When Bob Geldof is angry, people have to listen just as they did to Moses. He has moral authority earned through years of effort on behalf of the poor. He has now taken on the wealth and, indeed, popularity, of Ebay which has a stockmarket value of US$51 billion, and bullied it into submission. He encouraged people to bid ridiculous prices of up to £10 million for Live 8 tickets - sums that would never be paid - so as to wreck the auction process. He fulsomely insulted the company. He deliberately damaged their name and their business. In a court of law, the company might have had a right to claim damages. But Ebay realised that it that it would either have to give in or take on a mighty battle with Bob Geldof, conscience of the nation. The company understandably decided to give in.

One has to admire Mr Geldof. He is brilliantly effective. He gets attention and makes things happen. He has even performed a miracle - persuading the band Pink Floyd to get back together again. He also focuses relentlessly on something that genuinely matters - unlike some pop stars who flit from one fashionable cause to another.

But there is increasingly reason to feel uneasy about Bob Geldof and what he demands of us.

In the midst of this latest row, the quiet question people were asking was: what is so wrong about people buying or selling Live 8 tickets on Ebay? What harm was being done?

Bob Geldof said it was "capitalising on the misery of the poor". But if one person (the buyer) goes to the Live 8 concert instead of another person (the seller), how would this hurt the poor? The issue of who happens to sit in a particular seat in Hyde Park one afternoon is surely a matter of indifference to those struggling to get enough food for themselves and their families. And if no one is harmed, then Bob Geldof's expressions of outrage appear illogical and excessive.

He calls the sales "profiteering" as if making a profit were, in itself, an evil thing. But the entire economy is based on people making profits. Every company from Marks and Spencer to the Body Shop tries to make profits. Those who do jobs generally do so to get money, too. Bob Geldof used to sell records on which he, too, made profits. Indeed members of his own band are currently starting proceedings against him because they argue that he kept too much of the profits and passed too little on to them. If profits are evil, we are all sinners.

Bob Geldof may have stopped Ebay from auctioning tickets, but he should not imagine that he has stopped all buying and selling of Live 8 tickets. That will go on by email, in pubs and clubs and outside the concert itself. By blackmailing Ebay into halting its auction, his only achievement will have been to drive the trade underground whereas otherwise it would have been open and traceable.

Mr Geldof clearly thinks he has got the whole country behind him boasting, after Ebay gave way, "they miscalculated this country very badly and, magnificently, the country won". But on a Radio 5 Live phone in yesterday, there were plenty of callers saying they did not agree with him and who regretted that Ebay had been bullied into closing down a legal and useful auction. Warren Buffet, the second richest man in the world, is meanwhile showing that Ebay, far from being villainous, can be used to help good causes. He is selling lunch with himself on the auction site and the proceeds will go to Glide, a San Francisco charity for the homeless. Last year he raised $202,000 for the charity in this way.

The whole nature of what Bob Geldof is doing has changed. When he first created Live Aid, he was raising money for charity to help with the famine highlighted by Michael Buerk on BBC News. Charity - delivered with dedication by decent, philanthropic people to those in need - is something which virtually all of us support.

But Live 8 is not directed towards charity. It is a political campaign in which, among other things, Mr Geldof is trying to pressure world governments into giving more aid to the governments of poor countries. This is a different matter. Plenty of people have serious doubts about government-to-government aid. As a leading authority on the subject, Professor Peter Bauer that said government-to-govenment aid could readily mean "transferring money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries".

Through his over-the-top attack on Ebay and the changed nature of what he is doing, Mr Geldof could be beginning to lose some of the moral authority he previously built up. It is a pity. We can do with people who care about right and wrong.

(This is the unedited version of an article which appeared in the Daily Express today).