The 111th Congress will not be seated until January 3rd, but already there is a petty anti-freedom signal coming from our lawmakers. This is not a good sign.
California Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) has issued an ultimatum to E-Bay, Craig’s List, and other internet websites. Do not sell scalped tickets to the Obama inauguration, or she will offer legislation to make the scalping of those tickets a federal crime.
Libertarians believe in free markets — and there is no freer market than the black market. Ticket scalping, whether for a Falcons’ game or a Presidential inauguration, is an efficient method for the owners of tickets to turn a profit by matching their limited supply with a large demand. The scalper makes money, and you get tickets to that concert your wife informed you she must attend. Because your interaction with the ticket scalper is voluntary, you have the ability to negotiate a mutually agreeable price for the tickets; or you can decide your wife’s anger at not getting to go to the concert is ‘cheaper’ than the dollar cost of the tickets. Either way, it is a win-win transaction without any coercion (except for sleeping on the living room couch for a few days).
Senator Feinstein wants to prohibit this free exchange of value for value. She wants to make ticket scalping another victimless crime, like prostitution or selling sex toys in Georgia (oh, wait, that law was struck down this year).
The Libertarian Party of Georgia thinks Senator Feinstein’s action is dangerous. Our platform states “the only legitimate use of force is in the defense of individual rights.” Threatening the use of government force to prohibit the individual right to dispose of personal property as one sees fit is a violation of that tenet.
Senator Feinstein’s crusade is a frightening warning precisely because it is so petty: the 111th Congress thinks it is smarter than we the people, even in something as inconsequential as ticket scalping. There is a word for governments that regulate such minute portions of people’s lives: authoritarian — and it is an enemy of individual liberty.
Libertarians have been put on notice that the next two years will be a constant battle to salvage our liberty from an overreaching government.
