitalik Buterin
@vitalik.eth
"[X] is underpriced" is a perenially unpopular, but often very correct take. If demand > supply at the current price, you are going to get back to equilibrium _somehow_. Either that happens by people paying more in money, or it happens by people paying more in time (eg. waiting in line, staying up until 3AM to snap up a ticket). The former is more honest and is far less value-destructive. If you want to give non-rich people a chance to participate, then sure, allocate some tickets non-financially, but do it in a way that targets some other goal (eg. proof of volunteering, proof of getting good grades...). Basically, acknowledge that an auction will exist, but create more ways for people to bid that target diverse constituencies. Lotteries and lines are just an awful way to allocate things. https://x.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1971272756302844069
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Bryan R. pfp
Bryan R.
@bryanaka
I mostly agree with this point, though I think the missing piece is that some festivals and concerts are also rooted in culture too. I love that Tomorrowland allocates tickets to people from every country as a way to promote something worldwide. It sells out every year and uses lotteries as well. If it was just a bunch of rich Americans and Northern Europeans going, it would lose part of the mission and culture it set out to create. I don’t think you want tickets to purely be as extractive as possible. You want a balance of capitalistic optimization and culture retention. If your event has no culture (like most, it’s just fun), extract away. The latter option though (proof of volunteering, proof of contribution, etc) is a better way of retaining culture too
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Bryan R. pfp
Bryan R.
@bryanaka
I guess all that to say is lines and lotteries aren’t great to ensure diverse constituencies but also I’m not sure what else scales like random sampling.
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