I agree with everything you wrote here. In your original post it sounded like maybe what you were saying was that the airline should have used peer pressure as

I agree with everything you wrote here. In your original post it sounded like maybe what you were saying was that the airline should have used peer pressure as a means to violate their contract with a passenger. There are much better choices available than "beat him up"and "idling a whole plane on the tarmac for a few hours." - both of these are very bad choices. In the case of United, simply coming on board and saying a screwup happened and saying you are authorized to give 4 free round trip first class tickets on any destination where United flys would have quickly gotten more than enough volunteers.