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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

That's not what GP said. GP complained about having to pay as if there were multiple households benefiting, when it's actually just one household, albeit a wealthy one. If NFLX said "we're going to start charging rich people more, based on zip code," there would be a revolt.

I would assume it's not their intention to try to "go after" this segment and make them pay more (since it's a small portion of their users, and the revenue opportunity is small), but they've undoubtedly thought about this possibility and the unfairness it creates.

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You think The people will demand to pay more to subsidize the rich. I love your optimism and altruism

>If NFLX said "we're going to start charging rich people more, based on zip code," there would be a revolt.

Not in the poor houses, and the rich ones would pay anyway because they're rich and price inelastic.

So I doubt there'd be a revolt.

I would hypothesize a revolt for two reasons. First, it would violate people's general sense of fairness that a product is being sold at different prices to different customers. Wealthy people (who are perhaps above-average in terms of retention) would leave to go to other services that they perceive to be fairer.

Second, it would be difficult to avoid overinclusive/underinclusive issues. For example, someone who lives in a studio apartment in a zip code with many large expensive homes would feel they are being clumped with people who are not like them. Is it hypothetically possible to avoid these outcomes? Sure, but it would take a ton of work, and would likely outweigh the benefit of differential pricing.

> If NFLX said "we're going to start charging rich people more, based on zip code," there would be a revolt.

Revolt? Price discrimination is illegal.

Tell that to the California power companies:

https://californiaglobe.com/articles/income-based-electric-r...

To be fair, this seems like a very convenient redefining of "household". If a household can, quite literally, span two houses (and states!), then what does household actually mean?

Edit: double checked and Netflix today is clear that plans are for a single "household". No idea if that language has changed over time but I vaguely recall them always referring to multiple "devices", not people.

According to a dictionary, "household" means:

> those who dwell under the same roof and compose a family; also: a social unit composed of those living together in the same dwelling [1]

It seems more focused on the family unit rather than where they're located. If a household goes on vacation, are they not still a household when they are at their hotel? Why is it different if they're at a condo, which they own?

Disclosure: not that it matters, but I do not have a second home.

1: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/household

I'm curious how you read that and don't see the words "roof" and "same dwelling"? Because... that seems far more focused on where they are located than not? Only thing it is excluding is multiple family units all living in a shared building are not one household.

Oh, I absolutely see that limitation. But as I mentioned in my example, a "household" does not cease to exist when it leaves that shared roof. The group is defined based on where they live, regardless of whether they are together at any given moment, or if they are under a different roof together (and whether that different roof is part of a hotel, condo, or vacation home).

It totally ceases when you leave the shared roof. Is why me and my siblings shared a household with our parents, but don't share one now that we have moved out.

I can't believe you actually had to explain this to someone on HN

OP referred to an intact family unit that has multiple homes. They are still a household because, unlike your example, the are still intact. It's obvious that once you move out permanently, you're not part of the household anymore. But the original examples, and all of mine, refer to temporary relocations of an intact family unit.

I am sympathetic, but to pretend a household is multiple houses feels forced, to say the least. Would be like claiming you have multiple primary houses. Can make a sense, in very narrow cases. Largely not what anyone thinks that term means. To claim otherwise seems bad faith.

> pretend a household is multiple houses

To me this reads as a category error. Households are made up of people, and houses are made of wood. But if you want to pay more to Netflix when you visit a friend's cabin, or your own, I won't get in your way!

And to me this reads as petulant redefining of terms in the hopes of pulling a gotcha.

To be clear, the portability afforded with streaming services is nice. And I'm all for taking advantage of it. But household has always been the combination of a physical house and a social group in it. To claim otherwise is silly.

Can you find other uses of the term that does this? Even "family" is typically constrained to immediate family. Such that nobody expects family benefits at a job to extend to their cousins. Heck, we don't even expect it to extend to siblings or parents.

You're free to think of this as a redefining of terms, but the first person to make that argument upthread was downvoted to grey. That tends to indicate that I'm not the one redefining a term in a novel way.

