There is a case about to go in front of the Supreme Court where a small business owner is suing New York state over a law that prohibits merchants from explicitly adding credit card fees to their prices. Instead, business are only allowed to post the higher gross price and then offer a "cash discount" for people who don't use credit cards. It's a prime example of regulatory capture and crony capitalism where one industry - banks - got the state to pass a law that prohibits business owners from making the banks look bad or negatively affect their (the banks') business.

Notwithstanding the merits of that particular case - there are a lot of onion layers to peel back on the various different arguments - this strikes me as being very similar in logic.

Yes, United really is now charging extra for "perks", one of those being overhead space, because now if you don't book a higher fare class than BE - i.e. if you don't pay extra - you don't get the perks. But they definitely don't want to publicly admit that because that makes them look bad. Too bad they can't get congress or the FAA to pass a law helping them hide their bad publicity.

And, FWIW, I am indifferent. I think ala carte pricing is the most efficient way to deliver goods and services from an economic perspective.

How it actually will affect me personally remains to be seen based on how much more UA is going to charge for these perks. My guess is that if this holds, then the other major airlines will adopt the same policies and then airfares will start to go up across the board. All this is is another layer of price discrimination and discovery. It's their business and they are not obligated to fly me anywhere.

Agreed. For economics geeks this is kind of a neat experiment. Technology is beginning to allow firms to set prices with layers of precision they could only dream about 20 years ago.