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When is a ‘travel hack’ unethical?

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Re: When is a ‘travel hack’ unethical?

#71

Post by TeMPOraL »

asift wrote: post #66
TeMPOraL wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Both are imperfect. The real question is which is superior under realistic assumptions. And I'd say, why not both? It's obvious that the market is superior in many cases. It's also obvious that the government is superior in others. They both cover for each others' failures.

In a very narrow view (i.e., how the world exists at this moment) I agree that both are necessary. Over a longer time horizon, I'm not certain how "obvious" it is governments are superior. It takes time for alternative institutions to develop, but the institutional problems that are inherent to governments are avoidable through private institutions. The presence of governmental institutions causes a lot of distortion…

But who says that governments are superior? It makes no sense, it's like saying that a heart is superior to a lung. It's not, you need both!

Governments and markets cover for each others failures. Where a government is inflexible, a market can find an efficient solution. When a market is trapped in a race to the bottom, the government creates coordination. They complement each other.

As for the argument that keeping the current government prevents us from experimenting with alternative forms, you could say the same about free market keeping us from experimenting with different forms of markets...

Re: When is a ‘travel hack’ unethical?

#72

Post by asift »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #65
asift wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are reasonable and intelligent criticisms of market institutions. This is not one of them. Exactly what recourse would I have against someone who stole my sandwich? Unless I know the person or there is solid evidence to identify the individual, the costs of investigation and prosecution far exceed the value to be recouped. Police will take my information, file a report, and nothing else will happen. Not only is…

The difference between Paypal and real life is that Paypal works with arbitrary laws they set up, and real life works with the laws of physics. You can prevent fraud on the Internet by doing tricky filtering. You can't prevent someone from stealing a sandwich at gunpoint by rewriting how the universe works. Enforcement is not perfect, but that the police can punish the armed sandwich thief in principle is already a d…

There is very little reason to believe private security providers would resort to "firefights" to resolve conflicts. This is an incredibly expensive and undesirable solution for customers.

Go back ten years and have a conversation with someone about a private taxi company that uses technology to operate outside of existing regulations. You would hear outrageous claims about murderers, rapists, and thieves using the system to exploit customers. Of course, Uber drivers can and have assaulted people, but it turns out there are all sorts of creative solutions and private incentives that undermine these outcomes. Fortunately, the future does not lie in the hands of the uncreative people of the past and present. It's the people who can actually envision and deliver solutions--people like Kalanick and Camp--that determine the future.

Re: When is a ‘travel hack’ unethical?

#73

Post by TeMPOraL »

asift wrote: post #72
TeMPOraL wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between Paypal and real life is that Paypal works with arbitrary laws they set up, and real life works with the laws of physics. You can prevent fraud on the Internet by doing tricky filtering. You can't prevent someone from stealing a sandwich at gunpoint by rewriting how the universe works. Enforcement is not perfect, but that the police can punish the armed sandwich thief in principle is already a d…

There is very little reason to believe private security providers would resort to "firefights" to resolve conflicts. This is an incredibly expensive and undesirable solution for customers. Go back ten years and have a conversation with someone about a private taxi company that uses technology to operate outside of existing regulations. You would hear outrageous claims about murderers, rapists, and thieves using the s…

> There is very little reason to believe private security providers would resort to "firefights" to resolve conflicts. This is an incredibly expensive and undesirable solution for customers.

That's why they'd shoot the customers and get on with it :P.

I'd go back 10 years and I'd find multiple companies already doing the thing Uber does now (sans app, because there weren't app back then) - except they were doing it legally and weren't sociopathic about it.

People who envision and deliver solutions with no regard to anything else than their personal profit surely could determine the future - but it won't be a future any one of us would like to live in.

Re: When is a ‘travel hack’ unethical?

#74

Post by ZenoArrow »

tomp wrote: post #51
ZenoArrow wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Regulations are a part of a free market." Are you sure? I've never heard another free market capitalist argue that government regulations are an important part of how their ideal market works. Can you point out any free market economists that have argued for government regulation?

That's because those free market capitalists are (at best) hypocrites or (at worst) stupid. Obviously capitalism relies on regulation - of property rights, IP rights, contract laws, bans on fraud and insider trading (although opinions are mixed on that last one), ...

Free market capitalists argue that what we have now is not a free market. IP rights wouldn't exist in a free market system, for example.

It's probably best to find another term to describe the market you see working, as 'free market' is what free market capitalists argue for. I don't know what a better term would be, but I'm sure that economists would've thought of one.

Re: When is a ‘travel hack’ unethical?

#75

Post by tomp »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #74
tomp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because those free market capitalists are (at best) hypocrites or (at worst) stupid. Obviously capitalism relies on regulation - of property rights, IP rights, contract laws, bans on fraud and insider trading (although opinions are mixed on that last one), ...

Free market capitalists argue that what we have now is not a free market. IP rights wouldn't exist in a free market system, for example. It's probably best to find another term to describe the market you see working, as 'free market' is what free market capitalists argue for. I don't know what a better term would be, but I'm sure that economists would've thought of one.

But what would exist in this ideal "free" market? IMO, without contract law and courts that enforce it and persecute fraud, you can't have a functional market (free or unfree). Also, without some laws that monopolize violence, the market would be much more, well, violent (you might think of that as "free", but I don't think that kind of freedom is beneficial to the society) - we can see that in numerous places on Earth right now, where there is no effective "government" and you have multiple factions fighting for power - it rarely encourages trade and entrepreneurship.

