Frank Ocean’s Coldplay cover takes a nostalgic tour of ’50s America:

TPG reader Paris recently reached out on Twitter with an interesting question about when it might make sense to transfer Chase points to a non-transfer partner like Delta.

“Is there a way to transfer Chase Ultimate Reward points to non-transfer partners like Delta?” The answer is yes, but at a terrible ratio, let me explain.

I actually get similar questions a lot about whether there are ways to convert miles on one airline to miles on another, or to convert one kind of hotel points to another, and the answer is usually no. It gets a little trickier when we’re talking about transferable points like Chase Ultimate Rewards, though.

That’s because most hotel programs will let you transfer points to airlines, and these ratios have been decreasing in recent years. Club Carlson just hacked away at their point to airline ratio. You can transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points to Hyatt, Marriott, Ritz-Carlton or IHG Rewards and then from there to airline miles, but it’s pretty awful.

For example, Hyatt will let you convert points to miles at a ratio of 2.5 points to 1 miles in increments of 5,000 points, and if you convert 50,000 points they’ll give you a bonus of 5,000 miles so that you end up with 25,000 miles. Even with that, your transfer ratio is 2:1 – still not great. So what you can do is transfer Ultimate Rewards points to Hyatt at a 1:1 ratio then transfer them to Delta at a 2.5:1 ratio (or 2:1 if you transfer 50,000). At best, you’re using 50,000 Ultimate Rewards points to end up with 25,000 Delta miles – so I would not suggest doing that.

My go-to transferable points programs

On the whole, when you’re going through another program to transfer miles, you are going to lose a lot of value. There are a couple of exceptions. For instance, if you want to transfer Amex Membership Rewards (which you earn with cards like the Platinum and Premier Rewards Gold) into US Airways miles there is a way to do so by transferring them to Aeroplan and then converting those Aeroplan miles to US Airways miles via Points.com that I outline in this post. In that example, you’re using 100,000 Amex points and ending up with 86,000 US Airways miles – still a loss, but not too bad. However, there are limits to these conversions so read into it before you start transferring by this method.

In general, I recommend building up points in transferable programs like Amex Membership Rewards (17 airline partners), Starwood Preferred Guest (over 30 airline partners, though transfer times can be slow) and Chase Ultimate Rewards (10 travel partners including 5 airlines such as United and Southwest if you have cards like the Sapphire Preferred, Ink Bold and Ink Plus).

Ultimate Rewards will allow you to transfer points to up to 10 partners including United and Southwest

The real goal is to get as much flexibility as possible, diversify your points and focus on those transferable points programs which will give you a lot of different options when it comes time to redeem. For more information, check out these posts:

Why Transferable Points are Best
The Ultimate Guide to American Express Membership Rewards Airline Transfers
The Ultimate Guide to Chase Ultimate Rewards Airline Transfers
Ranking the Chase Ultimate Rewards Transfer Partners
The Ultimate Guide to Starwood Preferred Guest Airline Transfers
Maximizing Starwood Preferred Guest Airline Transfers

Let me know if you have any other questions by messaging me on Facebook, tweeting me or emailing me at info@thepointsguy.com.

Emily Bell recently argued that some hot new tech/journalism/etc. companies that are positioning themselves as radical alternatives to business-as-usual are, in the matter of hiring women and minorites, totally business-as-usual: a bunch of white guys with a slight scattering of women and minorities.

Nate Silver, one of those whom Bell was describing, didn't like her accusation: “The idea that we’re bro-y people just couldn’t be more off. We’re a bunch of weird nerds. We’re outsiders, basically. And so we have people who are gay, people of different backgrounds. I don’t know. I found the piece reaaaally, really frustrating. And that’s as much as I’ll say.”

Zeynep Tufecki has precisely the right response to Silver’s annoyance:

What happens when formerly excluded groups gain more power, like techies? They don’t just let go of their old forms of cultural capital. Yet they may be blind to how their old ways of identifying and accepting each other are exclusionary to others. They still interpret the world through their sense of status when they were “basically, outsiders.”

Most tech people don’t think of it this way, but the fact that most of them wear jeans all the time is just another example of cultural capital, an arbitrary marker that’s valued in their habitus, both to delineate it and to preserve it. Jeans are arbitrary, as arbitrary as ties....

How does that relate to the Silver’s charged defense that his team could not be “bro-y” people? Simple: among the mostly male, smart, geeky groups that most programmers and technical people come from, there is a way of existing that is, yes, often fairly exclusionary to women but not in ways that Silver and his friends recognize as male privilege. When they think of male privilege, they are thinking of “macho” jocks and have come to believe their own habitus as completely natural, all about merit, and also in opposition to macho culture. But if brogrammer culture opposes macho culture, it does not follow that brogrammer culture is automatically welcoming to other excluded groups, such as women.

