An observation on MetroCards, after a $1 fee (2013) | Hacker News Reader

An observation on MetroCards, after a $1 fee (2013)

secondavenuesagas.com

44 pointsnojito88 comments

The same observations are made on container deposits and recycling rates in the USA.

There are 10 states in the United States with container deposit legislation.

The US overall container recycling rate is ~ 33%, while states with a $0.05 container deposit laws have a ~70% average rate of container recycling.

Michigan is over 90% as its deposit is $0.10.

So why don’t more states have “bottle bills?” Because Coke, Pepsi, and the beverage industry oppose it

https://www.industryweek.com/the-economy/regulations/article...

Growing up in a state with container deposits (ME) I'm shocked that it's not a nationwide program. I guess that's why the bottles always list states where it's redeemable.

I wonder how the lobbying didn't prevent this in the ten states.

Government that works.

Do those recycling numbers take into account the number of people who don't pay a deposit, but get a deposit back? IE people buying sodas in Ohio and then taking them to Michigan to redeem a deposit?

The containers are marked with a Michigan deposit logo, assuming anybody looks.

Yes - when a person buys a bottle in Michigan, 10 cents is added to the cost. When they return the bottle to Michigan, 10 cents is given to them. However, when a person buys a bottle in Ohio, 0 cents is added to the cost. And they can't return the bottle anywhere in Ohio for any money. However, they can return the bottle in Michigan for 10 cents, even though they never paid the deposit in the first place.

So in that sense, naively doing (bottles returned)/(bottles sold) to determine the recycling rate of a state is wrong, because people will return bottles that were never sold in the state to begin with. So it would literally be possible to have a >100% recycling rate which doesn't make any sense.

~70% for a $0.05 is pretty good. In Germany, it's around €0.40, and IIRC, has a 90% recycle rate.

I guess just like Germany, poor people also collect the bottles for the $0.05?

There was a program where a city gave people money in exchange for cigarette butts. Obviously the poor people collected the butts.

Typically homeless people would collect them in places where returning the bottles was impractical. Trains stations are a good example. I remember many people would also leave the bottles on top of the bin rather than tossing them inside, to make it easier for them.

I lived a few years in Germany about 10yrs ago, and took a lot of trains (ICE). I miss those nice thick bottles. Much better than the flimsy ones we have in the UK and the whole redeeming of the bottles while doing your shopping was kind of fun.

> In Germany, it's around €0.40

I thought the deposit on single-use bottles/cans is (exactly) EUR 0.25, with significantly lower deposits for reusable bottles.

Interestingly, Switzerland has a high recycling rate for PET despite not having any deposit.

Switzerland is also the only country I’ve visited where everyone knew what PET is and could identify it from 20 paces. I remember going to a movie theatre and naively wondering if the dedicated PET bins had something to do with dogs.

Those bins are also exclusively for PET bottles, no other PET.

When I lived in Zurich for a few months the only trash bags that were legal to use cost around $3 PER BAG. Recycling on the other hand is free.

I don't know if that is throughout Switzerland but I reckon that had something to do with it.

EDIT: That was a long time ago. I checked online and a 17 liter (about 4 gallon) trash bag now costs 10.50CHF (USD 11.65) per bag.

The price you're mentioning is the price for a roll of 10.

https://www.coop.ch/en/household-pet/household-kitchen/waste...

Switzerland also demand you used biologically ropes when tying your old paper together. If not, they won't take it with them. Interesting country.

How often is the consumer who fronts the nickel the person redeeming the nickel? I suspect the nickels are, in aggregate, a regressive tax. I have no data, however, to back that claim.

What makes you think that? In states with the nickel redemption, I’ve often seen homeless people collecting cans and bottles to return. This makes me suspect the average redeemer has less money than the average fronter.

I would be willing to bet that the 99% pays at least 99% of those nickels and the 1% pays at most 1% of them.

I would consider those nickels regressive if most of them come from the lower half of economic distribution even if they all end up in the hands of the homeless.

But is a regressive tax bad if it is taxing something bad? (i.e. sugary drinks)

Diet drinks, unsweetened ice tea etc all pay the tax.

All just about as unhealthy.

