Selling Harvard Graduation Tickets
A student who is about the graduate from Harvard sends me the following question:
What would a libertarian think about the College’s policy to not allow us to sell our extra commencement tickets to other students who need them?
The answer is that libertarians would not think about this issue at all, since it does not involve a government policy. The College’s policy may be misguided, or not, relative to some criterion, but libertarians believe it is the College’s choice to make.
Libertarians do oppose laws that ban scapling.
If, however, a private institution sold tickets to a private buyer under a no-sale condition, and a buyer broke that contract, libertarians would support enforcement of a lawsuit for contract infringement brought by the seller against the buyer, assuming the seller could show damages.
Categories: My Blog
Jess Austin
To be clear, would you support the use of public resources in investigating or prosecuting such no-resale contract provisions?
Jeffrey Miron
Yes. Say the Red Sox sell me season tickets under the condition that I not re-sell them, and then they find out that I have. Say that the contract says that if I re-sell, I owe them some penalty. Then they should be able to use government courts to sue me for that penalty.
In principle I guess they could also sue for damages, but it is not obvious what these damages would be.
Ana
I really need at least one more ticket for the May 2011 graduation. Is there a libertarian out there who’d care to help a sister out? Instead of limiting the tickets, they need a bigger venue!