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Comment by 627467 | Hacker News Reader

There are so many possible perspectives for such story but in this day and age the focus is on how much this cost.

So let's talk about cost: I don't know how often he sleeps in this way[0] but clearly at £8500/year no one is discussing the externalized cost of taking up (arguably empty) seats he didn't pay for and setting the stage for future "nomads" to do the same and turning first class night trains into a substandard hostel

[0] https://leben-im-zug.de/mein-erster-tag-mit-der-bahncard-100... > That night, I decide to lie down under the seats on my air mattress, the air mattress at 2 meters doesn't quite fit under a 4 seat, so there's still a little bit of the footwell of the square in front of me, but with the low occupancy of the train, this is not a problem whatsoever, with my head half under a seat of the 4 seat. It's tight, but it's enough to lie on your side and change position sometimes at night, I take up about 3 seats in total.

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> he didn't pay for

hey, he paid for it! They gave him an unlimited ticket in exchange for euros.

You're free to say that the train company shouldn't have created an unlimited ticket but it's unfair to paint a person who uses what he legally bought as a thief.

Read the comment again - he pays for one seat, he sleeps across 3 or 4.

ah that's what you meant

well I'm pretty sure if those seats were taken he'd sleep in its own seat. Perhaps his equation would change if had to sleep upright every night, but still, there is nothing illegal

If you're on a flight and there's a free space next to you, would you say you're wrong if you occupy it by stretching your legs?

sure. once you take off, you're not getting more people on until you land.

by that logic, you have until the next stop, and then any claim you have to a seat is forfeit.

if they are empty what is the deal? If somebody books the ticket he will be asked to move to his seat.

You are not paying for the seat, but for the journey.

Go ahead and try to get a refund when you don't have a seat on a crowded train.

While that is true (if you don't have a seat reservation) you are prohibited from occupying more than one seat per DB ToS.

"Each passenger is only allowed to occupy one seat [...] Passengers who behave contrary to the above regulations, ignore the instructions of employees or otherwise pose a threat to safety and order can be excluded from transport or further transport without entitlement to reimbursement of the fare and baggage price."

Translated from https://assets.static-bahn.de/dam/jcr:82c5f579-c786-41dc-abf... (Page 20, 6.1)

Is he really occupying more than one seat if there’s nobody else there to take the remainder?

Literally yes he is. You can argue about whether this should be enforced, but by the text of the contract, it is not allowed.

Fair use IMHO IANAL

You can use as many as you like until instructed not to.

If you weren’t meant to do it they’d have countermeasures to prevent you

Does a falling tree in a forest make a sound if there's no one around to hear it.

Read the comment again

> with the low occupancy of the train, this is not a problem whatsoever

He paid once for an unlimited journey ticket. He gets either a seat for a day ride or a couch for a night journey.

Some of the older posts (https://leben-im-zug.de/howto-nachtreise-im-ice/) explain that when he was travelling second class, he was able to sleep on a luggage rack most of the time. That practice actually appears to consume a negative number of seats!

This is clearly also something you can only do when you're seventeen. I think if I tried to sleep on a luggage rack then (a) I would wake up in a claustrophobic panic attack, and (b) the rack would break.

Only because, according to him, the attendants don't seem to mind the homeless teenager (and others) doing this, not because it's ok.

If nobody minds, then in what sense is it not okay? If the space is needed for luggage, I'm sure he will be asked to move.

> If nobody minds, then in what sense is it not okay?

Nobody might mind a one-off antisocial behaviour, but if it becomes a pattern, or if everyone starts doing it, everyone might start minding it.

then it would not be ok. then is an imaginary some-time/some-condition.

So hypothetically, if things were different, it might not be okay... so it's okay now.

>seats he didn't pay for and setting the stage for future

That`s why he's under the seats, but let's talk about AirBNB-Ghosttown's ;)

And i think it's a absolute nice adventure for a 17 y/o. Talk with lot's of different peoples, see lot's of places....genius i love it!

People overusing their subscriptions are compensated by people underusing them.

People who exercise are overusing their share of air. People with more children are overusing their share of sunlight.

According to you, when does a child earn their own share of sunlight, so their parents are not "overusing" their share?

Is it at a certain age, or is that only for children born latest at $YOUR_BIRTHYEAR?

It's illogical to assume that was literal.

They are pointing out that what the previous commenter said was ridiculous, by saying the same thing with merely other variables swapped in which more obviously illustrates how ridiculous the original statement was.

Fair enough, I'll admit I missed that completely.

Yes, it's called a "false analogy", a typical informal fallacy.

There is nothing ridiculous about the fact that people-that-use-more-than-average (over-users: p>.5) are compensated by people-that-use-less-than-average (under-users: p<.5) to establish an average... it's called spread.

There is no such thing as overusing a thing that is sold as unlimited.

It's true that the train company does some probability math and figures out some balance point for the proper price for the ticket based on some estimated bell curve of usage, just like a diner selling a "bottomless" cup of coffee for $1.

But that doesn't make the right half of the curve "overusing" any more than it makes the left half of the curve "underusing". They are all merely using the thing that the supplier sold in accordance with the terms set by the supplier.

> no one is discussing the externalized cost of taking up (arguably empty) seats he didn't pay for and setting the stage for future "nomads" to do the same and turning first class night trains into a substandard hostel

It is not an externalized cost. DB would even make more money if more people did it, up until the point it started costing them more profitable sales (at which point they will change the rules). It is like any mass transport, where it is better to carry a passenger at zero or even negative profit than it is to have a half empty bus/plane/train. A full plane, even if half are traveling at cost, is more profitable than a half full plane, because the fixed costs of the journey is amortized over more passengers. Rather than 50% of the full fare being lost to the fixed journey costs, only 25% of the full fare gets lost. This is how economy class works, where little profit is made, but covers the fixed cost of a flight allowing more profit to be extracted from business, first and extras.

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