As a native Californian, I’ve never redeemed a CRV in my life, and I’m not sure anybody I know does, either. The prospect of not putting recycling in the recycling bin so I can have another errand in my life is remarkably unappealing, especially given that I’d make less than a dollar a month for doing so.

There’s a certain amount of people rummaging through the bins on trash night, but only in urban areas, and they can’t be that thorough. I imagine that most of our recycling rate comes from ubiquitous curbside recycling programs, and the CRV goes to the waste management companies, who just keep it as profit.

I basically never redeem deposits either. My town recycling center, which I go to a few times a year basically to dump all my Amazon cardboard, has a place you can leave deposit containers for a local animal shelter so I accumulate and take it in along with the cardboard.

> the CRV goes to the waste management companies, who just keep it as profit.

It's part of the negotiation with the municipality on the collection contract. If you want to call it offsetting costs or profit, money is fungible; if CRV was eliminated, billing for collection would go up in the next contract.

I live in NY(C) which has container deposits. I don't personally know anyone that bothers trying to redeem the container deposit. I personally don't because it's really not worth my time at $0.05 per container. Particularly when I don't consume meaningful amounts of cans/bottles.

Technically speaking, any retailer that sells containers is also required to redeem them. In practice consumers don't really bother since no one really wants to wait in the (frequently long) customer service line to talk to people to redeem containers. Some larger retailers have dedicated machines, but I still don't really bother since those machines aren't very convenient to get to for me.

There's an entire "industry" where people pick containers out of recycling bins/trash/building-waste/building-recycling and then redeem it which creates interesting tensions with funding the NYC recycling program [0].

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/21/nyregion/new-york-city-fi...

> Michigan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bottle_Deposit

There are weird externalities though.

Specifically homeless people. They all become deposit bottle entrepreneurs. They will often go places they probably shouldn't go and rifle through people's dumpsters and trash cans.

I'm not sure what to think.

When I lived in SF, people would break into our condo's private area just to rifle through the trash and recycling.

It came in for my state only a few years back. We returned ours a few times, but the novelty quickly wears off and it is really not worth the time. Now I just leave them sorted in a cardboard box out on the curb on our recycling collection day and they vanish pretty quickly due to the efforts of said deposit bottle entrepreneurs.

If you want to make dealing with the cans and bottles someone else's problem but also avoid encouraging the curbside "entrepreneurs" check to see if any local youth organizations do can drives in your area.

My kid's marching band program (in Oregon) collects over $10,000 a year from beverage deposits. It provides about 15% of their total funding for the year. They collect them once a month and will even pick them up from you if driving them to the school is inconvenient. There are dozens of organizations in our area doing the same thing.

What's wrong with employing curbside "enterpreneurs"? Would you be happier if they were begging on the streets, stealing, went hungry.. Over here, some enterprising souls tend to "acquire" (often steal) copper cabling, burn the insulation (regularly poisoning the neighborhood) and sell the remaining copper. I don't see why you would mind people collecting discarded bottles to return for recycling.

On another point, I don't think people go homeless in pursuit of bottle enterprises.

There's probably bigger issues to solve there, like the actual poverty that leads people to digging through trash to find can-shaped dimes? People aren't doing that for fun

Have the deposit system, _and_ force Coke + Pepsi to house the homeless! Problem solved (half-joking)

California has container deposits but as a consumer they’re impossible to get refunded. So while in Germany and Norway you’d take your bottles and cans back to the supermarket to return for credit, in CA we put them in the recycling bin and homeless folks come along and empty your recycling bins on bin night to collect any bottles and cans which they then sell to a middleman with a truck who sells them back to the one deposit return location in the city that will accept them.

Why do you say impossible? I can take them to my local recycling center which is open 9-5 every day of the year except Christmas, New Years Day and Thanksgiving, and they will gladly pay me back the deposit.

Impossible is too strong a word, but it's not very practical and at 5c a container not worthwhile to make a special trip to the single recycling centre in SF. Compare to Germany/Norway where the deposit is ~25c a container and you can just take them back to the supermarket.

Apparently retailers are obligated to refund CRV in CA but they just ignore the regulation: https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2021/05/03/ca-lawmaker-pro...

This is something that’s much easier in the suburbs - if I wanted to, I could stash three giant trash bags in my garage, eventually toss them in my minivan and drive the 5 miles to the recycling center, which is about the same as my ordinary commute. I can imagine that that’s basically impossible to do if you live in SF.

