It's not the wealthy, it's people that are willing to pay. This is pretty basic segmentation. You can pay with your time or money. Kind of like ad free listening/watching.
That's a perspective that makes sense when all individuals are given an equal income, and it's up to each one to decide how they want to allocate that income.
But that's very far from how the actual world works. In reality, some people make very little while having little to start with, some make lots of money, even when they have little to start with, and others might make lots of money while also being born into lots of money.
To look at the system and ask "why are people complaining? It's the same price for everyone." ignores that is actually has a different cost for everyone, regardless of what the price might be. And that perspective is what pushes society in a direction where many are forced to pay with their time, while the few who found their way to large incomes/born with large bank accounts, can pay with money, essentially establishing a class tier.
Well, we could allocate each American the US Standard Car and the US Standard Breakfast Meal and they can wear the US Standard Clothing, but there are societies that tried that and there are societies that have done what the US has done and our poor people are better than their 75th percentile, so I think having different incomes and charging more for more services is okay.
It's segmentation in places it never used to exist. A queue was a queue and the idea that you'd allow somebody to bribe their way to the front would have been terminally unfashionable.
Yes, it's just the free market, once again highlighting the blossoming wealth divide. There are few ways this doesn't end in rebellion.
In general, rebellion isn't inevitable. It only happens if people get together and organize it, which isn't guaranteed to happen. Individual people will just grit their teeth and put up with anything if they don't think they have the power to do anything about it.
Never used to exist? It has always existed. When I first got my driver's license almost a half century ago, you could hire people to stand in line for you. There were other places you could pay extra money for expedited services. If you had the money or knew someone you could always cut in line.
That wasn't true for every line, but most of them definitely
Nothing new here. And really nothing wrong with it either.
At the end of the day, it's yet another $189/yr cost + $99/yr/family member cost to add in. For a family of 4, that's $585/yr or $48/mo.
Generally speaking (however, not absolutely true), wealthy individuals typically have a larger amount of disposable income to potentially allocate to this expense.
It is not unreasonable to conclude that such a service might be more likely to be used in practice by wealthier people.
Disney & sky resorts are private and are free to charge who they want how they want. You don't like it? Don't use it.
But the TSA thing is ridiculous, because it is mandated by the government and their responsibility is to make sure the service is good enough so there's no need to pay to avoid it.
Populace keep voting for the same set of kleptocrats, so they get what they vote for. Subsidizing stuff only rich people can afford (electric vehicles, house improvements), taxing income more than capital gains, tax code with loopholes like tax free "charity foundations", etc.
Completely agree. The only one on this list that upsets me is Clear.
It's such a transparent abuse of government power that it makes my blood boil. Airports are funded through my tax dollars and TSA is as you said mandated by the government. There is limited space and resources in the airport so allowing a private company to take up some of that space and what's more turn a profit from it is peak Rent-seeking behavior and anyone in government who allowed this to happen should be run out of office.
Not really, or at least not in the same sense/degree as stuff like highways and roads. For example, my nearest major airport boasts:
> Airports are supported by the users of the airport and the fees, rents, or leases in place with airlines, tenants, and travelers. The bottom line for local taxpayers is “if you don’t use the airport, you’re not paying for the airport.”
Agreed. And to make it worse, Clear speeds up the id checking phase of airport security, but that has never been the chokepoint in my experience (it's instead the xray scanner).
> Disney & sky resorts are private and are free to charge who they want how they want.
Many ski areas, while private bushiness often operate on public lands through long-term leases [1]. Some amount of public access (eg free uphill access to the lands) are often requirements as a part of the lease; I don't see why certain business terms shouldn't be able to be regulated in the interest of the general public.
At every ski resort I've been to, you pay for the lift pass granting access to the ski lifts. The only thing stopping you from slogging uphill on foot and skiing down for free is gravity.
>I don't see why certain business terms shouldn't be able to be regulated in the interest of the general public.
Implying that there is a legitimate public interest in equal-cost access to rides at disneyland does not seem like a defensible position.
That's a bit like saying it is against the interest of the public to charge more prime orchestra seats than second tier balcony seats at the opera.
My position is that if Disney wants to charge ten trillion dollars to skip the line to ride a rollecoaster and one cent for a rollercoaster ride with a 40-year waiting period, that's none of my concern.
