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by II2II 715 days ago
Let's put it this way: the idea makes so little sense that it has never been done at scale. That is saying a lot since it is:

- An obvious idea. People routinely benefit off of senior and student benefits from friends and family members.

- There are more than enough people who lack scruples and would outright exploit seniors. I would imagine that there are even more people who would be happy to enter arrangements of mutual benefit.

The underlying problem is that such a company would erode social trust. There would be a very short term opportunity to exploit the loophole, so to speak, before senior benefits would be tightly controlled, reduced until such a scheme is no longer profitable, or outright eliminated.

And that is taking the perspective of people who would partake. There are more than a few people who would find such schemes morally reprehensible and would never participate (which would limit the market).