It does matter if we're going to limit the discussion to realistic scenarios. I'm all about considering various pitfalls, but let's at least focus on what's most likely to happen, both good and bad. My point is that it helps guys in understaffed categories get out of trips that they cannot otherwise drop.

What it would also do is penalize guys that simply fly their schedule, or fly less. Assume the total amount of money we're going to wrestle from the company is finite. Whatever is allocated to payrate increases can be distributed evenly, or it can reward overtime especially. Favoring overtime means less money per unit of work in the pockets of those flying normal schedules. 1.5>80 is a method for displacing "raise" money from those pilots who fly normal schedules, to those who fly more.

You can use the same argument against greenslips.

I think you are looking at the most innocent and beneficial aspect of OOBS, because you like them.

There is nothing unrealistic about my argument: 1) the SB/SWF system allows pilots to privately steer open time to some, above WS pick-up limits, what I described as mining open time. 2) the OOBWS system allows some flying to be transferred between bases, but (thankfully) within pick-up limits for the pilots concerned, and 3) OOBS would allow greater transfer/mining of open time between bases, to a greater extent.

Or they could hire Russian hackers to steal the trips from the pot and award them before the lines are even built in PBS!
I am against out of base anything beyond what we have but the above is a little far fetched!

Absolutely true, but how is that different from the current 2X GS system? Does that not also reward overtime and displace what might otherwise have been "raise" money? Again, I'm not sold either way, but I'm all about finding ways to put more money in our collective pockets other than simply in hourly rates.

One could say the same about you looking at the most egregious aspect because you don't. ;)

In any case, I'm not sold either way. I do know that other pilot groups, e.g., SWA, have it and like it.

I'm not saying that it's not possible. I'm saying that I find it unlikely that a group of pilots would select one of their own to bid a base in which none of them wants to be in order to mine that base's trips, trips that they could all hold on their own were they each to bid there.

I agree that, to the extent of drops and pickups, some amount of time in one base would be flown by pilots in another base. The question is whether the "harm" in that is worse than allowing some pilots to drop trips they don't want and others to pick up flying when their category shows little to no open time.

Not really. For starters, no schedule is ever published with a GS in it.

Let's say our category pays $100/hour. Say the ALV is 83. Using 1.5>80, PBS might build me a line at 90 hours where I get paid $9,500, or an average of $105.56/hour, and you might get a line of 80 hours, paid $100/hour on average. You might be senior, but that's just the way the cookie crumbles under PBS.

So right there, the 1.5>80 system has penalized a pilot on an arbitrary basis, disregarding seniority. It's built in.

The GS system, which the 1.5>80 would either replace contractually, or make irrelevant in practice, creates no such inequity, because the flying is not routine. But, in a tight staffing situation, it does come into play, and it then rewards pilots for helping the company's problem. In doing so, it changes the average rate of that pilot, bit it does it 1) by respecting seniority, and 2) by ensuring a distribution of GS throughout the list, before the senior pilot gets a second helping.

1.5>80, OTOH, does not have the second provision listed above, AND it can be bypassed by the loophole of SB/SWF, which confers the right to a senior pilot to pick-up then distribute flying as he sees fit, disregarding any WS pick-up limit. The pilot immediately junior to him would not be able to pick-up the trip, and depending on his social connections, would not get the flying before a junior guy that swapped with the senior-most of the three.

So no, you can't really make the same arguments about the GS system. The GS system comes with protections, but 1.5>80 is a free-for-all, where PBS and other pilots determine who gets a raise, and who doesn't.

Our posts crossed. I highlighted some of the differences in a post to Scambo.

1) GS are not routine, but 1.5>80 can create such inequities as part of the line construction process.
2) WS ARE routine, so they can increase the average payrate differential under 1.5>80.
3) SB/SWF are also routine, and can further increase the differential based upon who you know, not seniority.
4) When GS do come into play, they come with protections.

It's not too far-fetched. The flight attendants have been doing it for years.
The Portland mafia was incredibly efficient at harvesting trips until management cracked down on them.