The original post was talking about the scenario of third-party reservations trading marketplaces. In that scenario, reservations become financialized derivativ

The original post was talking about the scenario of third-party reservations trading marketplaces. In that scenario, reservations become financialized derivatives of the underlying supply of food at a restaurant. But this is being done in a really dumb way where fake demand is being injected to make the reservation independently valuable from the underlying. To be perfectly clear, bots don't eat food, and we don't need a market to tell us otherwise. Even an individual having Google Duplex reserve ten tables in advance isn't going to be able to eat ten dinners. But if reservations actually cost money, then any restaurant doing the smart thing of just skipping no-shows to keep the kitchen running is now defrauding reservation holders. Capacity has to be reserved and left fallow for the sake of optionality. Bringing this back to market terms: if reservations are so in demand that restaurants have to charge for them, why don't they just raise the prices on the actual food instead?