Live 8 tickets are, or rather were, on sale on eBay for lots of money. Here comes the obligatory Geldof quote:

“The people who are selling these tickets on websites are miserable wretches who are capitalising on people’s misery. I am appealing to their sense of decency to stop this disgusting greed.”

Suddenly, according to Bob “I’ve got a focking knighthood, me” Geldof, ticket touting is not just a grubby practice but a crime against humanity.

Right, let’s get this straight. No-one, here or in Africa, is being actually hurt by the practice of selling Live 8 tickets on for profit. The tickets are a luxury good that people are free to choose, not a necessity that buyers are getting fleeced over. The information within the market is free and open to all parties, so no-one’s getting swindled. There are (according to the reports) plenty of sellers, so no-one’s abusing a monopoly position. The tickets are distributed via lottery and those taking part in the concert are (ostensibly) volunteering, so no workers are being exploited in its production. And the last time I checked, pop concerts do not do irreparable damage to the environment or cause cancer, so there’s little to worry about environmentally (although I would hate to be a park keeper in Hyde Park the next day).

Aha! you might say, but they’re taking money away from the good causes. To which the only reply can be - no they’re fucking not, you idiot. The kind of person who is going to give a tout £100 to go see Dido or Madonna isn’t, if they failed to get that ticket, going to give that money to Africa instead. They’re not interested in Africa at all, they’re only interest is seeing their idols on stage. They grudgingly parted with the cost of a text message or two to charity for the chance to get one; when they didn’t get one, they looked elsewhere. ‘Selfish’ may be a loaded word but it is entirely the right one to use to the kind of person who frequents eBay to pick up charity concert tickets.

If anyone should be condemned, it should be the kind of person whose desires and wishes created the market for tickets in the first place. But Geldof can’t. Because they’re the exact same people for whom the concert was created - people who are happy to hand money over for mainstream commercial music (hence the paucity of black artists). Live 8 is, to put it simply, media whoredom - it’s admittedly whoredom for a good cause, but whoredom nevertheless. And yet Geldof is in denial about it, instead blaming the sellers for meeting a demand that he has helped nurture.

You want examples of where disgusting greed damages Africa and capitalises on misery? I can give plenty - from drug patents that deny thousands the medical treatment they need, to the premature deregulation of capital markets that make developing countries’ economies at mercy of Western banks, to the ‘opening up’ of agricultural trade that dumps the West’s subsidised food surpluses onto their markets.

Touting tickets, though a murky and dubious trade conducted between two sets of selfish people, is not profiting from the misery of Africans, as it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to their situation. The above examples do, and on a terrible scale. But do we hear much about this from Geldof? Nope. Instead it’s getting him and Live 8 in the papers all the way, without any consideration that this is exactly what happens when you indulge people’s selfish wants, instead of trying to educate them.

Update: I toned down the headline slightly (the post is sweary enough as it is); at the same time I wish I’d gone for the neat obviousness of this.