A lousy, stupid, no good, bad, law is being proposed

Worse than that, a lousy, stupid, no good, bad, law is being proposed to solve something that is not in fact a problem. Yes, the political classes have managed to get their knickers in a twist over people, spontaneously and on their own, allocating something to people who value it the most.  They want to ban ticket scalping, or as we might put it, they want to stop people disposing of their own private property in whatever manner they desire: 

Some of the music industry’s leading players are demanding that ticket touting be made a criminal offence for all UK concerts, plays and sporting events, Guardian Money can reveal.

The calls for ministers to take action come on the eve of the publication of a government-commissioned review of the secondary ticket market, which is dominated by four players: Seatwave, Viagogo, Get Me In and StubHub.

This is simply insane. It's not just unjust, stopping people from that disposal of their own property as they wish, it's also vastly inefficient. We know very well that a market in something, a free market in it, allocates whatever it is to those who value it the most. It also doesn't matter, in those efficiency terms, what the original allocation is. That people can trade means that that scarce resource, whatever it is, ends up in the hands of those willing to offer the most for it: that is, in the hands of those who value it most highly.

These are the grounds upon which we allocate scarce electromagnetic spectrum among the various TV stations, mobile telephone operators and so on with the government taking the cash. This is also the way that we should be allocating any other scarce resource: like those concert tickets.

And that those prices become very high is not a problem. That's just the universe's way of telling you to play a few more gigs. This really is not a complicated point: banning scalping is absolutely the wrong thing to do.