What Happens When Non-capitalists Fiddle With Pricing Schemes?

The two week period for putting your name (and credit card info) into the primary Burning Man lottery for 40,000 tickets ended this past Sunday. And, as one might have predicted after last year's sell-out and the institution of this year's strange new system that attempts to allocate the tickets without being simply capitalist, "there are a lot more tickets being requested than there are tickets available." An average of 1.7 tickets/person were requested. They aren't saying how many total tickets were requested by how many people. You could only request 2 tickets, max. They are guessing that many people requested more than they really needed to help their campmates and friends. The Burning Man people who came up with this scheme (there wasn't a business degree among 'em) assure us there is nothing to fear but fear itself because "this means that there will be a large number of tickets in circulation within the existing community, tickets that simply need to be redistributed to those who need them." Translation: you can buy your ticket from a scalper.

But again they reassure us there is nothing to worry about because they are going to set up an online system in which valid tickets can be "redistributed" at face value. (It violates the Burning Man ethic to mark up the price of resold tickets). I myself have high hopes that this online ticket exchange system which will be set up by the same people who brought us this bizarre lottery, and last year's system crash on opening day, will lead to some unforeseen inequities.

If we were all in a crowd out in the desert where we could do this face to face while heavily intoxicated, it might be a lot of fun, especially if we could burn the ticket printing machines afterward. But this cold attempt to thwart the principles of economics is about as much fun as a Cuban sugar cane harvest.