The wealthy are cutting the line at the airport, Disney World and ski resorts | Hacker News Reader

The wealthy are cutting the line at the airport, Disney World and ski resorts

cnn.com

50 pointsrntn117 comments

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.

What's up with news media reporting these days?

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.

Or it is people that are employed where traveling a lot is a requirement. And most likely a company would pay for this upgrade.

But why even argue about this, the people that FLY are either wealthy or have a company that is paying for the flight.

How much business travel directs to disneyland and ski resorts annually?

Whether the person is individually wealthy or connected to a profitable company what is the effective difference? The person is experiencing the benefits of wealth; the person is wealthy. It is not a permanent state and wealth/luck change.

... or neither

The article agrees:

> 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.

Disney introduced Fastpass during the Clinton presidency.

This isn’t exactly news.

Fastpass didn't cost money till they rebranded it DisneyGenie+ in the last couple years. It was just a way to get a reservation for a ride that anyone could do.

No, they're charging money openly for it now. It's long been possible to skip ahead of the queues at Disney by paying for it, it was just hidden for most people, since it required that you booked expensive suites at their on-property hotels. If you did that, you could magically get a lot more fast passes than everyone else.

You get one hour early access if you book at a Disney property. There's VIP tours for $500/hr min 6 hours that lets you cut all lines.

My recollection is that in the past, staying on property on the premium floors got you access to the club room and 3 or 4 fast passes per day.

Do you mean Club 33? Because I doubt that.

At the resorts e.g. The Polynesian or Grand Floridian, like most mid-rangeish hotels, there’s a “club room” lounge area that has an assortment of complementary drinks, (beer?), (breakfast?), snacks and hors d’oeuvres

> and 3 or 4 fast passes per day.

Yes, this is how it worked.

Remember that the fastpass system was completely opaque, you put in your tickets in the fastpass machine, and it gave you a fastpass ticket and timeslot. Everyone with normal tickets were told they could only have one fastpass at a time, so if you put your ticket in again, or into another fastpass machine, you'd get denied.

But they knew the ticket numbers of people staying in the right rooms, so they could have the system work differently for them, and hand out as many fastpasses as they liked. And the people staying in those rooms generally didn't blab about all their perks.

And the general public was used to a small trickle of people passing them in the fastpass lane, the number of rooms that had more fastpasses than normal was limited, so regular visitors would pretty much never figure out that certain guests pretty much always used the fastpass lanes.

Yes, those things were/are openly advertised.

There was a lot more hidden perks for people who shelled out for suites.

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.

The retort to extremes by bringing failures of Communism do not address any of the key points from the parent comment. Red scare is a concept from the 1950s, time to update the boogeyman.

Of course it's ok to charge for more services but there's a limit until your whole society is divided into an underclass and an overclass sharing the same spaces, the same rides in a theme park, the same social contexts and can see the divide. That generates social unsatisfaction, people have an inherent sense of fairness (and many animals as well) which can create social tension, boil that to the limit and you have the violence and crime you see in the USA but not in many other developed countries.

The statement about what the US does is the right thing because it's one of the richest countries on Earth is ignorant, or simply naïve. Also, a comical clichê of Americans worldview.

Well, I suppose we could limit Disneyland to only the rich but I somehow doubt that would create more happiness in the world.

Can you explain how this relates to my comment above? There was no sentiment there that all people should have the same possessions and experiences. The point of the post was that objective price can't be evaluated without consideration of the actual subjective cost it represents to people.

It's that it's preferable to any alternative. It's not a class tier so much as a gradient of availability and that is good.

I really need you to connect the dots for me here. What you described is vastly different to what I described. Why do you feel they are equal?

I'll do you one better. This prompt to ChatGPT-4 led to it comprehending quite well https://pastebin.com/KY9Zne5R

I think you should be able to query it for comprehension. I wrote it from your perspective to get you started.

I tried it out with a conversation and it was able to have a very reasonable discussion about the subject. Should be easier than having to wait for my reply.

You're putting a whole lot of effort into not having to explain something you were so willing to share.

It's clear that I cannot explain things to you, either through my fault of being legible or your fault at comprehending. Give the model a shot.

You didn't even try to explain. At no point did you even phrase your idea in the language I used, or connect your idea to the broader conversation. You brought in a conclusion without any hint of the work you put in to get to that conclusion. The conclusion may very well be valid, but you have to show your work or else others won't be able to follow.

You're taking gradient of availability but he's talking about the fact that this gradient is dependent on pwrsonal income. You're missing his point.

If a medicine costs one million, you probably will agree it's only for the wealthy? Now, it's just a question of the price limit you assign to "reserved to the wealthy", that's all. You may have a different threshold here, but I find it hard denying there is a threshold.

Oh I'm not denying it, I'm celebrating it.