The London Underground's Oyster (more like OMNY than MetroCard) has a refundable deposit. So in principle you could give back your Oyster and get the deposit. Of course it's not very much money and most people might need an Oyster again sooner or later so this is rarely taken up, but it discourages people from throwing them away.

Because people from far away are less likely to imagine ever needing an Oyster again, yet might still need one right now (especially before contactless payment cards would work just as well for most short term visitors) there was a scheme where you could just "donate" your card to charity at places like airports, I don't know if it still exists.

Because Oyster is variable fare even in the simplest scenarios (a trip from Stockwell to Brixton for example, versus a train going from central London out to Amersham at the far end of the line are different prices, before any consideration about season tickets, time of day etc.) it is possible to have a card that's valid to enter the system (it has enough money that you could make some trip) but then make a trip it can't pay for. In this case the balance on the card falls below zero on exit, to use it again you'll need to first pay the excess and enough for a ride somewhere. So you'd expect to see some number of cards discarded in this state, since they are in some sense less than worthless. But the inconvenience of needing a new card seems to out-weigh that.

This is the way almost all RFID systems I have used work, including Tokyo, Taipei, Singapore, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Bangkok, Hangzhou, and the SF bay area.

The RFID cards, however, are far more durable than the flimsy MetroCards that NYC uses.

I keep all the cards from cities I visit though, since more often than not I end up passing through the city again within a few years. Some cities' cards unfortunately expire and eat all your balance, while others keep them for 10+ years.

It's really nice though to just land at an airport and be on your way in minutes without fumbling and getting in line.

On another hand I kind of miss the subway tokens that Boston used to use a long time ago. One of the advantages of tokens is that they are very much like NFTs in that if you have a token, it is a promise of a ride, any time, now or in the future. So you could also use them as an investment vehicle by buying 1000 of them, and the transit agency gets 1000 * (fare price) in liquid cash upfront that they can use to scale their infrastructure and make upgrades, while you can re-sell those tokens at a profit 4 years later. Or if you were arriving in Boston for college, you could buy enough transit ride tokens for 4 years upfront, if you were smart. Unfortunately with the RFID systems they don't usually pay dividends or interest on the balance on the card.

I don't (as a rule) fly, so I certainly haven't visited as many far away cities as you. However, don't you find that increasingly contactless payment just works anyway?

Certainly all Oyster terminals have accepted my Android phone for some time

[If you use it constantly I believe the cheapest options still involve paying up front for an Oyster - but visiting once a week for work, or a few days on holiday the system tracks where you went, then works out after the fact what the cheapest way to do what you did would have been, and charges any contactless payment system accordingly]

> However, don't you find that increasingly contactless payment just works anyway?

Aside from the (bigger) reason that they aren’t accepted in all stations yet, one reason I haven’t switched in NYC is I’m nervous about my phone running out of battery.

Yes this. It's much more reliable to just put the RFID card inside my phone case. I can continue to swipe into transit "with my phone" even if the battery is dead.

Also I always have to disable NFC on my phone because I have 2 phones and if they have NFC enabled they're always trying to talk to each other in my pocket and vibrating my crotch all day from it. Really bad UX.

The iOS wallet implementation allows access to certain cards long after the phone is “dead” https://support.apple.com/guide/security/express-cards-with-...

I really like Bangkok's integrations where the card you use for the BTS also works with some food courts, so it's an extra incentive to store it (you get to leave the airport and grab a meal without even having to go to an ATM!)

Although having the BTS, MTR, and SkyTrain managed differently means having to store 3 thick cards plus extra cards for some food courts just for a single city.

Do the subways in Chinese cities have a system where you can just load the cards onto your phone? Hmm, now that I think about it not many Chinese phones have NFC.

NFC isn't common in China. QR codes rule everything and are the standard way to do contactless payments in China. There are recently some cities e.g. Guangzhou that are implementing Wechat QR code scan entry to metros as an option. They claim to have it down to 0.2 seconds which if true is impressive. I haven't tried it. I find the physical cards easier since you don't have to fumble with the phone's UI, they aren't dependent on batteries, and you can shove them in your phone case and forget about them.

I've never used a QR code based system, but it seems to me like it could be the best of both worlds.

