Southwest Airlines will begin charging customers a fee to check bags. It's a significant change for the budget carrier, which built years of advertising campaigns around its policy of letting passengers check up to two bags for free.
I guess the devil’s advocate would say that 1) they’re uncovering value that was previously unaccounted for, and 2) if people stop using the thing that is newly charged for, then it wasn’t that valuable to them in the first place/it could be more valuable somewhere else.
Is there a name for the method of enshittification where they take away things you used to take for granted and try to sell them back to you?
It’s bad even from the perspective of the system because even though they’re growing GDP they aren’t actually creating any new tangible value.
The airlines call it “unbundling”
Unbundling? Ugh.
I guess the devil’s advocate would say that 1) they’re uncovering value that was previously unaccounted for, and 2) if people stop using the thing that is newly charged for, then it wasn’t that valuable to them in the first place/it could be more valuable somewhere else.