Clear doesn't avoid the TSA and in fact, the TSA isn't directly involved with Clear aside from setting the requirements for the "trusted traveler" program that Clear operates under. It's the airports who control the lines up until that first TSA agent and it's the airports that Clear is paying to ensure their customers are prioritized. In most cases those airports are owned by the local city or state government.
I get a little chuckle when I'm in the airport Xray line and the Clear agent is trying to get the attention of the TSA agent. But he/she ignores them and waves over a family of 7 instead. LOL.
Rich people don’t get the electric vehicle subsidies, at least not the consumer facing ones. There is an income limit that is fairly low by rich people standards.
Regarding voting for the TSA: Remember the median number of flights taken by an American in a year is zero.
The majority of voters have no incentive to make the TSA experience not suck. Their only stake is the self-satisfaction of increasing safety, however theatery it might be.
So...by that logic, the theater aspect of TSA is completely invisible to the majority of voters, and they get no satisfaction of increasing safety. They might see a news item on TV once in a while, that's about it. Doesn't seem to me like we can blame voters for what the TSA does, at least not today's voters.
Voters after 9/11, on the other hand, were definitely security-minded, and the political response to that is how the TSA became the juggernaut that it is today.
> Populace keep voting for the same set of kleptocrats, so they get what they vote for.
Probably not an original idea on my part... but if the # kleptocrats (elected officials) is approximately constant, and the # of decisions made per kleptocrat goes up* (I can't actually say if this is true or not), as an individual the ability to direct change goes down it seems.
*or the number # of changes the aggregate lawmakers agree on goes down (i.e. more things left unaddressed)
At least the fast pass offloads some of the cost to frequent travellers. Funding airports with taxes is slightly regressive as high-income earners will usually fly much more often compared to someone on minimum wage.
> Populace keep voting for the same set of kleptocrats
I'm not arguing in any way to stop trying, but this is a systemic issue that won't be solved by voting. For a start, all of the options are kleptocrats.
> Disney & sky resorts are private and are free to charge who they want how they want. You don't like it? Don't use it.
that's all well and good until essential services are privatized because "free market good" and now you're dead because someone outbid you for the next available ambulance.
ERCOT can get away with charging $10k+ to a single customer during a "surge" in demand during a massive snowstorm... but "don't like it, don't use it"?
Clear lines in major markets have been consistently longer than precheck for the past year. On top of that, they're building a new, private facial recognition system. Clear is hot garbage.
Oh how surprising, a school of tough love post. These people own the world, and we all have to merely accept & live in it as they permit us. Very nice.
This kind of shit creates enormous class tension. These luxuries have become enormously harder to afford & make happen. Now, you go do some hard earned family time thing & a bunch of rich folks are constantly skipping in front of you? It's degrading & insulting in principle, and in practice it greatly diminished the time one gets to spend doing the activity.
It's unlikely many companies will suffer much for these policies. Indeed their bottom line will probably soar, as they de-democratize access and step away from a 1 person 1 vote operational pattern & walk further down that pay to play world.
But it's gross & disgusting & going to breed enormous class hatred or despair. It's an indignity. As for the "Don't like it? don't use it" tough love, well, the number of ski resorts not owned by Vail keeps shrinking. The number of Disney World alikes is pretty limited. We have to share this planet, and telling the not-wealthy to shut up & like what they get is a disastrous plan, is abnegation of humankind.
Ultra-wealthy & their dollar-based optimizations should not be the only thing with a hand on the wheel of this planet. (And it wouldn't kill the libertarian neofuedalists to pretend like they even a little bit of compassion buried down somewhere).
Is this viewed as a bad thing? I suppose the person who waits slightly more might be annoyed, but would they rather their ticket cost more to avoid these line skips?
I think part of the problem is that value of their ticket is degraded because of the longer wait times. For someone unable or unwilling to pay $$$ for skip-the-line tickets, it would perhaps be preferable for all tickets to cost $$, but remain "fair."
At the end of the day it's a simple supply-demand problem, and prices probably should have gone up anyway if lines are getting longer. It's just that businesses seem to find it more profitable to charge extra for premium tickets versus raising all ticket prices.
I could have paid for a fast pass, but the entry fee was already twice what every other theme park costs. I figured I'd get value for the huge amount of money I paid them for a standard ticket. But in reality the lines were ridiculous. It's clear that the Disney is incentivised to overfill the park and make the experience for most of their customers worse so they can upsell people on the fast pass.
There's also a massive irony that the happiest place on earth, the idealised version of Americana, being a two tiered system of haves and have nots.
