Wormwood, I ask you again, what is gouging? Buying $100 of magazines or whatever is on offer? $1,000? 10,000? Who decides? I assume from your other posts that you will say that we should self limit. Well, if someone is filthy rich and buys 100K's worth but could afford to buy 1MM worth is that not self limiting? Ultimately isn't it up to the people running the promotions to limit them? If not then why not? Why do we as consumers have to make business decisions on their behalf?

I believe that what you were talking about was that in order to have "perfect" markets (i.e. markets that find the perfect price or balance between supply and demand) all participants must have perfect information. Free markets are not perfect in the real world.

I think that the gouging and "get as much as you can get before the deal is gone" is the way that business has been done for at least the last 50 years. Businesses that see an opportunity will take as much advantage of it as possible before it disappears. Look at the fisheries, the logging industry, the oil industry to name a few. You may very well not like it but that is the business environment of today. The self limiters will lose out big time because while they are self limiting the rest of the hoard is not. Whether we like it or not, or choose to play or not for our own reasons, those are the rules by which the game is played these days. And you are right, in the end we will all suffer because of the dilution of the programs that we, myself included, are shoveling miles in to.

The people I feel for are the people who actually fly all those miles like an earlier poster who had flow 500K this past year(there should definitely be something more than EXP for people who do those kinds of miles). How fair is it to them that I will accrue more miles than them this year though I will have flown 1/10 as many?

I would be happier with a program where miles could only be accrued by flying. It would be fairer to the people actually doing all the flying and also serve them better. The airlines must know this but I suspect that they do quite well off all these mileage deals with companies like goldpoints and Kelloggs. Looking at the whole FF. issue from this perspective one might even welcome the demise of deals like those offered by valuemags/goldpoints.

[This message has been edited by Mvic (edited 12-30-2001).]