Originally Posted by
amolkold
I agree with your first paragraph. It's a pet peeve of mine. The value you get out of a mile is only the cost you would have spent in the first place. If coach is $1000 and business is $5000, I might personally value business as $2000 for a particular trip. Therefore, the price I saved is $2000, not $5000.
I agree with this to a certain extent, though not entirely.
Firstly, what if you would've never taken the trip if not for miles (in coach, even)? Is the value of the flight 0? Sure, you didn't save anything relative to if you had not taken it at all, but surely there's value there--subjective value, beyond simply crunching savings.
Valuations based purely on the absolute savings relative to the revenue price are flawed; yet, so too are valuations based strictly on the cash outlay that you would've made.
If someone gets you a new blender at christmas, and you would've only bought the $40 version, but your benefactor gets you a much nicer $200 version, what is the value there? Did you save $160? No. But is the value of the objectively better (let's assume) appliance somehow borne out in your subjective valuation? I think it's reasonable to think so.