You stating the "wealthy threshold" is not reached, you're not celebrating a threshold which has not been reached according to your standards.

What you are writing in your previous answers makes little sense, it almost sound alike random words. I won't answer if the next reply doesn't make just a little sense, it feels too much like trolling on your part.

mostly because people like to believe there's equity where none exists because capitalism is antagonistic to most equitable distribution

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.

It seems that rebellion is getting more difficult, either because of better surveillance or social media. It was originally thought social media would increase rebellion and revolution (e.g. Arab Spring). But social media also makes it much more difficult for anyone to emerge as a leader of it. Social media transparency makes the leader mythos evaporate pretty quickly. Arab Spring failed, and no real leaders emerged as a part of BLM or Occupy Wall Street.

You're forgetting one very important factor in my view: desperation. This makes a single individual rebel.

You get enough desperate people, feeling like they don't stand a chance to get XXX, you got a rebellion.

If someone is desperate, but there's no group or organization that's trying to make a change somehow, I think they're more likely to turn on those with less power or wealth and scam or steal from others, while looking out for themselves and their family, and not organize a rebellion against the government or against a group of rich and powerful people.

But in this case (wealthy people paying to cut the line at the airport, ski resorts, and Disney world), I don't think anyone will feel desperate due to the circumstances, even if they think don't stand a chance at getting wealthy enough to benefit. It may make them resentful, but that's all.

Agree, desperation only applies to more critical things in my view. But sometimes it's the sum of little vexations, being passed on, being forgotten, that lead to a high level of frustration, anger and desperation. Then one goes into a "I don't give a shit anymore, I have nothing to loose" (there is always something to loose but desperation does that to you).

I'm mentioning this because the general tone of the article and the comments was that there are many examples of this trend toward less equality and in my eyes it is very true, we are going toward a society where the gap between poor and rich becomes bigger and bigger. And this is going like this since 50 years at least...

That makes sense; good point. With rising class-based inequality and disparities, some sort of push back is likely.

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.

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.

> 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.

[1] https://www.snow.com/info/colorado-forest-service-informatio...

>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.

The comment you are replying to is about skiing on public land, Disney has nothing to do with it.

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.

This is not the case, many resorts on public lands in the US do not allow uphill travel.

Not on the ski slopes themselves of course, but is there anything stopping a determined person from slogging their way up through the woods?

In my state resorts have the legal right to allow / deny uphill travel, regardless of whether it's public land or not. This is for several reasons that are mostly related to safety:

- There's a large amount of people that skin up and hike here, enough to present crowding issues if it's allowed

- Grooming being done in the early morning when people want to start hiking, and it's hard to see hikers regardless of if they use lights or not

- Areas that are roped off from above can be closed for unstable snow with high avalanche risk, or may be subject to bombing operations (hand placed explosives and artillery to induce avalanches before they are caused by skiers)

Check your areas rules, many allow it under certain conditions like time of day, routes, lights, etc. It's a good idea to make friends with someone on the patrol team so you know which areas are safe (and contain good snow ;) )

> 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 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.

At SFO half the time the Clear + TSA-pre is slower than the standard TSA-pre anyway.

One of the few times that a premium experience for the better off improves the experience for the lesser well off. As opposed to credit cards, with their rewards for those who can afford them, resulting in raised prices for people who can only pay in cash. As someone who uses pre-check, I love this outcome.

Keep in mind pre-check isn't just about line times (though there are plenty of times it's drastically different). You also don't have to unpack your stuff, or take off your shoes, or go through the mm wave scanners. The funniest part is that that's still the standard experience in many other countries: with pre-check, we're paying for a "downgrade" in security theater!

I don’t understand the “security theater” criticism. There hasn’t been an airplane hijack or terrorist attack since 9/11. That is not proof that we can relax security checks. Nor is it proof that it’s just about the locked pilot doors. If anything, it’s proof that the system has worked well so far.

+1 it has always confused me too - security, while imperfect, does make a difference

The Flight 93 movie making heros out of people resisting hijackers (and making it known that hijacking wasn't just a diversion to Cuba anymore) was the only thing we ever needed to fix the system.

It's not proof of anything, including not proof that it works. The catalytic converter was stolen off of my father's car, was replaced, and then was stolen again. When it was replaced the second time, he very seriously considered paying for anti-theft devices to accompany its replacement. In the end, he chose not to purchase or install any anti-theft devices. His catalytic converter hasn't been stolen since. Just as this is not proof that choosing to do nothing has prevented subsequent theft, if he had purchased a device, the absence of a subsequent theft would not be proof of its effectiveness.

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.

> 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)

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.

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).

Nope, the real benefit of Clear is that once you are past the id check, you waltz past most of the line for the scanner. I suppose that depends on the airport but that's how it works wherever I've been.

