Originally Posted by
LoveMountains
It is possible for the game to be neutral.
For example, an airline is only able to fill 50 out of 52 seats on the plane, while person X with his wife will never travel except for MS.
So, airline is not losing, since they don't care either seat is empty or filled with an MS person. CC is not losing, since airline is giving it a good deal on miles to account for the case above. And so on.
What about thank you points? They're worth 1 cent for sure, and cost at least very close to 1 cent, because there's no way WalMart or BestBuy would give away their gift cards at a heavy discount, or airlines won't sell seats at 25% discount through the TYP travel portal.
They all make money in aggregate, on the unenlightened masses, but we definitely cost them a lot, which would at least partially explain the rash of devaluations in the past 2 years. It coincided with the explosion of travel award blogging and booking services.