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Comment by antihero | Hacker News Reader

I don't think 75KG is a good standard weight. I mean, what about people who are muscular? I go to the gym and nobody I know would say I am obese (I am a little overweight) but because of muscles I'm around 109KG - I was 100KG and overweight, now I'm thinner and stronger but actually heavier.

So should people who are muscular be exempt? Do we do it based on height vs muscle or body fat percentage?

Unless we consider this, there's no way to do it fairly without punishing people for things either they can't control or would in other contexts be a good thing.

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It's not about rewarding you for being healthy, it's about charging people for the resources (eg, jet fuel) which they consume. Whether your weight is from fat or muscles, you are costing the airline more than the 75kg person next to you.

You're right about the main thrust of the article, however a significant part of the article did argue about health issues, obesity and taxing unhealthy living, which I think weakened his argument somewhat. So as a counter to that side of the piece, I think it's ok to mention the difference between muscle/fat etc.

> I don't think 75KG is a good standard weight.

I'm sure that can be discussed, focusing on this detracts from the article's main point.

> I mean, what about people who are muscular?

They're completely irrelevant, this is not about people being healthy versus not healthy, this is about weight being a direct driver of costs for airlines.

> So should people who are muscular be exempt?

No, why should they be>

> Do we do it based on height vs muscle or body fat percentage?

No, "we do it" based on weight.

> Unless we consider this, there's no way to do it fairly

How's it not fair to say "baseline of Xkg total (person + baggages), surcharge is Y/kg extra"?

Because all of these factors have some degree to which isn't under our control - by this logic a muscular woman pays less than a muscular guy, which is sexist.

Would you have disabled people pay a huge amount for their wheelchair? How is discriminating based on sex or height or build any different? Some people naturally gain muscles at a much faster rate than others. What makes it okay to discriminate against those people?

Having a society where people are not discriminated against based on factors they cannot control is far, far more important than private profit.

You're taking a slippery slope from "out of control to some degree" to "a society where people are discriminated based on things they cannot control (at all)". In the vast majority of cases, obesity can be controlled by a healthy lifestyle.

Right now, it's unfair to the skinnier among us, where the prices for overweight luggage and overweight pax do not compare at all. People search all kinds of justification why being obese is ok and needs to receive special attention. I do not argue with that.

But: please explain to me why I should pay E100 for 3kg overweight, while the obese person on the seat next to me pays nothing for a 40kg weight difference. How is that fair?

Regarding what you call "discrimination":

It's really really easy to exempt the obvious (wheelchair etc.) from the bill. No one is asking to become inhumane or discriminate. Where did you get that idea from? This is not about private profit but about the conceived asymmetry in the pricing structure.

Trying to understand how to factor in "fairness" here.

The fact is that irrespective of body content (ie fat or muscle), what counts for the economics of the airline is the total weight. Heavier the passengers and the luggage, more fuel is burnt, and the costs correspondingly go up.

I agree with you, however, that the 75 kg choice is pretty arbitrary. I wonder, though, if tickets online can be initially issued at price ex "weight-rate". Everyone would then stand with their luggage on the scales, and pay $k for every kilo (without any limit, per se). To me, that seems more "fair" without setting arbitrary limits that might carry discriminatory or racist overtones.

But then, many people are on medication that causes huge weight gain, or are naturally built bigger, or are taller, or are male. We shouldn't support discrimination in order to detect profit, and something like "how much someone weighs" is far too simplistic to take into account the factors that would contribute to it being a horrendously unfair system.

If everybody had their own little plane to fly, the overweight person would end up paying more for the same trip because of the higher fuel cost. That person is simply more expensive to transport.

Now, you can claim that we shouldn't expose people to the humiliation of being weighed at the airport and I agree with that and thus, it might just be best to divide the added cost among the passengers like we do today.

But apart from that, the fairness argument seems deeply flawed to me. I guess that I am quite the capitalist (even though I'm from Scandinavia) but it doesn't seem fair to me to force the other passengers to share that persons extra cost.

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