If your local airport is incredibly congested, Clear goes from a nice to have to a huge timesaver.

Oh, I agree that Clear is worth using since you get to skip the id line. My point is that Clear isn't making the process any more efficient - they instead created a "skip the line" option under the guise of "technology".

And the tech doesn’t even work that well! Half the time I end up pulling out my ID. They also erased my account this summer in a “system upgrade.” I pictured some poor DBA getting chewed out for deleting thousands of rows by mistake.

> Airports are funded through my tax dollars

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

Do not allow politics to take private jets.

You’ll see TSA issues will vanish very fast.

Plenty of Congresspeople fly commercial like everyone else, at least between their district and DC.

Or it would result in a higher tier version of TSA PreCheck.

Exactly the opposite, there will be not a VIP + normal, but Politician + VIP + normal lanes.

> 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.

There was a time when these practices would have been considered anti democratic. But like checks and balances those days are long gone.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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 took my kids to Paris Disneyland recently.

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.

I'm from Alabama and having to pay a toll to get to work sounds dystopian.

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 travel a fair bit and have TSA Precheck. It’s very far from spotty.

It’s not so much about what you do in line as it is about the line — it’s way way shorter than the normal line. I get through TSA Precheck lines in under 10 minutes whereas a normal line can take an hour when it’s busy.

Plus Precheck lines have a higher proportion of business travelers who know what they’re doing and know the dance to get through the line quickly (3-1-1, pockets emptied to tray, no water). Infrequent travelers are usually the biggest causes of a slow line because they’re unfamiliar with the routine.

Precheck lines also don’t require you to take off shoes or take laptops out of bag. Even if you are flagged for secondary, you just have to step through the full body scanner. It literally takes 3 mins.

I get TSA Precheck as part of the Nexus program and I definitely see its value.

As I wrote, TSA-Precheck is a pretty big win if you travel almost any amount at all. I'm usually through in 5-10 minutes though I don't count of it Global Entry is more variable but it costs very little more if you travel internationally.

I'll generally worry less about loyalty programs beyond a bare minimum going forward as I travel less. But Pre-check/GE seem like a win for even semi-regular travelers.

I am an infrequent traveler but part of my pre-travel routine is checking the guidelines the day before, and making sure I'm following them, because I abhor being That Person. And even following the guidelines to a T, I always get selected for the extra scan, because I am constantly cold, and wear sweatshirts - not even jackets with metal zippers, just sweatshirts. Apparently armpit heat is suspicious. And the last time that happened, the scanner decided it was so suspicious that I warranted an additional pat-down, and had to wait a quarter hour before a female TSA agent finally showed up. My traveling buddy went through the basic line and came out way ahead of me.

I think what may have slowed you down is the female TSA agent, not Precheck in general. That’s unfortunate.

Also business traveler tip for future:

all heavy and light tops (light jackets, suit jacket, winter coats, sweatshirts, hoodies, etc) go into the bin. Pockets empty, no wallet, watches, phones, etc. — put them in your jacket or hoodie.

Basically walk through that metal detector with only your basic layers and you will be through in 15 seconds.

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.

Yeah, and before that we had lords and peasants. A few people deserve to be treated better than other people. It just make sense y'know?

> 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

Isn't by definition being wealthy a way of cutting the line even if most of the times the line is a metaphorical one?

If you're wealthy you don't live by the same rules as everybody else.

If I'm waiting longer because someone else paid money to get ahead of me, I personally wish that a large percentage of that money had to go to some nonprofit...

That's my personal take. I get there's no way to enforce it, and it'd be a crappy law. But that's what I wish would happen.

The issue here is how our position is perceived, right? If it's about feeling better, we may assume that the operator could have risen the ticket price for all, or did what we see instead - chose to take more only from the willing. Doesn't this effectively mean that they partly subsidy the tickets for the rest?

It sounds like a nice theory.

But selling an expensive ticket to them decreases the supply of cheap tickets they can sell to me... Right?

"But selling an expensive ticket to them decreases the supply of cheap tickets they can sell to me... Right?"

Yes. But, the tickets are theirs to sell (or give, or withhold). The reason they are selling the cheap tickets to you is because you most likely won't chose to be their customer unless they offer the said tickets at that price, and they happen to desire having you as a customer in some circumstance. After filling as much seats they could with high margin offers, between getting no more money by running with the rest of the seats empty and getting some more money by running with all the remaining seats filled by some lower profit margin offer (i.e. cheap tickets), they chose the later.

Yeah, but the cost of my ticket is governed by supply and demand of tickets at my price.

Your theory was that selling someone else an expensive ticket would decrease the cost of mine. But I think your logic is flawed.

Worst one about TSA is the first class only line. Each ticket pays $5.60 whether its first class or economy. Why does first class get its own line?

