Free Market Knocks

From Zanecorpwiki

My friend clued me in a month or so back that they were going to do a screening of UHF with Weird Al live. I'm a big fan. I had all the albums when I was a kid (on tape)--even the rare stuff. And UHF is a great movie.

So I put in a scheduled TODO to get the tickets on the day they went on sale. I felt very on top of it.

Now, the day that the item came due, I was busy so I didn't get to it. When I went to buy the tickets this evening, the show was already sold out.

Now, my first reaction was that the system was broken. How could a true fan like me be shut out?

Then I realized, the system isn't broken at all. Most the people that got tickets wanted them more than me. Otherwise, they would have delayed and there'd still be tickets available.

Maybe a few people aren't "as big a fan", just more organized, or with less to do, or whatever. But that's okay. The transaction cost of determining "who really deserves to go" would be so high that it'd be a drag on the system as a whole. The allocation that ended up shutting me out is probably as close to maximally efficient as we are likely to achieve any time soon.