More on Free Wireless

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving. To pick through some leftovers of what is in my head a couple of thoughts.

One of my readers asked two questions that might be of interest. First how many oysters did my wife and I eat at the Oyster Riot. My guess is about 50 each, somewhere toward the end of the evening we reached diminishing returns.

The same reader would like to know as another blogger pointed out that some hotels charge $10 or more for wireless, while it is free at others. Steve Landsburg at slate provides a great explanation of the economics behind this pricing. Basically it depends on the makeup of your customers. It is best to charge for wireless if you have some that will pay for wireless and some that won’t (like a fancy hotel with business travelers (will) and leisure travels (won’t)). However, if you are a typical road side motel fewer people will pay for it. So it might not be worth setting up the system to charge customers.

Oyster Riot!

So tonight my wife and I will be going to the Oyster Riot at Old Ebbitt Grill. The Riot feature 20 varieties of oyster paired with wines. Being a Riot, it is all the oysters you can eat. A couple of economics lessons along the way.

1. The Oyster riot is a popular event, so popular tickets sold out in about 45 minutes. I purchased tickets on Craigslist for substantially more than the face value. I'm sure my wife values the tickets more than we paid, and since I offered more then other bidders through Craigslist I (we) value it more. I'm therefore still in favor of ticket reselling.

2. When purchasing through Craigslist, it helps to have idea of who you are buying from. The person who sold it to me sent the e-mail from her work e-mail. Checking the website it turned out she was a CEO and had a background with a well known company.

3. At some point eating oysters will reach diminishing returns, I will be curious to see when that happens for my oyster loving wife.

RIOT!