The TSA doesn't have a first class only line, at least not at the major airports I frequent. Are you talking about the airlines' ticket/baggage counters?

I've seen them at most airports next to the TSA pre lines and they are much shorter than TSA Pre, usually no wait to the ID check station.

https://www.alaskaair.com/content/travel-info/at-the-airport...

I was about to be shocked that I've never seen it at my main hub port for my preferred airline, but then I remembered that I only ever layover at SEATAC, never going through security there. Thanks for linking, I'll have to keep an eye out elsewhere!

Vegas has them as well. I notice them when TSA gets backed up and i look around to see what the wait time on other lines are.

I've used these lines several times without a first-class ticket and I've never had my boarding group checked. Nobody cares. It's all the same security.

If you get "caught" just play confused.

And roads! In California, there are express lanes on the freeways now that you can pay to use during rush hour that have less traffic on them.

I wish I'd have such options in other parts of the world, to know that are there for picking if I'd really want them.

TIL I'm wealthy ... someone please tell my net worth then, as it's blissfully unaware

Yeah, the fees in this society are getting out of control, it's exhausting.

What other mechanism do they propose to distribute scarce resources? Let's say it's FCFS. I'd like to see cnn-critters write an outrage piece: "larks [people who tend to wake up early] are first in line at Disney World". Genetic (probably) privilege! It's not other guys' fault they have to sleep in! Of course not, it's always the "wealthy". Then they themselves say Clear apparently has 19m members and is planning to expand. Given realistic rate of adoption this is probably top 10% at least (and that would assume more than half of top 10% are enrolled - seems unlikely), hardly "wealthy". Of course, if you don't say "wealthy" you don't get the outrage.

One tech angle here is... posting this political, non-tech drivel on HN, for me, just helps convince me that mainstream media is pernicious and that most journalists cannot be trusted. I'm trying to cling to the belief in the importance of the press as an institution... but no, I think with stuff like this, we'd do better without. Can AI, Google, Substack, e/acc, whatever please compete them out of existence already?

Honestly, I don't give a shit how Disney or private ski resorts stratify there services. I do have a problem with a government mandated safety processes keeping that same logic. If lawmakers are going to make it suck then it should suck equally and for everyone.

(Edit, only referring to Disney / other private businesses here, not the TSA part)

Is this not a good thing? People, perhaps reductively, complain about how the affluent are hogging all of their wealth, that it's locked up in a way that doesn't flow back into the economy. Is this not one antidote?

Have a ton of cash and want to pay 10x for a first class seat? Yes please. Want to buy veblen goods to status signal? Sure thing. Want to hire hundreds of people to build yourself a castle? Lovely.

Is paying money to go into Disney that goes out of its way to avoid taxes really "going back into the economy?". Let alone a government factor like the TSA.

It doesn't feel like stimulation, it feels like companies are profiting off their own inefficiencies. In which case, they have negative incentive to improve.

Is paying money to go into Disney that goes out of its way to avoid taxes really «going back into the economy?»."

Yes, absolutely! Even without considering the tax contributions, the mentioned money are already circulating (one step further). Disney is acting as a service provider to the public and also a channel for the money towards their employees, suppliers, 3rd party service providers, and whatnot.

The concern here is the whole thing about trickle-down Reaganomics, the concern with this is the enshittification of things that are public services.

The TSA for the longest time was something that everyone dealt with, from the overworked mom from the projects to George Clooney. But now, those with disposable income can pay to bypass the inconvenience. (EDIT: sorry, posted this before I saw your edit about the TSA part).

Granted, that's how a business works. The entire point of a business is to trade money for convenience. However, when that "business" is something that we deem as "core" or part of everyday American life, it rubs many people the wrong way.

Take, for example, the new charge for drivers driving into NYC at specific times. For the wealthy, it's whatever, $15 is pocket change. But for many people who may not have access to public transportation, $15 could be the difference between having lunch or dinner that day.

To me, we've gotten to the point where businesses that have become a core aspect of daily American life are going to have to begin pressuring us to either tolerate being second-class citizens or begin paying to continue to live our lives the way we used to with minimal disruption.

So, just like always then.

Have always felt conflicted about these policies. Real life works this way but somehow seeing people escorted to the front of the line violates the rules of having a line.

Yeah part of me feels like the solution would be that ticket prices go up and these programs are eliminated. Which would lead to a similar outcome. Wealthier people would freely be able to go to ski resorts as regularly as they want while the less privileged would have to choose between a weekend on the slopes or paying their electric bill.

But it'd reduce the lines because less people would be there and, ultimately, it'd be equal for everyone. So I'm really not sure.

On the other hand, prices can be risen enough that only people escorted now would still be in them. That prospect makes the current situation a pretty good one.

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