It’s scalping if you have a quick turn around, it’s investing if you take care if it to sell farther into the future. Seeing a recently released limited set for double the price on ebay is scalping, seeing a 20-30 year old mint set for double the price is investing.

A place where you won't get sick, at a minimum

You haven't paid enough attention to notice that the tropic of conversation is that scalping is bad and property scalping is worse, which you seem to agree with, so I don't know why you're arguing with people.

Would thry?

The ticket seller doesn't care if there's an empty hall, he got paid early on.

You're hoping that the scalpers don't get enough return to be able to justify continuing to play their role.

That "solution" suffers from the problem that requiring hundreds of thousands or even millions of people to get informed about and agree to do something all in the same time period (it won't work if some do it now and others only later) is incredibly more hard than it is for a few tens of people or maybe a couple hundred to as individuals swarm the sales venues and take all the tickets to resell them for more money.

Or putting things another way, it's a mountain to climb for large numbers of people to organise and stop scalpers (and that, only for a while, since if people stop doing it the scalpers will return), whilst in the current commercial environment scalpers appearing is a natural outcome.

This kind of thing usually requires changing the structures that make scalping so easy, rather than hoping that somehow (magic?) hundreds of thousands or miliions of people agree to do something.

PS: Yeah, a cultural change would be it, but expecting it to just happen and all at the same time (given that early adopters of that practice won't actually see any upside until a large enough mass of people have adopted it and they'll start giving up if too much time goes by whilst they're refraining from buying from scalpers and yet scalpers keep going because so many others are still doing it) is highly unrealistic.

If we all collectively agreed...

Gestures broadly

I didn’t say anything about affordability, just stated that it’s cheaper than purchasing land + house

If my assumptions are correct, there should be a crash of something within the next 4-6 months. My problem is that a new president always means a new unknown variable, like Bitcoin did nearly double its value after Trump won, there will be a still unknown thing once he gets into office.

Yea, absolutely, hence the approximated 4-6% return on investment - some years more, some years negative.

There is this apartment that I've been eyeing for a while, and I've seriously considered becoming one of those loathed landlords myself. Feels like trying to do right by the apartment and by a tenant would be putting out more good to the world than a passive stock fund, you know? So been reading up on it quite a bit lately.

A home is 1 form of shelter. The luxury form. Much in the way a Ferrari is a form of transport vs a bike. The meme doesn't show shelter in the context of a basic right. It's showing a luxury good among other luxury goods.

If them buying it denied other legitimate buyers with the same purchasing power from doing so, then yes. A home is too unique a purchase to be scalped though. It's like art in that the house is the only 1 one available exactly like it. The same exact house built on a corner or further in on the block have different values.

2 pairs of the exact same sneaker treated the same from the same production run are practically identical. Market manipulation through scalping is the only method to raise it's price at the time of market sale.

Tickets have a limited duration they hold ANY value so their prices can be manipulated through scalping too.

Houses just shouldn't be in the same conversation.