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gruezyesterday at 11:43 PM1 replyview on HN

>The options model matters: if you model an ambulance ride as a roulette wheel, you only expect to pay if you get very unlucky. If you model it as an option, you expect to pay even if you never use it.

There are plenty of services that have high fixed costs but low marginal costs, but we don't use the "options" framing. A movie costs tens to hundreds of millions to make, but otherwise costs very little to deliver. Their price are also fixed, rather than dynamically priced. Yet when a movie bombs, nobody is like "wow I guess they shouldn't have been selling an option for 2 hours of entertainment for $20!". It's a price problem, first and foremost, caused by insurance companies and medicare strongarming them.


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Noumenon72yesterday at 11:49 PM

I don't think you fully grasped the concept of an option, which is why it isn't illustrative for you; no one is purchasing the right to see a movie regardless of how much it turns out to cost to show. It's the movie maker that would love to buy an option that makes you promise to buy a ticket, even if the movie turns out bad.

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