[NoZebra120vClip]

So many people have unused gym memberships that the gym can afford to purchase 3 new treadmills every year. Seems like a fair tradeoff.

But you've strawmanned this. Do you go to the gym, put your towel down on the leg press machine, and then go to the juice bar for a drink? Because that's what we're discussing here: taking away a finite resource so that others can't use it.

People with unused gym memberships who don't show up haven't promised anything. They didn't make an appointment with a personal trainer, they don't have machines reserved, there's no implicit contract to exchange limited resources for a membership fee. Your membership fee gives you access to these resources, not a guarantee of their usage. If you go to the gym and every treadmill is in use, then you don't get a treadmill for now. You just wait for a treadmill.

[rpearl]

evidently the airline priced that resource at a negative value. (Florida to Charlotte $X, Florida to Charlotte to NY $X-$Y.) so apparently that resource was worse than useless.

[gruez]

It's only negative if you think airline's pricing model is something simple like "distance traveled * cost per mile", which isn't the model that airlines with advanced revenue management systems use.

[rpearl]

From a black box perspective it's easy to conclude that it's negative.