What if the kid passes at $30 because money is tight, they’d prefer to pay $20 and want to try for that, but scalpers snatch up all the cheapest tickets before the kid is able to. The kid still really wants to go, however, and is willing to actually pay the scalper up to $40 when push comes to shove, even if it hurts a bit?

Or if they weren’t organized enough or able to commit to going early on, but still have the purchasing power to pay a higher price?

Then they learned a valuable lesson?

I mean, this seems like a low stakes operation. Nobody on their deathbed is like, "If only that Taylor Swift ticket had cost $10 less."

See my response to your sibling comment.

Yeah, the price/time algorithm for the auction can't accommodate every single kid's temporal and financial idiosyncracies. Compared to what?

I was mostly asking because the explanation in the parent comment seemed overly simplistic, and to indicate that this approach would destroy the scalpers’ business model entirely. I’m totally open to the idea that this is a good solution that would improve on the status quo.