> I find the physical cards easier since you don't have to fumble with the phone's UI, they aren't dependent on batteries, and you can shove them in your phone case and forget about them.

So... print out the QR code and shove it in your phone case and forget about it?

And if you forget / lose / break the print-out, but still have your phone, you're good to go.

> So... print out the QR code and shove it in your phone case and forget about it?

That won't work. WeChat and AliPay QR codes change every minute for security, if you are paying from an account with a QR code.

You can pay to a statically printed QR code by scanning it with your camera (streetside food sellers do this), but you cannot pay from a static code.

That's too bad... Are they generated by a central server or are they based on a fixed seed, like OTP codes?

I'm wondering whether this could be implemented on some kind of low-powered e-ink device like some OTP tokens.

I'm pretty sure it's a weird hybrid of a mostly centralized system and some on-device for the case where the user has momentary reception loss but the merchant still has a solid internet connection. I'm pretty sure you can't be without reception for too long, it's not like an OTP key.

The mobile app is very opaque and not decompiler-friendly, so I can't say with 100% certainty what it is.

As far as a low-powered electronic device I think that's exactly what an RFID card is, and they work very well. The only real downside is lack of inter-city recognition of RFID systems, but I suppose the reality is most people only travel frequently between a consistent set of 1-3 cities and not usually more than that. My RFID "brick" of 20+ cards is quite the exception, and I'm more of a public transit enthusiast than most people, who usually just take taxis/rideshares when they travel to unfamiliar cities.

Typically how these work is that the client caches some small number (i.e. 5-10) offline tokens for use when you have no connectivity. They also expire after 24 hours.

The same in Japan, the Tokyo subway is actually run by several network operators, so sometimes when you change trains you have to exit one operator's station area and enter another one, and buying a different ticket in between. So the NFC cards (and here they have several providers as well) are very convenient, since all the network operators support all the cards. Also nicely, all the drinks machines I've encountered in Japan also support these cards. As well as all the arcade venues with their claw machines.

Can you actually exit the system without scanning the card again?

It depends on the system.

Most Asian metro systems charge a fine-grained per-distance fare, so they require scanning on exit.

Boston (and NYC I think?) is per-ride except for a couple stations that charge a surcharge to exit, so exiting doesn't require scanning except at those couple of stations.

Boston eliminated the last of its subway exit fares years ago. (The system is famous for the song Charlie on the MTA, about a man trapped on the train due to an increase in the exit fare.)

There are a couple of bus routes that require payment on exit. However, it's not a variable fare. It just works that way because the configuration at Harvard station requires entry on the left side side (without the farebox) and exiting curbside. So people pay as they leave, instead of when they board.

“The RFID cards, however, are far more durable than the flimsy MetroCards that NYC uses.”

Absolutely, when I lived in Chicago I had their RFID card which was relatively durable. And you could refill the balance online iirc. I moved to NYC in 2007 and eventually got used to the flimsy metrocards, always hoping that they’d get it together and get a contactless system in place.

Well, it finally happened in NYC. I took the subway for the first time since the pandemic started not too long ago and all of the transit in the city has the new Omny card system. It just uses my default Apple Pay card and that’s it. No passcode, faceid, etc. I just waved my phone in front of it, my card gets charged, and the turnstile is open.

And it works on buses too! Finally no more having to run to a subway station to find a metrocard machine to refill my balance when I want to take the bus.

Another pro of RFID is that phones can theoretically work. They just enabled iPhone support for Clipper here in the Bay Area.

Is it using RFID or did they have to install NFC payment terminals at the turnstiles? My understanding (I haven't used it) is that for New York's OMNY system, they installed NFC hardware that Apple Pay knows not to ask for authentication with. (So that the Express Card functionality will work). But perhaps I am mistaken.

They're RFID readers, you can set any card as "Express Pay" in Apple Pay and it doesn't require auth. I have my Ventra Card in Chicago as my "Express transit" card and it will still work even when the phone is off or dead.

One of the problems with a lot of RFID systems (or even generally non-token systems) that you need to get from a machine is that now, rather than sliding a couple dollar bills under a glass and getting a token in return, now you have confused tourists, often tired from travel, fumbling with unfamiliar machines with lousy UIs.

You see it too at busy tourist areas of a city.

