Sonny wrote:No one is being excluded Catlax. You act as if the fans are being sent to jail or something. It's a $15 ticket. Basic free will. They get to choose if they wish to pay for it or not. If distant family and friends don't wish to pay it, then they won't. But they aren't be excluded.
Sure some are being excluded...those who have budget constraints that set the marginal utility of the last dollar spent so that the satisfaction derived is not equal to what they could derive from spending it on some alternative consumption good or service.
The problem here is that we are not really talking about the free market. We are talking about a monopoly that has been transferred to the organizers and the organizers have chosen to maximize their profit by attempting to garner a portion of the consumer surplus* from a group of upper middle class families in the Lamorinda area rather than setting a lower price that would allow a larger number of friends and those with personal ties to the players as well as other lacrosse fans to attend....By Sonny's logic if a marketing study were performed and the Major oil companies determined that they could maximize their Oligopoly profits by setting the price at $25.00/gallon due to the inelasticities of Demand, the budget constraints of their customers and the the consumer surplus available...then they should be able to do it. Those who are no longer able to drive have made a free choice....It is just not that simple....This is what CATLAXMAN has tried to explain that people are upset about. It is also presumptuous to believe that all families and friends of the players from the State and Private Universities involved in the tournament are all in similar upper middle class and above financial circumstances and can afford to pay the prices being charged for the tickets especially if they have large families and are coming from out of town and therefore have to pay for transportation and lodging and meals in the high cost Bay Area.
*Consumer Surplus: In more perfectly competitive markets with multiple suppliers the market not the supplier determines the price. If a supplier decides to set his price above market for an identical good or service, he will have no purchasers. Because different buyers have different budget constraints some are willing to pay far more than the price set by the interaction of supply and demand forces in the market. If I was willing to pay up to $50.00 for a pencil becuse I am relatively well off then the $49.00 difference over the market price of $1.00 is the amount of consumer surplus I derive. Because there are many pencil manufacturers no single manufacturer can influence the market price and arrogate the consumer surplus for himself.
