Originally Posted by tomgoodman

"Throw away" or "trade away" items (sometimes truly absurd ones), are very common in contract opening offers. Each side must demonstrate "good faith bargaining", i.e. movement toward a settlement, so they load their ship with plenty of jettisonable stores. Sometimes they will anonymously float out an idea to see what kind of fire it draws, and if it gets clobbered, deny all knowledge of it.
The real danger is not that pilots will yield to an outrageous demand, but that they will give up something of real value to make it go away.