Within my rural, southern public school system,I was clearly marked out in the southern caste system as "white trash" in school because I wore $15 canvas sneakers rather than $60 name-brand shoes, jeans and t-shirt rather than polo shirt and khakis, etc.
In the adult world, the caste system still exists in a rather potent form: dating. If you are a man who is marked out in some way as earning less, you will get significantly less attention from women in general. The OKCupid data has confirmed this effect for men over the age of 23, and it is a very potent one.
Sure it's still not great, as if you can't afford to buy the cool clothes then you're being judged none-the-less - but I think it's a lot less bad to be judged as not cool than as "white trash", and at least in my situation it was possible to be understanding ("his parents don't have much money, so I'm not going to mock him for having cheap shoes").
I wonder which of our experiences is more common. I hope mine - but I have no idea.
1. True segregation where the rich go to a separate school all-together / have separate planes, etc.
2. Everyone wears the same lowest-common denominator clothes / travel in the same travel class?
Each of these alternatives is economically inefficient, and the poor suffer more as a result as their fares cease to be subsidised by the rich.
I'd rather fly $500 return to Tokyo, because some rich guy upfront is paying $4000 for a flat bed, than pay $2000 because some left-wing loon demands everyone has the same class of travel.
NB: I'm 40 and didn't have these issues when I was younger/fitter/elasticker.
I pay $10k+ for a flat bed to Asia because I find that I can be off the plane and ready for a meeting the next business day, with no need to take an extra day or two on either end. Little seats that don't recline all the way are a recipe for back pain, neck pain, or just general low-grade misery, as if air travel isn't annoying enough. It's not really about "rich" (although I'm glad I have the option) but more about productivity and not losing time. The same thing happened with Saturday stay-overs on round trips (I don't know if they still do this) or one-way tickets being as or more expensive than round trips, because business customers often prefer to be home on weekends.
All that said, I generally book business and upgrade myself to first, so I'm not feeling the full $10-15k pressure myself. Also, I only book international first on vacations, when it's miles/points anyway, for which the spendy fares help out a lot.
Plus, I really don't want to fight with 500 people over two toilets. That gets more important when you get old. :-)
Even the quoted $15 (all JPKab could afford) is more than enough to meet Nike's manufacturing cost, for example, so under the suggested scheme he could wear the same clothes others do; and if Nike could charge different people different amounts, it would prefer to also receive the $15 than not receive it. (If it wouldn't impact its ability to charge its normal prices.)
In practice every company strives for price discrimination, by making something for every price point without hurting the higher ones.
This isn't really a caste system, it's just human nature. Women are generally attracted to men that have ambition and a good job is a good indicator of this.
Would you consider ugliness a caste system as well? Women that are less attractive will get less attention (and dates) on and offline.
One interesting experience WRT 1st class trains is unlike the authors strange ideas about sitting on spikes in a bus, the primary difference between steerage and 1st class on Amtrak trains was privacy. My own bathroom, my own closed cabin, etc. Same food as everyone else (although it was "free" with the ticket price). Same view out the window, we didn't get there any sooner than anyone else...
Oh and the 1st class only lounge in the Chicago station has to be seen to be believed. That alone might be worth the ticket price. Even impatient me, in luxurious enough surroundings, didn't mind waiting an extra hour or so. Its not like any airport waiting room I've ever seen.
People view long distance travel differently than their daily commute when it comes to economic segregation. I imagine there would be an uproar in NYC if the MTA talked about a plan to create a first class car on the subway however no one bats an eyelash about Amtrak.
However, I bet you could find a price point where people wouldn't complain if you added a first class car to the London Underground or NYC subway system. I think there's a psychological effect in play where if it's a price that you could pay if you cut into your budget then it stings but if it's a price that seems ludicrous to you then you don't mind as much. I personally would feel more ok with a first class car if it was $100/trip vs. $10 (regular ride is $2.25).
$100/trip for a subway ride? Preposterous, and the economic system is somehow broken that such an income disparity exists.
