Tuesday's announcement that Miley Cyrus, alias Hannah Montana, will perform at the Stadium of Fire in Provo on the Fourth of July has triggered a frenzy of activity usually reserved for BYU football in Top 10 seasons.

The flurry of selling and re-selling is already looking like a busy day at the New York Stock Exchange. Cyrus -- arguably the most popular entertainer in America -- saw tickets to her concert tour, which ended in January, sold out in minutes. They were often resold for many times their face value.

Her pre-teen fans wept. Parents fumed. Elected officials blustered. Everybody complained that ticket re-sellers were driving prices up and making it impossible for real fans to buy them. Attorneys general in three states announced that they were looking into the matter. Lawmakers sought remedies.

Consider the situation in Florida last fall. State Rep. Dan Gelber has daughters, ages 7 and 9 who were begging him for tickets to see Cyrus. But he found that entrepreneurial opportunists were scarfing up most of the tickets and then selling them for hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars above face value. Gelber introduced a bill that would make it a crime to use "ticket purchasing software" to vacuum up tickets from a Web site. The measure died in committee and Florida remained a scalping state. It dumped a law banning ticket scalping in 2006.

Should Utah ban or restrict a practice that pushes the prices of tickets into the stratosphere? Heck, no. This is free enterprise. It's supply and demand. If a music fan really, really, really, REALLY wants to see a celebrity, he or she is going to cough up the dough.

Scalping actually ensures that more hard-core fans will attend an event. That's good for the fans, good for the event organizers and good for the artist, whose most ardent adorers will cheer and croon and coo.

Sure, ticket prices may be exorbitant and inflated -- some say unfair. And at least a dozen states ban scalping or regulate it. Many cities with major sports teams have their own ordinances. This year's Stadium of Fire show will no doubt give rise to plenty of grumbling that Utah, and Provo in particular, should join the list.

They shouldn't. The free market remains far and away the best regulator.

If someone is willing to pay a price, then that price is not exorbitant, inflated or unfair by definition. It's merely the going rate. A commodity in a free market is worth precisely what someone is willing to pay for it, no more and no less. If a scalper has the brains, guts and good luck to get $500 or $1,000 for a ticket purchased for $100, the ticket is worth $500 or $1,000. The scalper isn't inflating the value of the ticket; he is merely seeking the ticket's true value.

Nobody forces a buyer to spend what a scalper asks. Yet plenty of buyers are eager to fork over the cash for the hottest show in town. If another person doesn't want to spend that kind of money to hear a teenager sing, well, maybe that's just a rational decision.

Scalpers perform many services. They provide tickets to people who couldn't get them originally, for example. After all, not everyone has time to wait in line or on the computer for hours or days. The jacked up price can be viewed as a fee for service.

Re-sellers also take tickets off the hands of buyers who have had a change of plans and need to sell them.

Some of the uproar over scalping comes from the feeling that re-sellers make huge profits. We're not sure why that's bad. Scalpers also assume the risk of buying tickets far in advance. If they miss the wave of public interest, they can be left holding the bag. Sometimes a ticket bought for $100 will only bring $20 after the craziness subsides. As an event approaches, scalpers' ticket prices can plunge, providing bargains for those fans with the patience and fortitude to wait. And so that's another benefit. Providing tickets at a discount is a public service.

That scalpers provide a needed and wanted service is shown by the fact they can be found outside most stadiums on game days, even where scalping is illegal. Usually all such laws do is make useful transactions more furtive.

The value of scalpers is slowly dawning on many. Some states have repealed or eased anti-scalping laws. Sales over the Internet, for instance, are too hard to police, and if you can't enforce your law, then there's not much point in having it.

It should be interesting to see what a Miley Cyrus concert ticket will go for in frugal Utah Valley. If you're a scalper, register in the Daily Herald's online forum and tell us how well or how poorly you did with your investment. It's at heraldextra.com.