I did took my kid to Disney Sea recently. They had some rides you could sign up for free on, and some that required money. But the dollar to yen is strong, so I guess it wasn’t that expensive. At Disney world we’ve always done genie+, which still doesn’t get us on some rides available only via virtual queue. Still, a ,I h better experience then waiting in lines at universal, who have a much more expensive fast fast system.
I think everyone knew about the Disney World and ski resorts doing this. If you pay an outrageous amount you can get a $70 burger with Mickey Mouse on it and skip all the lines. The airports however, THAT is shitty and should be borderline illegal.
I feel the same way about all the new-ish toll roads in Southern California. It feels like the government's answer to traffic congestion is to sell a solution to those who can afford it and ignore the fact that it worsens the problem for those who can't.
This stuff is great. I have Clear, TSA Pre, Global Entry and it's fantastic. You can lose the TTP privileges easily, though. Someone I know lost their GE and their sister couldn't get approved for GE soon after their uncle (who is not a US Citizen) overstayed his visa and was deported. Multiple million net worth, but no GE (which is fine since in SF Mobile Passport is faster at the moment). Even years afterwards, they never get past Conditional Approval. They have spotless personal records.
There are trade-offs here with the TTP and it makes perfect sense to have for people who can make those trade-offs. Ideally, most of life is like this with segmentation appropriate to the setting.
If it's a big thing for people to be about data privacy and stuff like that then don't do this stuff. It is perfectly reasonable for those of us who have differing views on this to trade up for convenience. Sure I need to go through a background check and then through this process and every time I change an address I need to explain myself. You don't have to. You don't want to. So don't. Just let me do it.
TSA Pre and GE are a pretty good deal if you travel a lot or even some. Probably not worth it for the flight once or twice a year. I travel less than I used to and I keep that but closed the window on a fairly expensive status upgrade from my airline last night. I can always do an upgrade a la carte but probably isn't worth it if I don't fly much.
TSA Pre is pretty spotty from what I remember. You still have to do 90% of what the basic line does, and if the scanner beeps at you for some reason, it's basically an on-the-spot downgrade to the normal line.
I'm not sure why this is news. Planes have had first, business and economy classes since as long as I can remember, and everyone knows the feeling of walking through business class to get to your economy seat. Why are we shocked that now other businesses are following that exact same model? A more premium experience at a more premium price is pretty much business 101.
> By removing the wealthiest or highest-paying customers from a line, there’s little incentive to advocate for better service for the rest.
Why would the business want to have a better service, the long lines is the means for the business to make people pay up the premium for cutting the lines. Ideally they would want even longer lines so more people pay the premium
Readit News
What's up with news media reporting these days?
But that's very far from how the actual world works. In reality, some people make very little while having little to start with, some make lots of money, even when they have little to start with, and others might make lots of money while also being born into lots of money.
To look at the system and ask "why are people complaining? It's the same price for everyone." ignores that is actually has a different cost for everyone, regardless of what the price might be. And that perspective is what pushes society in a direction where many are forced to pay with their time, while the few who found their way to large incomes/born with large bank accounts, can pay with money, essentially establishing a class tier.
Yes, it's just the free market, once again highlighting the blossoming wealth divide. There are few ways this doesn't end in rebellion.
Generally speaking (however, not absolutely true), wealthy individuals typically have a larger amount of disposable income to potentially allocate to this expense.
It is not unreasonable to conclude that such a service might be more likely to be used in practice by wealthier people.
But why even argue about this, the people that FLY are either wealthy or have a company that is paying for the flight.
> Of course, businesses have long segmented customers
The article's argument is that:
- This kind of segmentation is more widespread and automated than it was previously.
- It's appearing in areas it wasn't in before (e.g. Disney World).
- It's extending to public arenas like vaccine queues, access to public lands, and TSA queues.
This isn’t exactly news.
But the TSA thing is ridiculous, because it is mandated by the government and their responsibility is to make sure the service is good enough so there's no need to pay to avoid it.
Populace keep voting for the same set of kleptocrats, so they get what they vote for. Subsidizing stuff only rich people can afford (electric vehicles, house improvements), taxing income more than capital gains, tax code with loopholes like tax free "charity foundations", etc.
It's such a transparent abuse of government power that it makes my blood boil. Airports are funded through my tax dollars and TSA is as you said mandated by the government. There is limited space and resources in the airport so allowing a private company to take up some of that space and what's more turn a profit from it is peak Rent-seeking behavior and anyone in government who allowed this to happen should be run out of office.