$10/trip? Eh, if I cut out the Starbucks latte, I could do that. But, I really prefer flavor coffee to sumptuous subway seating.
I guess I'm really a socialist at heart.
1st class trains on the London Underground would be hugely unpopular because deliberately running overcrowded services below maximum capacity to skim a bit more money off the top is seldom popular, especially when no commuter is naive enough to believe they'll be compensated for the extra wait and crush with reduced fares.
This is a fairly edge case, that only really occurs on US domestic flights. The majority of the world's frequent-flyer programmes do not give space-available upgrades in the way that say American or United do domestically.
The vast majority of those travelling in premium cabins (or their employers) paid cash for their ticket.
You don't have enough trains in your subway? That's strange. It's supposed to be rapid transit isn't it?
[1]: He has to refer to the Tube, as National Rail already has classes not unlike as described. :P
on some lines you even get a train entering the platform while the previous train is still pulling out!
I don't think we want the ad guys determining the pricing structure for airlines. Anyway, the reason for the wacky pricing on airfares is not some sort of implicit agreement to be socialistic about it. It's because the fixed costs associated with the flight are so high. It costs virtually nothing to add another person to the flight. Airline fares are a dance between filling up the flight while maximizing the average fare per seat. Price too high and you fly with empty seats. Price to low and you fill up but leave money on the table.
His point was that if the airline pricing system is not so bad (and I'm not agreeing with that), then having it apply to other high fixed cost, low marginal cost things--like his daughter's bus--might also not be so bad.
Of course, the example of his daughter's bus makes me wonder if the whole thing isn't tongue in cheek and I'm not getting it because I'm not British.
Of all the things that struck me about "The world", the number one thing was the "class system" that the airlines tried to impose. At every check-in counter there was a little sign saying economy on the right, business on the left. For the four flights I waited for an eventually got on, I heard the airline announce on the PA, at least 5 times each "Economy stay on the right".
I never did see a single person line up and get on from the "left" line.
It occurred to me, the point of separating the lines was not so that the business passengers would have a faster/better experience, it was merely used to remind the rest of us exactly where we sit on the class ladder: The Bottom.
About all I can say to this is "fly more often" or "fly on more airlines".
United, for example, has been restructuring their boarding process for a while, precisely to try to maintain some semblance of order -- too many people crowding the gate area before their group is called, trying to sneak on to the plane early to get access to overhead bins, etc.
(and typically, a separate-lane process is intended to avoid that -- most US-based airlines have basically given up on the idea that they can get an orderly boarding process by assigning groups based on row number, and have switched over to using the multi-lane system)
No one is better at this than the travel industry. Remember that story about a travel website showing higher prices to people with Apple User-Agents? Yup.
If a restaurant wants to charge $1,000 for a premium cheeseburger on the off chance some rich person wants to distinguish himself, well, that's weird, but that's capitalism.
But if this "software" were to read everyone's mind and calculate exactly how much they are willing to pay for any good at any time, consumers will get fleeced.
Riiiight. And what on earth is going to convince the wealthy folks to type "$100" into the system instead of "$3"?
> How can you avoid people gaming the system? The price each parent pays could theoretically be kept confidential, but in reality would not remain so.
What does that even mean?
A sealed bid auction is all fun and games until participants voluntarily disclose their bids to other participants.
The London underground did as well, but ended them in 1940 during/because of the war [2]
In Paris, it seems that demand fell to non-sustainable levels. This was after enforcement stopped though, which seems like it could be a rather classic example of the free-rider problem!
1: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1991-05-12/travel/9102110...
2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_O_and_P_Stoc...
I'll offer another, more pessimistic perspective. He assumes that the users paying more will get extra service, while service level for the rest will stay the same. But, it's almost never the case. In practice, the level of service for regular price will just go down, and service providers will start to charge even for something that was free, or available at lower cost before this service differentiation started.
By the way, Joel Spolsky has a very good explanation of the mechanisms behind airplane fares, including why you might not want to go this way: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...