But to answer your question, economists refer to "household income" and they don't care if you have a vacation home.

If you look at the origin of this thread, it relates to a single family with multiple homes. If you can't see that a family does not cease to be a family when they purchase a second home, then nothing I can say will convince you. Cheers!

Apologies on missing this the other day. The "first person" to make this argument is just getting the ire of folks that are upset to be losing their streaming benefits.

Household income is an interesting one. You have a primary residence that dictates a ton of information for financial reporting. And as far as households go, you only count in one of the houses, as far as a household. The others are non household units.

My entire point is that a household is not a family. Those are different things.

> And to me this reads as petulant redefining of terms in the hopes of pulling a gotcha

You are the one doing the petulant redefining.

> But household has always been the combination of a physical house and a social group in it. To claim otherwise is silly.

Not true.

Household has a well established meaning that you are trying to redefine. The referent of "household" is a social group and does not include the house itself. The house is merely part of how that social group can be defined.

If your house is destroyed in a fire, you don't stop being a household while it is rebuilt. If you own a vacation home, the household doesn't change based on who might be visiting the vacation home at any given time.

> Even "family" is typically constrained to immediate family. Such that nobody expects family benefits at a job to extend to their cousins. Heck, we don't even expect it to extend to siblings or parents.

You seem to have trouble with meanings. Just because some employment benefits described with the term "family" are contractually limited, doesn't change the meaning of the word "family". In fact, even the term "immediate family" explicitly includes siblings, spouse's siblings, parents, spouse's parents, grandparents, etcetera.

My point was that nobody has ever used household for two houses. Ever. If you can find a place that has been done, I'd be swayed. But I have never ever seen that. The definition posted above has family/social unit and house/dwelling unit. Reading that as one of those being plural is awkward and feels flat out in bad faith to conversation.

Now, I will fully cede that Netflix has redefined their terms and are also at fault in this whole fiasco. They are the ones that tried to build on the back of goodwill by allowing a much more open sharing policy than anything else was ever capable of doing.

> My point was that nobody has ever used household for two houses. Ever. If you can find a place that has been done, I'd be swayed. But I have never ever seen that.

Then maybe you should have spent some time looking before so strongly asserting something that is flat out wrong. Go look at some definitions. There are plenty of legal definitions, in addition to dictionary ones, that clearly contradict your take.

The key element is shared residency and living expenses. The number of homes owned is not relevant.

Point me to some. Seriously, the definition linked here clearly has household as the combination. Where are households defined as multiple houses?

For fun, try https://www.prb.org/resources/what-is-a-household/ which says "A household is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as all the people who occupy a single housing unit, regardless of their relationship to one another."

Did they get it wrong? https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/technical-docume... seems to agree with them.

Or, maybe, you are just trying to gaslight folks and not actually arguing in good faith...

The census is a great example. If a person is at a location, such as vacation home, when the census counts them, the census counts them as at the location that they sleep at the most. You don't stop being a part of a household just because you're spending the weekend at your cabin.

Even if your 10 person household has 11 homes, 1 primary home where everyone sleeps 183 days a year and 10 vacation homes where each sleeps the other 182 days a year, that would still be counted as a 10 person household by the census.

And both those linked definition make clear the basic point that you are still apparently failing to grasp. The referrent of "household" is the people who share their primary residence, not the residence itself.

Ah, I see the distinction you are trying to make. You are talking of the people in the household. But that is easily seen as a distinct thing from the household.

Consider standard household services. They are tied to the household, which has a fixed address. Is why power company won't give you power for your RV at any other location.

Again, I'm sympathetic. And power companies distinguish this with service address. But this is exactly the point. Every other "sharable thing" will be a distinguished thing that is shared. They will often have vague ass terms that tie it to the people of a household. But they will also have carve outs on how that applies to them.

I will be curious to see what happens to families living in RVs.

Apologies for missing this. I'm not clear what you mean. They already have the worst services of any "household" you can imagine. Such that I don't see it changing much?

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