Re: [81attendees] are we getting complacent? Good job!

[Andrew Sullivan <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Aug 03, 2011 at 01:30:06PM -0500, Adam Roach wrote:

> I'm not so certain about that generalization. Major US hubs include
> Dallas, Houston and Atlanta -- which are, generally speaking, rather
> inexpensive compared to most off-the-beaten-path places we've gone
> resently.

Dallas is not a hub except maybe for Southwest.  Dallas-Ft Worth is.
But we have also heard endless complaints when there is not something
within walking distance of the venue, and in my limited experience of
Dallas-Ft Worth, even the other terminals aren't in walking distance.
We did have a meeting not too far from that hub that I recall being
unusually unproductive for me, partly because a large number of things
I wanted to do on the Monday were cancelled because the hotel was
built on the flood plane of a river, and it rained hard.

I note that there is a meeting planned for Atlanta in the near future.

I can't speak to Houston.

Other obvious hubs, of course, are Chicago, New York, Los Angeles,
London, Paris, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Hong Kong.  Or, if we want to keep
going to Canada, Toronto.  Several of those are outstanding partly
because of their expense, particularly if we also hang on to the
criterion that people at the HQ hotel never have to venture into the
big room with the blue ceiling in order to go to meetings.  (When we
met in Chicago, everyone seemed to complain about the noise.  I had a
good meeting there.  I'd be happy to go back, except I bet the rates
went up because they're not renovating the hotel any more.)

I think the central problem here is a classic Arrow transitivity case.
The set of preferences of the collective is not transitive (and under
some definitions, therefore, not rational).  Whether individuals'
preferences are transitive I can't say. 

A

-- 
Andrew Sullivan
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