All‑inclusive Pricing Spurs Lotteries

When a provider charges a flat or bundled fee so marginal prices are zero, scarce premium goods inside the bundle (better rooms, premium services, priority slots) stop being allocated by price and instead by non‑price methods: lotteries, first‑come rules, reservation frenzies, or hidden queuing games. Those allocation mechanisms generate different incentives (timing competition, bots, favoritism) and fairness concerns than price rationing, and they can hide cross‑subsidies between users. — Understanding how bundled pricing shifts allocation rules matters for debates about subscriptions, public services, platform features, and regulation because non‑price allocation can enable gaming, inequality, and inefficient use of scarce resources.