Price Discrimination: Russians Get a Discount
Blogging From Moscow: It is well-known here that Russians often get discounts to museums, cathedrals and other culturally important national and historic landmarks. But how do Russians get the discount?
One common method here of price discrimination is illustrated in the picture above (click to enlarge), which shows a sign at St. Issac's Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Russia. The top sign says "ENTRANCE TO THE MUSEUM" in Russian. If you can read Russian, you enter to the left and go to a ticket counter that has a lower entrance fee than if you speak English, and enter to the right.
9 Comments:
That's pretty common. There are also some Russian grocery stores in the states that have their "CLOSED" sign up, and underneath it says "ОТКРЫТО" (open).
Outrageous!
Thank God for America!
It also indicates that not everyone is a billionaire in Russia. Most lost their life savings with the collapse of the currency.
It's even more blatant in India. They write both prices in English. This sign
www.dreymann.net/Misc/India.jpg
(photo taken during a trip to Bombay in 2001) shows Rs. 10 for Indian citizens and Rs. 250 (!) for foreigners...
The Russian thing isn't even real price discrimination, it's an ignorance tax. I'm all for ignorance taxes. They give a benefit to smarter people, which (smart benefits) is a commodity all too rare in our current society. They exist, but with an increasing dependence on understanding basic technologies, our societies do far too poor a job encouraging smart (both wise *and* intelligent) people to reproduce and thrive, while what they do grant is far outweighed by idiot benefits.
Government-funded Flood Insurance is an obvious example: "Do ya grasp the term 'flood plain'? Did you buy a house on one? Are you a moron? 'But I repeat myself' as the man said..."
t used to be that you had to show your passport to get the cheaper tickets too....
Quit your whining whiners!
Checkout the home grown price discrimination right here in the good old USofA where "foreigners" can pay 95% to 98% more.
I had a similar experience at Baalbek in Lebanon. The sign said one price in Arabic and another in English. An extra twist was that the Arabic actually said "price for Arabs". A long debate ensued between the ticket agent and my father-in-law about which fee applied to me since my Lebanese father-in-law was paying. I still don't know what the final result was!
"Checkout the home grown price discrimination right here in the good old USofA where "foreigners" can pay 95% to 98% more"...
Well do you think this is a problem anon @ 1:21 PM?
Personally I think all domestic schools should charge foreigners the extra fare... No one is forcing them to come here...
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