Not really, or at least not in the same sense/degree as stuff like highways and roads. For example, my nearest major airport boasts:
> Airports are supported by the users of the airport and the fees, rents, or leases in place with airlines, tenants, and travelers. The bottom line for local taxpayers is “if you don’t use the airport, you’re not paying for the airport.”
-- https://www.portseattle.org/blog/who-pays-sea-airport
Many ski areas, while private bushiness often operate on public lands through long-term leases [1]. Some amount of public access (eg free uphill access to the lands) are often requirements as a part of the lease; I don't see why certain business terms shouldn't be able to be regulated in the interest of the general public.
[1] https://www.snow.com/info/colorado-forest-service-informatio...
Implying that there is a legitimate public interest in equal-cost access to rides at disneyland does not seem like a defensible position.
That's a bit like saying it is against the interest of the public to charge more prime orchestra seats than second tier balcony seats at the opera.
My position is that if Disney wants to charge ten trillion dollars to skip the line to ride a rollecoaster and one cent for a rollercoaster ride with a 40-year waiting period, that's none of my concern.
You’ll see TSA issues will vanish very fast.
The majority of voters have no incentive to make the TSA experience not suck. Their only stake is the self-satisfaction of increasing safety, however theatery it might be.
Voters after 9/11, on the other hand, were definitely security-minded, and the political response to that is how the TSA became the juggernaut that it is today.
Probably not an original idea on my part... but if the # kleptocrats (elected officials) is approximately constant, and the # of decisions made per kleptocrat goes up* (I can't actually say if this is true or not), as an individual the ability to direct change goes down it seems.
*or the number # of changes the aggregate lawmakers agree on goes down (i.e. more things left unaddressed)
I'm not arguing in any way to stop trying, but this is a systemic issue that won't be solved by voting. For a start, all of the options are kleptocrats.
that's all well and good until essential services are privatized because "free market good" and now you're dead because someone outbid you for the next available ambulance.
ERCOT can get away with charging $10k+ to a single customer during a "surge" in demand during a massive snowstorm... but "don't like it, don't use it"?
This kind of shit creates enormous class tension. These luxuries have become enormously harder to afford & make happen. Now, you go do some hard earned family time thing & a bunch of rich folks are constantly skipping in front of you? It's degrading & insulting in principle, and in practice it greatly diminished the time one gets to spend doing the activity.
It's unlikely many companies will suffer much for these policies. Indeed their bottom line will probably soar, as they de-democratize access and step away from a 1 person 1 vote operational pattern & walk further down that pay to play world.
But it's gross & disgusting & going to breed enormous class hatred or despair. It's an indignity. As for the "Don't like it? don't use it" tough love, well, the number of ski resorts not owned by Vail keeps shrinking. The number of Disney World alikes is pretty limited. We have to share this planet, and telling the not-wealthy to shut up & like what they get is a disastrous plan, is abnegation of humankind.
Ultra-wealthy & their dollar-based optimizations should not be the only thing with a hand on the wheel of this planet. (And it wouldn't kill the libertarian neofuedalists to pretend like they even a little bit of compassion buried down somewhere).
At the end of the day it's a simple supply-demand problem, and prices probably should have gone up anyway if lines are getting longer. It's just that businesses seem to find it more profitable to charge extra for premium tickets versus raising all ticket prices.
I could have paid for a fast pass, but the entry fee was already twice what every other theme park costs. I figured I'd get value for the huge amount of money I paid them for a standard ticket. But in reality the lines were ridiculous. It's clear that the Disney is incentivised to overfill the park and make the experience for most of their customers worse so they can upsell people on the fast pass.
There's also a massive irony that the happiest place on earth, the idealised version of Americana, being a two tiered system of haves and have nots.
There are trade-offs here with the TTP and it makes perfect sense to have for people who can make those trade-offs. Ideally, most of life is like this with segmentation appropriate to the setting.
If it's a big thing for people to be about data privacy and stuff like that then don't do this stuff. It is perfectly reasonable for those of us who have differing views on this to trade up for convenience. Sure I need to go through a background check and then through this process and every time I change an address I need to explain myself. You don't have to. You don't want to. So don't. Just let me do it.
Why would the business want to have a better service, the long lines is the means for the business to make people pay up the premium for cutting the lines. Ideally they would want even longer lines so more people pay the premium