The right to refuse service

Isn't it irritating when you hail a cab, tell the driver where you want to go, only to watch him drive away with an indifferent look on his face? Most of us would agree. The question is whether this is justified? Well, the law certainly agrees. If you were to lodge a complaint against the driver, he would certainly be fined. There's no point looking at the legality of this issue. But is it fair? I think the best way to decide that is by looking at similar situations. Two things that first came to my mind are:

The Railway

Ever wondered, why you never see a train almost empty when it is half way through its journey. According to the railway's reservation system, there are a certain number of seats reserved for passengers who travel longer distances. This is done using a well thought out quota plan. So, once a certain proportion of seats have been booked by passengers traveling short distances, any additional tickets to such destinations will be put under a waiting list (even though there are vacant seats on the train).

Internet service providers

When you ask certain ISP's for a new internet connection, they do something called a "feasibility check". Now that's a misnomer. It's actually more of a "profitability check" which looks at the setup charge required to get you the connection as opposed to the expected payoff (rent collected from each subscriber times the number of expected subscribers). If the numbers don't add up, your internet connection becomes infeasible (for you) and unprofitable (for them).

Now if you compare these examples to what a rickshaw/cab driver does, you can see the correlation. They are both CHOOSING their customers in order to maximize profits. It is also obvious that doing this optimizes resource utilization. In fact, this in turn helps reduce prices for the customer as well.

There are two basic but contradictory ways to look at it

• When there is a service being offered, it should be offered to every customer irrespective of his requirements.
  
• The provider of a service decides who he serves based on his own interests
  

Whichever philosophy you believe in, you need to apply it everywhere and not selectively. That would be fair.

PS : If you want to know more about the railway reservation quota system, here's a link that explains it in greater detail.