Hacker News Reader

Opacity in price discovery as an objective in a commodity business is definitely an insightful framing of the issue.

Although the airline industry can be considered a commodity industry, the airline rewards miles industry is less so. What those miles can get you, can essentially change at any time if the airline says so.

View on HN

This is true. Though one thing I've considered is that the front-end clients to the miles themselves have a balance of usability and inefficiency. They don't want everyone getting maximum dollar for their points. I would maybe so that giving data API access to the points tilts the $USD market price of what a point is worth in the favor of the consumer.

At the very least, data obfuscation obfuscates the shenanigans of a constantly asymmetrically redefined value store.

TPG just highlights the shenanigans which puts pressure on airlines to change the value even more frequently. This in turn makes the shenanigans more apparent which might call for regulation.

This lawsuit is attempting to nip this process in the bud before stumbling on regulation. But, fundamentally, the relationship is asymmetric regardless of any data api access.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com