Re: When is a ‘travel hack’ unethical?

#76

Post by TeMPOraL »

mikeash wrote: post #69
TeMPOraL wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hidden city ticketing doesn't waste the airline's fuel. They'd burn just as much fuel if you used all segments you purchased. The same amount of fuel is being burned, but one less person is getting transported to their destination. I see a pretty clear-cut example of waste here. > It's not generally considered unethical to, say, buy a bottle of wine just to dump it out. Why would the same thing be unethical when it…

If the wine were rare, the price would be high. Here, we're talking about a product (an extra leg on an airline ticket) whose price is negative . You're being paid to take it. That pretty strongly implies the product is abundant. If it's not abundant, and the airline is still giving it a negative price, that's pretty dumb on their part, and I don't think we can be blamed for making decisions based on the (apparently…

Negative price means they pay you to do something, not to take the money and then not do it. Doing otherwise is, well, unethical ;).

I doubt that negatively priced legs come from product abundance. It's most likely optimization - e.g. if they can get more people going A->B->C then they can merge them with B->C passengers group and fly them together on a bigger, more fuel-efficient plane, etc.

Anyway, we're already paying much less than we should when flying privately; price discrimination works in our favour, at the expense of business customers.

Re: When is a ‘travel hack’ unethical?

#77

Post by tomp »

venomsnake wrote: post #59
ZenoArrow wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Regulations are a part of a free market." Are you sure? I've never heard another free market capitalist argue that government regulations are an important part of how their ideal market works. Can you point out any free market economists that have argued for government regulation?

Regulations that make possible entrance to a market - standards, forced ineroperability, common carrier, dumb pipes etc - are generally good and provide more efficient market. Regulations that prevent entrance to a market - by artificially rising the capital requirements to the impossible, are probably not helping the free market.

Exactly - the government should prevent markets from becoming less free - discouraging monopoly, persecuting fraud, encouraging transparency, taxing (appropriately) externalities, and owning natural monopolies (like infrastructure - dumb pipes owned by the government or a very regulated entity, and used by market competitors). I also think there should be less regulation in certain very regulated markets (banking, food) to encourage experimentation, but those should come with restrictions (e.g. no advertising, limited sales volume, etc.) - I think the world of hedge funds is a good example - they have less restricitons and hence can offer lower costs and better (or less correlated) performance, but they are effectively closed off to the general public (only "knowledgeable" investors can invest).

Re: When is a ‘travel hack’ unethical?

#78

Post by dmalvarado »

jegutman wrote: post #39

LOL, is this "native advertising" and is it for the airlines or the companies helping you buy cheap tickets? Airlines are in my experience among the least ethically run businesses: * They will cancel a flight at the last minute stranding passengers because it was "undersold". * They will delay flights for reasons that have no accountability to consumers. * They pass on 100% of the risk of flights being on time to con…

To your last point, I have suspected this for a while. The mere fact that you care where you're seated is a signal that you're willing to pay for the change.

Airlines are going the way of ISPs. Monopolies that just don't care how annoyed they make you.

Re: When is a ‘travel hack’ unethical?

#79

Post by mikeash »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #76
mikeash wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the wine were rare, the price would be high. Here, we're talking about a product (an extra leg on an airline ticket) whose price is negative . You're being paid to take it. That pretty strongly implies the product is abundant. If it's not abundant, and the airline is still giving it a negative price, that's pretty dumb on their part, and I don't think we can be blamed for making decisions based on the (apparently…

Negative price means they pay you to do something, not to take the money and then not do it. Doing otherwise is, well, unethical ;). I doubt that negatively priced legs come from product abundance. It's most likely optimization - e.g. if they can get more people going A->B->C then they can merge them with B->C passengers group and fly them together on a bigger, more fuel-efficient plane, etc. Anyway, we're already pa…

Negative price means they're paying you to take the product. They're not paying you to do something unless doing that something is the product.

In the case of negative-priced airline tickets, they are not paying you to ride an airplane. They're paying you to take a ticket. That ticket then gives you an option to ride an airplane. Ticket use is not mandatory, not even ethically.

If it were somehow advantageous for the airline to actually have people take the trip from B->C, then they could pay people to actually do it by, for example, giving you a rebate when you step off the airplane at C, or charging you a fee for not boarding the airplane at B. But they don't do this. So either they benefit from just selling the ticket, or far more likely they don't benefit from selling the ticket but are trying to manipulate the system in some other way.

I don't understand your optimization comment. There is no scenario in which it's cheaper to fly more people from B->C than fewer. Larger, more efficient planes are still more expensive in total to operate, so if your passengers fit on a smaller plane you'll save money that way, not lose money. Even if the bigger plane were somehow cheaper in total, nothing says you need to fill it up. You can just fly your normal B->C passengers in a bigger plane with lots of empty seats, if that ends up being cheaper. Airliners don't require ballast. There is no scenario where the airline makes more money at the end of the day by having you use your B->C ticket compared to obtaining a B->C ticket but not using it.

I also don't understand your "flying privately" comment. Airlines are cheaper than the alternative, so it's OK if they play pricing games? Well, it's a free country, they can play as many pricing games as they want, but I'm going to play them too.

Re: When is a ‘travel hack’ unethical?

#80

Post by irascible »

So... Travel agencies have been ripping me off for my entire life due to the fact that I'm American... effectively making me pay double what some other world citizens pay.. and I'm supposed to feel GUILTY about it?

This should be the biggest class action suit ever.

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