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Comment by rimunroe | Hacker News Reader

> Flying is a luxury.

You appear to have since edited your comment, but the version I replied to referred to being able to choose a seat as the luxury, not flying itself. As I've said elsewhere, flying is either a straight up necessity in some cases and a practical one in others. As I've also said in other places, people without kids can fly without need of choosing their seats.

> But I paid for my seat and if I did pay to sit next to my wife (which isn’t really a big deal for either of us), I would be really pissed if my seat was changed because a parent was too cheap to pay to have an assigned seat.

You can debate on whether or not flying is a necessity, but if we're flying then it's a luxury for you to sit next to your wife but it's a necessity for me to sit next to my infant.

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It’s a distinction without a difference. Just like flying is a luxury. I paid to sit next to my wife. You can pay to sit next to your infant. Don’t inconvenience me because you want to save a couple of hundred dollars.

You have to pay for all sorts of “necessities” because you have kids - just add that to the list.

> It’s a distinction without a difference.

That difference matters quite a bit if you're specifically arguing about how people who are going to fly get to experience said flight.

[Edit] If you don't believe that parents have as much reason to fly as anyone else I don't think there's much point to further discussion. However if you do believe it then whether or not assigned seating specifically counts as a luxury matters quite a bit.

> You have to pay for all sorts of “necessities” because you have kids - just add that to the list.

Why should we accept increasing the relative cost of having kids? That's a very good way to make having kids prohibitively expensive and part of how we've gotten to the point we're at. I'm in my late 30s and most of my friends chose not to have kids. For quite a few of those friends, they decided not to have them specifically because of how expensive it's become. You might think that's acceptable or even good, but birthrates are declining and people don't seem interested in allowing immigrants to come in and fill the void so I'm not sure what the endgame here is.

I didn’t say parents shouldn’t fly. I said if you want to be able to select yoir seat, pay just like other people do.

> Why should we accept increasing the relative cost of having kids?

So i now live 10 miles away from DisneyWorld, should my ticket prices also be more so your kids can get in free when we only have to pay for two adults? We were also able to downsize to a 1200 foot condo from a 3100 square foot house, we can spend our money on vacations instead of travel hockey like my friend.

What next? Should airlines have “kids fly free”?

> You might think that's acceptable or even good, but birthrates are declining and people don't seem interested in allowing immigrants to come in and fill the void so I'm not sure what the endgame here is.

I’m all for both low skill and high skill immigrants coming in where there is actually a shortage.

But play me the smallest fiddle because you don’t think you should have to pay for a ticket to reserve your seat requiring other people to move. See also, if you are too big to fit in one seat without encroaching on my space, you should also have to buy two seats - a policy many of the airlines have.

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