memes

you may not transfer your earned points for cold drink upgrades as a member of the Subway Conductor Platinum club to any other sandwich tier and if you do not lower your voice, i will summon the restaurant police and they will escort you away from the service counter with extreme prejudice where you will lose your club membership and forfeit all earned points. and this will go on your credit report and your name will appear on the national Do Not Feed list.

literal credit cards.

here's an article (aimed at the capitalist/investor class) about what they call "co-branded" cards and their "value"
https://www.tdsecurities.com/ca/en/co-brand-implications-for-airlines-credit-card-issuers

Airline co-brand credit cards have become increasingly more important to the airlines, which appear to have more leverage than the card issuers. The economics to the airlines from these programs are also typically based on revenue sharing, which is in their favor.

We believe airline loyalty and co-brand credit card programs are undervalued in the market. One U.S. airline has disclosed that their co-branded card contributed U$6.8B in 2023 revenue; and the company management believes this can grow to U$10B by 2030. We expect to see other airlines making earnings contributions from co-branded credit cards available during investor days later in the year.

here is a nerdwallet review with recommendations for 5 different credit card lines offered by United Airlines (scroll to the recommendation after the Chase Sapphire card)
https://www.nerdwallet.com/best/credit-cards/united-airlines-cards

the value proposition, as i understand it, is loyalty within an airline network. the cards generally come with travel perks, like access to swank dining lounges in certain airports where there are tons of comfortable seats with chargers, free food and drinks. i traveled with someone who had one and they could get us all in with their membership. it was ridiculous. all i could think was how the entire airport could be like that, except they make the rest of it shitty on purpose.

and of course the "points" towards travel and upgrades, which are often 2-5x when spending money at the airline. the first article discusses in more detail what the airlines get out of it, but generally rewards programs tend to induce more frequent purchasing especially because points can expire. not to mention, they can be shifted to induce making reservations during times where demand has slacked. and the very "best" cards have annual fees, which more or less offset any of the costs of the perks for a typical traveler.

you have to be a pretty hardcore, big spender to really churn the shit out of those programs to make your money back... and at that point, you're probably exactly the kind of customer the airline wants to lock in. not to mention, you'll push others who travel with you be on your flight, probably, if its family etc.

Car loans

If your savings account is interest bearing, theoretically you'd be ahead by the amount of interest generated by the price of that pizza that you can defer paying until later.

In practice, you'll lose out because most loans come with a one-time establishment fee or something.

The reality of this would be determined at the time of a socialist group taking charge of society and being able to enact these reforms; and would thus be decided by the material reality of that time. In reality socialist policy in the past has simply been to massively reduce the price of these staple goods, and this does well to prevent hunger.