Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisV
I definitely wasn't coming to those sort of crypto-Marxist conclusions though (you filthy communist). I'm fine with the way the airline industry operates. I'm satisfied that what people want is the lower possible fares and that the sort of price targeting airlines do ("For just $30 upgrade to legroom that will fit normal human legs!") is the means they use to accomplish what people want.
It's notable that other service industries do not operate that way. We're not all staying in horrible hotels with "Upgrade your bed to bedbug-free for only $50!" options. Hotels tend to compete on service and quality just as much as price, because again, that turns out to be what people want.
If your point is more "yes, but just blind provision of 'what people want' degrades and cheapens human existence" then sure, but that's a feature of capitalism writ large and I'm skeptical of the ability of regulation to fix it in every instance. The airline industry also probably wouldn't be in my top 1000 examples of that problem, and in the scheme of things is pretty minor. Most people don't fly often. It's not like regulations designed to make workplaces more pleasant, which affect people's day to day lives.
It was that (in the original thread) and United beating the piss out of their passengers was, I thought, a great example of the bolded since some would deny it.
Also I disagree that while we're maybe you and I aren't staying in horrible hotels with "Upgrade your bed to bedbug-free for only $50!" options, that actually is pretty much how the hotel industry and other service industries operate. It's just that the airlines are extremely transparent and unscrupulous about it.
But the fact that firms compete on service and price and they are correlated is a trite truism and not worth talking about. Maybe I'm strawmanning but I suspect there's a form of cheap, filthy communist type talking points that might decry the Presidential Suite and business class because they are unequal, but I want to make sure it's clear that I'm not talking about that. The only point worth making here is that the price can go so low that the service veers to degrading; or that industries like airlines will market bait-and-switch rates to entice naive consumers, and create an incentive for consumers (naive and savvy alike) to purchase their way out of the miserable environment firms intentionally set out to create so they could advertise low rates. Or that firms can market such that people might engage in extremely unsavory behaviors for the opportunity to get goods/services extremely cheaply, or will violently lash out to protect a perceived good deal.
I come with no grand solution to any of that, and perhaps not even to insist we solve it. Only to note that market orthodox types will simply deny the condition itself. They argue that by providing what people want, the transaction is prima facie morally exculpatory, the market worked, quit complaining, and if there was anything wrong with this, consumers would walk away. My retort is glib of course but airlines provide very very easy targets to deconstruct this idea. When we see people barbarically battling it out of overhead space or to board first, we should see the fallacy here. No, they won't walk away, they may simply violently battle over the scraps of comfort made available to them, and commercial airlines practices like baggage fees create a host of negative externalities like extra wait times to get through security which increase passenger stress and wasted time and the like.
Last edited by DVaut1; 06-14-2017 at 05:00 AM.