In my experience, pretty much no one streamlines the experience of buying transportation tickets for people who aren't familiar with the system and may not speak the language.

I think it depends on location. In Paris, a machine usually is quicker, especially for non-French-speaking people.

Tellers mostly don't speak English and sometimes the intercom system barely works so even a French-speaking person will have a hard time communicating.

On the machine, a ticket to / from the airport is one of the first choices available, after language selection.

Of course, if your final destination isn't inside Paris proper, you may have harder time and may need to consult a map since fares aren't fixed.

I don't remember Paris as being a particular offender and I've taken the Metro around Paris quite a bit. Probably doesn't hurt that I can at least read French a bit. (I would characterize my French as putrid but I was there with a friend who doesn't know it at all and it does make a difference in general.)

I don't think language is the issue, but many of the machines have terrible UI design even if you select English or your native language.

In SF you have to insert your Clipper card TWICE, and listen to 9600 baud modem beep-booping in-between, and many stations don't even have recharge machines, and you have to go Walgreens (WTF) to get a transit card.

In China international credit cards aren't even accepted by the machines. In general tourists and business travellers are stuck dealing with cash while locals use mobile payments, which require a local SIM card and local bank account to use. (Now visitors can legally get these with just their passport, after which they can enjoy all the benefits of the Chinese internet ecosystem, but it's time consuming getting in line for them, it's almost impossible for people who don't speak the local language, and not all bank tellers actually know how to input a passport number instead of a national ID number into their system.)

I imagine similar things happen with other countries that implement their own payment systems -- tourists get left out.

Most of them have terrible UX for tourists.

It really makes me so sad. My dad is too stubborn to use an app when he travels to my city, so he'd be just as likely to just take a cab instead of public transport, paying 10x extra because their ticket system is unwelcoming to visitors.

In what way are Metrocards flimsy?

After living in NYC for six years, it was actually nice to not have a full-sized, extra card just for transit but one that was super slim, flexible and barely takes up any room in a wallet.

Same question. I’m a lifelong NYer, and a metro card has never failed in me in use or in structural integrity. I tend to replace them every five years or so for eventually /losing/ them, but that’s it. What more could you ask for?

I kind of miss the arbitrage that used to come when the price of subway tokens would go up. People would inevitably go in and buy hundreds of dollars in tokens and then hoard them for years. You can in theory do the same thing with “forever” stamps from USPS.

In practice, you don't even need to give the Oyster card back to collect the deposit.

What does that mean? You can just go to some sort of service desk and ask for your deposit back without presenting anything?

Yes, using a machine like this one [0] you just need to present your card to the contactless terminal and you'll be able to get £5 back in cash.

[0]: https://www.google.com/search?q=oyster+card+machine&tbm=isch...

Fares are a boondoggle that I won't be surprised to see eliminated by major cities in the next decades. LA metro is planning on moving to a fareless system. As it stands fares only cover a tiny portion of the operating budget, and most riders on public transit live below the poverty line in LA county at least so the fare weighs a lot more heavily than you might expect.

> fares only cover a tiny portion of the operating budget

This varies a lot by city and transit system. For example NYC subway + bus + train fares under the MTA umbrella amounted to $6 billion in 2019, which accounted for 38% of the total system budget [1]. The SF Bay Area's BART is another system that's largely fare-funded, with $485 million in fare revenue covering 52% of the 2019 budget [2]. It's definitely possible to eliminate these, but you'd need substantially more dedicated tax revenue.

[1] https://new.mta.info/budget/MTA-operating-budget-basics

[2] https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/Fiscal%20Year%... (p. 11)

Wow, I didn't realize these major systems were still so reliant on the farebox revenue. I thought that was what ultimately killed the private subway operators in NYC: a lack of subsidies or any other revenue for private companies beyond what they could make from the farebox. It seems like funding transit on dedicated tax revenue is the way to go. LA metro is building more transit projects than any agency in the country by far, and they are emerging from the pandemic with a 1.4 billion dollar larger budget than what they had before the pandemic in 2019. NYC subway can barely do regular maintenance, on the other hand.

Sales taxes just make sense for funding infrastructure like transit, considering we all benefit from transit even if we don't personally use it. Transit alleviates congestion, improves air quality, and chances are if you live in a city, you probably rely on someone in your day to day life who themselves relies on transit to get around. It doesn't make sense to force the low paid worker to pay for the bulk of transit when their high paid bosses depend on them coming to work reliably on transit.

