WeeWillyWinky, I'm not disagreeing with the requirement for overbooking - the industry would go bust in a week without it - but in the case I discussed before it was a question of overbooking a once weekly holiday flight to St. Lucia. There was little chance of my holding mutliple reservations to get there, given the lack of alternative direct flights, or deciding to travel the next day (there would be no flight!)... thus I'm not sure that airlines' overbooking (yield management) systems are as perfect as you think. Yes, executives flying between London and Amsterdam are buying business class mostly so they can change their flights - and LHR-AMS has a flight every hour or so. But on some routes pax are buying business for the comfort factor and are much, much less likely to change their bookings - e.g. LGW-UVF.
It seems to me greedy on the part of the airlines that they are so concerned to fill to brimming their premium cabins that they are prepared to hack off regular customers to achieve this. I don't know if this is particularly bad at VS (a sample of 2 is inconclusive).