A bunch of people had trouble getting tickets for Taylor Swift’s upcoming concert tour, and the United States Senate has decided that it has to spring into action to address the cause of the problem: a lack of competition.
It’s amusing to read statements like the one made by Democratic senator Amy Klobuchar:
Ticketmaster’s power in the primary ticket market insulates it from the competitive pressures that typically push companies to innovate and improve their services.
Klobuchar and other Democratic senators are alarmed that Ticketmaster has a market share of around 60%, which they see as evidence that the company needs to be broken up.
But while we’re on the subject of breaking up harmful monopolies, here are some questions worth considering:
- What’s the market share of the public school system?
- What kinds of competitive pressures are faced by the public school system, and how have those pressures resulted in innovation and improvement?
- How do the ‘significant service failures’ suffered by consumers at the hands of Ticketmaster compare, in scope and importance, to the failures suffered by students, parents, and taxpayers at the hands of the public school system?
This seems like a perfect opportunity for some Republican senators to join in the call to break up harmful monopolies… beginning with the public school system, and getting around to companies like Ticketmaster only after that’s been dealt with.