Reusing an electronic payment allows your trips to he connected and used to track you. There was nothing wrong with tokens and this fee is a huge increase for people who don't want to be tracked. RFID would make it even more difficult to avoid the eye of sauron.

There are single-use paper metrocards that come out of the machines. They haven't used tokens for many years.

It's a real bummer, as those of us who don't want our trips tracked/correlated now incur an extra $1 charge every single trip.

You could maintain a small collection of cards, perhaps half a dozen, which you cycle through. Just keep them in a bowl by the door and grab one at random on the way out?

I no longer live in nyc, so this probably isn't practicable.

You would have to also be sure to only load those cards from cash, which is an additional hassle.

Anyone who cares about this sort of stuff already pays for most things in cash anyway. It's cards that are the additional hassle, really.

Related: Never hit the "$19" button when getting a new MetroCard -- they are actively trying to cheat you with that, as it will leave you with just $0.05 short of a fare leftover on a card.

https://www.6sqft.com/19-05-is-the-perfect-amount-to-load-on...

The article's number of $19.05 is likely out of date since the last fare increase though.

And yes, the MTA is cheaper for hackers with an engineering degree and more expensive for unskilled laborers. SMH.

They got rid of the bonus for preloading larger amounts in 2019, which simplifies the math. Now any multiple of $2.75 is fine. For example, adding $22 to an existing card will get you 8 rides ($23 if you're getting a new card).

Got it. But having the buttons still say "$19" sounds pretty damn dishonest and manipulative to me.

The buttons should really say "5 rides ($X.YZ)", "10 rides ($X.YZ)" or whatever and compute the exact amounts for the user.

Can you tell me how much does it cost in US to have unlimited rides for month by MetroCard?

I'm quite shocked that you do not(??) have flat feet. In my country it is 35$ per month for unlimited rides on metro, buses and trams.

There are daily/monthly plans in most US cities that you can add to your card, and if you do, it won't charge you per entry. For NYC it's $33 for 7 days or $127 for 30 days.

The only people it really makes sense for are people who use it every single business day for commutes plus some more, and tourists who will use it several times in a single day. For people who don't use the system consistently every day it doesn't really make sense. In the case of NYC, 42 rides a month (== round trip every business day) still doesn't make sense to get a monthly pass, you need to also use it on the weekends for some more stuff in order for it to make sense.

So you are telling me that people do not travel 5x(10x) per week to work, and THEN in weekends by metro/buses? And its minority?

I think with actual NYC residents, yes, it makes perfect sense.

The reality is the majority of people working in NYC don't live in NYC due to housing costs, so they won't need or even have access to the subway on weekends, they'll be in NJ or Long Island or somewhere else where subway coverage is sparse or non-existent, and other transit systems in those places don't take the MTA cards.

And in terms of public transit usage, NYC is probably the highest in the US. I've lived in Boston and now near San Francisco.

In my 10 years of living in the Boston area as a student, I never found a monthly pass useful, even when I was able to get a student pass for half price the math did not make it worth the cost. Being a student was special though because I was able to walk to 80% of the places I needed to go, and I had a bike which was pretty much 100% of my transportation during the summer months, and Boston is far more bike friendly than NYC in my opinion (modulo weather).

In the SF bay area public transit coverage is so sparse it doesn't make sense to get a monthly pass either. Just yesterday I swiped into a BART station, then promptly swiped out and took an Uber from that BART station to my destination BART station because the wait time was 27 minutes. And on several occasions I've been in trains that have hit pedestrians and cars or delayed by engine failures of sorts and gotten delayed for 90+ minutes so I've had to get off and get an Uber.

Commuter rail passes make sense in Boston. I haven't gone into Boston regularly from the exurbs for ages. But when I was sometimes commuting there was a monthly pass and also a "10-pack" or whatever it was for irregular commuters like me.

But, yeah, you generally have to be a very frequent transit user to benefit from passes.

The people who run public transport in the US realized 10 or 20 years ago that you don't have to give discounts to people who need to take the train or bus to work every day. If anything, you should charge them more because they have no choice.

Many people get these subsidized.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com