(FORTUNE Magazine) – In which Kindly Dr. Keeping Up chortles uncontrollably while testifying on efforts in New York and other backward communities to extirpate market makers dealing in tickets to theatrical and sporting events. Dear Up: Stowing the mirth, kindly adumbrate the impulses behind the anti- scalping crusade, stated by Jeffrey Jolson-Colburn of the Hollywood Reporter to be onstage in 16 state legislatures as we speak. Impulse No. 1 is the ever-burning yearning of populist politicians to control prices and criminalize speculators, in this case identified as ''ducat desperadoes,'' or at least that is the label applied in press releases from the office of Bronx Assemblyman John C. Dearie, he who co-sponsored the New York State anti-scalping statute with the backing of such industry luminaries as ''Broadway Dynamo Schoenfeld.'' Dear Kindly: How does the just-mentioned powerhouse fit into the picture and whence his colorful moniker? Gerald Schoenfeld of the Schubert Organization, whose honorific sobriquet is also being plagiarized from Dearie's releases, is famous or maybe not for going to Albany and there gamely testifying to the Assembly's Committee on Tourism, Arts & Sports Development that it is wrong to equilibrate supply and demand via prices deviating in a northerly direction from those engraved on official admittance pasteboard. Dear Upkeep: But even assuming arctic markups, why would he wish to prevent willing sellers from selling to willing buyers? Gerald's testimony is not easy for everybody to understand, or possibly anybody, the core difficulty residing in the part where he says ''We endeavor to maintain our ticket prices at levels commensurate with the economics of our business rather than at levels fixed by supply and demand,'' which could lead an out-of-towner to think business economics have nothing to do with supply and demand. Dear Keeping: Could we move to less theoretical ground and tell the people how in fact scalpers in Cuomoland will be deterred by the new law. Deterrence will critically depend on a cordon sanitaire. Dear Dr. Up: Huh? As initially broached, the rule was that nobody would be allowed to resell a ticket within 500 feet of the entrance to a theater or sports arena under penalty of heavy fines and/or prison terms of up to a year. At no point did the legislature vote for the knout. But the 500-foot rule led the state attorney general to worriedly testify that perpetrators of ''aggravated ticket speculation'' would hover just outside the forbidden zone while their scouts reconnoitered inside it looking for prospective customers wishing to know where the action was. So the legislature thought and thought, and finally came up with a terrific new rule: no ticket sellers allowed within 1,000 feet of the entrance. Dear Doc: But will this law not adversely impact the non-speculator who has tickets to the hockey game and then his Aunt Nellie dies and only if he can resell the seats will he be able to afford airfare to the funeral? The Dearie gang thought deeply about this soap-opera problem, albeit not deeply enough, and finally wrote into the law a lovable requirement that each and every major theater or sports arena must create a special resale area someplace near the box office where Nellie's nephews and other nice people can offer their tickets for amounts not in excess of face value plus $2. Dear Kindly: And who alleges that the thinking was insufficiently profound? The chap who runs the Meadowlands sports center, where the Giants and Jets play, sagely observed that this resale area could undermine the whole law, as it would enable scalpers to pretend they were looking for the area when caught hawking tickets inside the 1,000-foot limit. Dear Doc: So profound New Yorkers are against the resale zone? ((Chortling)) Not if it undermines the law.