Opinion
The Talmud is very clear on Oasis ticket pricing
Jewish law and custom make plain that exploitative or unjust price inflation are both morally wrong
September 18, 2024 10:17
3 min read
Jewish law and custom make plain that exploitative or unjust price inflation are both morally wrong
September 18, 2024 10:17You will have heard: Oasis are reuniting, and while I can find no Jewish connections with the band to feasibly cover this momentous cultural event, the whole ticket chaos has sparked ethical questions. Ones which the Jewish moral code deals with nicely.
Within moments of release on August 31, tickets were sold at more than double the £148 face value. Fans queued for hours online only to discover that the standing tickets had increased to £355 through the dynamic pricing model, in which ticketing sites raise prices according to demand. And, like the encore that always comes at the end of a gig, no matter how enthusiastic the ovation, it was utterly predictable that more tickets would become available, with extra shows added due to “unprecedented demand”.
I won’t be buying one. That’s not because I share other music critics’ sneering views of their music; few bands can instantly summon that teenage feeling of being arm-in-arm with your friends, full of youthful hope, singing along to the likes of Wonderwall and Some Might Say. It’s a principles thing.
Imagine if it got to Friday and the last 100 bagels at your kosher baker suddenly doubled in price, and by 1pm the last ten cost £5 each? You can’t possibly be the only bagel-lover not to have bagels over the weekend, so now you really want those bagels. So much that you would pay £5 for one. What if the last doughnuts in the bakery before Chanukah tripled in price? Or shul tickets for the High Holidays crept up as Rosh Hashanah approached and there was a sudden flurry of people asking for one? And what if the customers were taken by surprise by the lack of transparency in this unexpected practice?
Oasis ticket buying has been a frenzy I’d never seen before in 20 years of gig-going. When the tickets went live, people staying at the same hotel as us in the remote Lake District were talking about it. Friends I haven’t seen in years messaged me about it. Human nature is to want to be a part of it, so those Oasis tickets and overpriced doughnuts become even more alluring.
“That’s how exploitation can work,” says Rabbi Mark Goldsmith, of Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue, musing that the same might have happened in Maimonides’ day, should a camel train have arrived from Samarkand carrying exquisite Indian cloths. “The prices would potentially have gone up and up, so they became prestige items only for the very wealthy.”
However, Rabbi Goldsmith points out, the just pricing legislation under Talmudic law meant that this could not go too far. When it comes to buying and selling, Leviticus 25:14 tells us that we must not wrong one another. The “wronging” is the prohibition of “ona’ah” – unjust pricing whereby a seller overcharges for an item by more than one sixth of its real value, or a buyer takes advantage of a seller’s lack of knowledge of their item’s true value by underpaying by more than a sixth. The local Beit Din – or market inspectors – could adjudicate and enforce your rights to return the item for a full refund or retrieve your object if you sold it for too little.
As for how this applies to concert tickets, the only way that you could put aside the law of just pricing is when a buyer and seller specifically agree that the seller will pay an agreed amount more than the object is worth, or a buyer will take an agreed amount less. For example, in such exceptional circumstances as there were great risk in the seller obtaining the object – say, exotic spices from far-off lands. But it must be transparent and it’s your choice as to whether you agree.
“Jewish law and custom is clear that exploitative or unjust pricing is a moral wrong,” says Rabbi Goldsmith. “You can make a decent profit but not take excessive advantage of buyers or sellers. Though our classical sources apply the law only to members of the same broad community, it seems clear that for a harmonious relationship between people we should not take advantage of supply and demand to rip each other off.”
I don’t agree to being financially exploited, so I’m off to see the singer-songwriter Bertie instead.