6 ms·

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 listenin

• redserk 3y ago
  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.
  • throwitaway222 3y ago
    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.
    • plussed_reader 3y ago
      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.
    • kennethrc 3y ago
      ... or neither
• akprasad 3y ago
  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.
  • tiahura 3y ago
    Disney introduced Fastpass during the Clinton presidency. This isn’t exactly news.
    • adrr 3y ago
      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.
      • henrikschroder 3y ago
        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.
        • adrr 3y ago
          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.
          • tiahura 3y ago
            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.
            • aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 3y ago
              Do you mean Club 33? Because I doubt that.
              • tiahura 3y ago
• ysavir 3y ago
  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.
  • renewiltord 3y ago
    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.
    • piva00 3y ago
      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.
• cyanydeez 3y ago
  mostly because people like to believe there's equity where none exists because capitalism is antagonistic to most equitable distribution
• oliwarner 3y ago
  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.
  • trealira 3y ago
    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.
    • chkaloon 3y ago
      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.
    • illiac786 3y ago
      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.
      • trealira 3y ago
        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.