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To directly address your point and why I disagree- what we're really talking about here is the economics concept of consumer surplus. What the OP was eluding to (and he's correct) is the fact that if demand is such that tickets are selling out and people who want tickets are presumably waiting to get them for a later date, then that's a strong signal that there is a large amount of uncaptured consumer surplus. In other words, consumers are taking a profit of value from the restaurant because they are getting tickets for less money than they would have otherwise paid.

To think about the problem differently- occasionally you will come to certain places and see two Starbucks sitting across the street from each other. If you ever wondered why that is, the reason is that in certain locations, demand is so high at peak times that the lines will get so long that large numbers of customers will actually not buy coffee because they aren't willing to wait. Rather than raise prices during these times, Starbucks figured out that it was profitable to open a second adjacent location to service this demand overflow.

I don't mean to sound condescending, but there are two sides to this coin and I think that looking at it from only the customer side is a mistake. The restaurant is losing out on potential profits that the customers are capturing. Traders would simply be capturing the surplus that the restaurant can't or won't. It isn't necessarily being greedy, it's just being smart.




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