I’m reminded here of a fantastic essay Freddie deBoer wrote a while back about the triumphs of geek culture, especially in its love of fantasy and SF:

Commercial dominance, at this point, is a given. What critical arbiters would you like? Is it a Best Picture Oscar for one of their movies? Can’t be. Return of the King won it in 2003. (And ten other Academy Awards. And four Golden Globes. And every other major award imaginable.) Recognition from the “literary establishment?” Again, I don’t know what that term could refer to; there are publishers and there are academics and there are book reviewers, but there is no such thing as a literary establishment. Even a cursory look at individual actors dedicated to literature will reveal that glory for sci-fi, fantasy, and graphic novels has already arrived. Turn of the century “best book” lists made ample room for J.R.R. Tolkien, Jules Verne, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, and others. Serious book critics fall all over themselves to praise the graphic novels of Allison Bechdel and Art Spiegelman. Respect in the world of contemporary fiction? Michael Chabon, Lev Grossman, and other “literary fantasists” have earned rapturous reviews from the stuffiest critics. Penetration into university culture and academic literary analysis? English departments are choked with classes on sci-fi and genre fiction, in an effort to attract students. Popular academic conferences are held not just on fantasy or graphic novels but specifically on Joss Whedon and Batman. Peer-reviewed journals host special issues on cyberpunk and video game theory.

To the geeks, I promise: I’m not insulting you. I’m conceding the point that you have worked for so long to prove. Victory is yours. It has already been accomplished. It’s time to enjoy it, a little; to turn the critical facility away from the outside world and towards political and artistic problems within the world of geek culture; and if possible, maybe to defend and protect those endangered elements of high culture. They could use the help. It’s time for solidarity.

And this is what I’d also like to say to Nate Silver: Victory is yours. It has already been accomplished. Dude, you worked for the New York Times and you left it voluntarily — to work for ESPN, 80% of which is owned by Disney and the other 20% by Hearst. In 21st-century America, it is not possible to be any more inside than this. You cannot stick it to the Man — you are the Man. It’s best that you, and people in similar positions, realize that as soon as possible; and forego the illusion that you have some outsider status that exempts you from criticism like that presented by Emily Bell. Whether you agree with Bell’s argument or not, get used to it: you’re going to hear a lot more along those lines as long as you continue to be the Man.

The NYTimes has a very bad article on Tesla and auto dealer franchise laws. The worst bit is this mind blowing contradiction:

…most states have some limits on direct sales by auto manufacturers…These rules are generally meant to ensure competition, so that buyers can shop around for discounts from independent dealers, and to protect car dealers and franchises from being undercut by the automakers.

So there you have it, limits on direct sales ensure competition and protect car dealers from being undercut by the automakers. Sorry, but you can’t have it both ways. Which view is correct? Let’s begin with some background (drawing on a great article by LaFontaine and Morton).

Franchising arose early on in the history of the auto industry because, as in other industries, franchising can take advantage of local knowledge and at the same time control agency costs. Franchising rules evolved in Coasean fashion so that manufacturers could not expropriate dealers and dealers could not expropriate manufacturers. managers. To encourage dealers to invest in a knowledgeable sales and repair staff, for example, manufactures promised dealers exclusive franchise (i.e. they would not license a competitor next door). But with exclusive franchises dealers would have an incentive to take advantage of their monopoly power and increase profits by selling fewer units at higher profits. Selling fewer units, however, works to the detriment of the manufacturer and the public (ala the double marginalization problem (video)). public. Thus the manufactures required dealers buy and sell a minimum quantity of cars, so-called quantity forcing. Selling more units is exactly what we want a monopoly to do, so these restrictions benefited manufactures and consumers.

Politics, however, began to intrude into this Coasean world in the 1940s and 1950s. Auto sales accounts for some 20% of sales taxes and auto dealers employ a lot of people so when it came to a battle in the state legislatures the auto dealers trumped the manufacturers. The result was franchise laws that were increasingly biased towards dealers. In essence, exclusive franchises became locked into place, manufactures lost the right to add dealers even with population expansion, quantity forcing became illegal and dealer termination became all but impossible.

The result of dealer rent seeking has been higher auto prices for consumers, about 6% higher according to one (older) study by the FTC. Consumers have been stiffed in other ways as well. In some states, for example, manufacturers were required to reimburse dealers for a repair under warranty whatever amount the dealers would have charged consumers for the same repair not under warranty. As a result, dealers had an incentive to increase their price to consumers because that increased what they would be reimbursed for repairs under warranty. The franchise laws have also resulted in a highly inefficient distribution of dealers as populations have moved but dealers have been frozen into place. The inability to close, move close,move or consolidate dealers has impacted the big-3 American firms especially because they have older networks. As a result, a typical GM dealer sells 377 cars a year while a typical Honda dealer sells 1,062 and a Toyota dealer 1,488.

Tesla wants to sell directly to the public but more generally what we need is torestore the Coasean balance,put dealers and manufacturers back on a equal footing and let the market decide the most efficient means of retailing and distributing automobiles.

Addendum: Dan Don Crane and Lynne Kieslinghave further posts on this topic.