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US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

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Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#221
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an election year, don't hold your breath.

If one party's election-year pandering is legalizing marijuana and enforcing antitrust law, I'll take it.

Rescheduling marijuana is a multistep regulatory process set out in law that Biden initiated with an executive order the month before the 2022 midterm election, so its kind of weird to call it election year pandering.

Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#222
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an election year, don't hold your breath.

If one party's election-year pandering is legalizing marijuana and enforcing antitrust law, I'll take it.

Rescheduling is not descheduling.

It's better but it's still a half measure and far away from the blanket pardons that the President (any president) needs to be signing asap.

I get the whole "progress is slow thing" but this is a case of politicians being the only slow ones. A supermajority of the public supports alcohol/marijuana parity.

Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#223

Let's however not get too caught up in feel-goodism that somehow breaking up Ticketmaster is ridding the live entertainment industry of some external leech that everyone hated. You should realize that venues and artists are equally beneficiaries of what Ticketmaster enables. In a sense they enjoy having Ticketmaster be the hated scapegoat for high prices that they then also enjoy the benefits of. Without Ticketmaster…

A lot of artists are not happy about this. Selling seats to the highest bidder to maximize revenue of a given show is not necessarily in the long-term interests of an artist.

Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's feasible. Nobody is saying "go to Europe", they are saying to not go to concerts. To effect change, you have to make sacrifices.

Exactly. This is not a food company. We're talking about a product (live event tickets) that is totally optional and which nobody has to buy. This should be the simplest "vote with your wallet" scenario ever. If everyone collectively stopped buying the tickets, they'd either be out of business or be forced to change their practices. People like their bands more than they dislike Ticketmaster, so TM is not going to vo…

Yeah and this is why I think this will amount to zero changes in ticket prices. People have demonstrated that they will pay. Venues sell out at the current prices. Why would they take less?

Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the objection is the timing. If the administration truly cared about such things, they'd do them in non-election years. But they seem to save up these things for election years so people feel listened to.

I’m confused about why you’re so opposed to the biggest climate legislation package ever signed into law.

Inflation.

Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#226
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case, because I don't expect Biden to win another term and I expect the prosecution of this case to take longer than a year. The last several administrations have opened their term by tearing down everything that the prior administration had done. To be specific: I'm not confident the prosecutor behind this will have a job at the end of the year.

I genuinely think that if Biden does not win another term there are far larger problems for the American project than Ticketmaster, including democracy existing as we know it today.

On your opposite side, they think if Biden wins babies will die horrible deaths.

American politics are full of superlatives, and very devoid of any real actions. Once the hero or the devil gets elected, nothing happens much.

Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#227
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is my theory for what its worth: https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba The US as a democracy isn't supported by evidence.

Giving up on your democratic representation is not going to make things better.

What democratic representation?

> “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#228
Twice this year, I've paid the highest prices I've ever paid for tickets to shows. First, I paid something like $300 each for tickets to see the band Air. Sure, they're popular (among people who like their genre, at least) and from France and rarely tour. I could justify it cause I've only seen them once and might not get another chance, but holy smokes. Then I bought tickets to see comedian David Cross. Who is American. Playing in America. To get in the tenth row cost over $1000 for four tickets.

I know that Ticketmaster's role is to play the bad guys and most artists are in on the scam because they get some of the "fees" without the blame. But this is ridiculous. I found some old tickets that I saved as mementos and some were as low as $20. I saw someone posted pics from a show in the 80s that was $5. This is just absurd.

Take them down. As one of my favorite bands would say (Floyd) "cut them into little pieces."

Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#229
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely think that if Biden does not win another term there are far larger problems for the American project than Ticketmaster, including democracy existing as we know it today.

On your opposite side, they think if Biden wins babies will die horrible deaths. American politics are full of superlatives, and very devoid of any real actions. Once the hero or the devil gets elected, nothing happens much.

Yeah except for Roe v. Wade which you might consider a bellwether event for anti-contraceptive activists. But other than that yeah nothing much happened.

Re: US Justice Department to seek breakup of Live Nation-Ticketmaster

#230

Jeez, How did Govt take this long to break up Live Nation. How?

The Administration is bound by the Due Care clause, but that's a huge window, so you can just intentionally create a dysfunctional and incompetent group of people and give them the responsibility for enforcing this nations laws. This Administration, although it would hate to actually admit it out loud, actually put someone competent in charge of the agency with this enforcement responsibility and then.. to everyone's…

Effectiveness is debatable, because they’re not winning cases. I like the targets they’re aiming at, but trying and failing prevents someone more competent from winning the case in the future. Results matter.
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