Even on a plane full of game theorists, willing to bid up to a million dollars, you're still probably miles away from the amount this will cost in negative PR, to say the least.

Sure, you can try to go to the courts to get monetary compensation for that, but you can't force them to provide the service.

The public has pretty well demonstrated that they prefer lower-price tickets over a higher-quality flying experience. So the airlines are giving the public what (the majority of) the public wants - a crappy, but cheap, experience.

In future one might consider, "how likely are they to violently drag me off a plane?"

That's the source of the brand damage here: many people (rightly or not) will be wondering whether the same thing might happen to them if they fly United, and decide it's not worth the risk.

Plus, I am not a lawyer, but I think IDB means just that -- boarding. Once you board the airline cannot change its mind, not for commercial reasons (although it might be able to weasel out of that by getting everyone off and re-boarding without some people). Again, take with a grain of salt; this is just what I heard.

Lots of things were legally allowed established practices until they were not; people realized they were unethical and immoral, hopefully people will begin to realize this practice is also unethical and work to abolish legal overselling

But overbooking is almost certainly right. Look, fact is that some pax won't show up for their reservation. Without overbooking, planes would fly emptier, wasting money and damaging the environment.

The airlines have fairly good predictions in most cases, and people have different preferences, so that almost always in the small number of cases where there is not enough space you can get people to get bumped voluntarily. It's really a win-win.

Sure, the flight would be delayed, perhaps significantly, but the impact of that would pale in comparison to this horrendous PR controversy.