Hopscotch Corner

Hopscotch owes a debt of gratitude (and karma points) to all of the patient people that listened to our idea and creation story. Anecdotal or not, we received much evidentiary support as we spoke with those who shared generous feedback; and many horror stories.  Objection or Rejection We received  many objections (cough, airlines, cough) from businesses. It was so much so that we continue examining the idea and searching for what we missed. Have we missed something so fundamental  about exchanging seats directly between two people that we cannot get through to airlines? We heard: "What is the business use case?" "Why did karma become intertwined with exchanging airplane seats?" "What makes you think we need your mobile app and API to exchange airplane seats?" "Do travelers even share your concept of goodwill in supporting another traveler?" "Does anyone expect a traveler to make altruistic decisions on an airplane to h...

Can we design an economic model of passenger-to-passenger seat exchanges directly between passengers ? If such a model exists, we wish to further consider a passenger audience meeting the following constraints for the air travel use case: ticketed passengers of a commercial flight with publicly available information, passengers possessing a mobile device with GPS and a machine-readable seat assignment, passengers physically present in the waiting area prior to boarding the aircraft, and passengers willing to consider multiple offers before choosing or declining seat offers. Why place those restrictions on the qualification of passengers? We can take them one at a time to explain further. Simplified Economically Coincident Model The above constraints satisfy and meet the criteria for a "double coincidence of wants", from microeconomics. An economic model needs a buyer and seller. We expect goods or services exchanged in this use case to be an exchange of assigned ...