But if I'm out and about and want the next best thing, it's Hardee's sourdough bacon cheeseburger for me.
Posted on 07/29/2010 12:40:29 AM PDT by B-Chan
I don’t know about you, but I love to fly. Put me in a Boeing 707, a Douglas DC-8, or a Convair 990 and I’m literally in heaven. Once we’re safely aloft I sit back in my roomy, brocade-upholstered seat, loosen my tie, stretch my legs all the way out, and call that slender, honey-voiced 23-year-old stewardess in the attractive Pucci uniform over there to bring me a pillow, an aspirin, and an Old Fashioned. Later, she’ll give me a deck of cards and I and maybe even sit in the empty seat beside me for a hand of gin rummy or two. Then, after a delicious steak, I’ll light up a Chesterfield and OH WAIT THE WORLD MAKES SENSE I MUST BE DREAMING I’M IN MAD MEN AGAIN
For those of you under age of thirty, air travel is at best a necessary evil. Traveling by commercial airline is an exercise in inconvenience, mistreatment, humiliation, discomfort, and disrespect. It’s no big deal. That’s just the way it is.
But it wasn’t always. Once upon a time, airline travel in the U.S was convenient, classy, comfortable, and even a little bit glamorous. Once upon a time, men wore coats and ties when they took a flight somewhere; ladies wore gloves and hats; and children were dressed in their Sunday best when they got on board an airplane.
Not today. We all agree: today, U.S. airlines suck. But why? Why did it all change?
In a word: DEREGULATION.
(Excerpt) Read more at plymouthbelvedere.wordpress.com ...
Oh boy, who doesn’t want higher prices in order to keep the riff-raff out?/s
It took me awhile to catch onto the satire.
“Why did it all change?”
You may as well ask why did SOCIETY all change? It’s doubly ironic, in that today’s adults were the most privileged, pampered, most wealthy kids in the history of Planet Earth. Now they seem all to want to repress everyone else, suppress all behaviors which are in any way different or unique, and delete from society the very privileges they inherited from their parents.
Social historians will be wrestling with this fact centuries from now.
Why would it not be possible for an airline company to offer an all-first-class flight at commensurate rates, if there were a market for such a thing?
The commonizing of the space age has turned aircraft from wonders to a faster traveling form of Greyhound bus. And so progress goes.
We can thank deregulation for what little sanity the airline business still has. If it were completely run by the gummit now... it is to shiver to think about it.
The media and the GREEN BS type issues has "everyone" wanting to do better, smaller, more efficient. "Everyone" is the group of people who don't realize the re-programing that is going daily.
Rush Limbaugh and just a few other thinkers say SCREW UM!
STFU N00B
But who cares, right? Brawndo's got what plants crave! It's got electrolytes!
Domestic bicycle manufacturing could be a viable industry again. Change the rules of the game (place tariffs on cheap, imported bikes; subsidize domestic bicycle makers, etc.) and suddenly there is "a market for such a thing".
The market is a guide, not a dictator. The choice of the majority of the buying public is not always right. By the free choice of the sandwich-buying public, McDonald's sells more food than the all-organic hippie sandwich shop down the street — but that doesn't mean McDonald's food is better than the organic sandwiches the hippies sell. In fact, the opposite is true: Big Macs will kill you if you eat enough of them. But thanks to advertising, an inferior product (the Big Mac) can be made to "satisfy" the customer more than a superior product (the tofu and goat cheese on rye) and "win" the economic game.
Free markets are supposedly regulated by independent persons acting in accordance with rational self-interest. That's a fine theory. Unfortunately, the average person is more or less incapable of reason, and thus is incapable of discovering his or her best interests. Instead, the average person acts according to their emotions — the way they feel at any given time.
And people who act in this way can never truly be independent persons; they are slaves to their nerve endings, childlike, credulous, and capable of being easily manipulated by advertising and peer pressure into making "free choices' about what to buy. Thus "billions and billions sold"; thus the sorry state of U.S. airlines today.
Several all-business-class airlines have been started; all have fallen victim to the rules of the economic game as currently played. In a contest where the game is rigged to favor the cheap over the good, it is impossible for the good to win.
Oh pooh, don’t tell me what my best interests are. You are being fascist.
By all means underwrite an airline venture offering all-first-class service and see if it, ahem, takes off. If people don’t want something bad enough to buy it when the market offers it to them, then they shouldn’t have it forced upon them.
The article seeks to avoid the fact that the decline came =with= regulation and government-supported protectionism and government-supported trade unions. The good days were the during the earlier relatively free market.
A market that airlines figured they could safely kill since they didn’t want a chance at competitors displacing them. And the government claimed to be terrified of looking bad if the US airlines died like the government regulated railroads, besides, it seemed like it’d buy some votes.
By the time “deregulation” (in name only for the most part) came we had already lost the days so fondly recalled. The author’s mind goes from the sixties to post-deregulation while conveniently forgetting how things really were under regulation between the early 70’s and the early 80’s (remember, “deregulation” was so dangerous it had to be phased in from 79 to 85.) Flying in the days of OPEC embargoes, strikes, strict route controls and government subsidies was not the days of comfort and gentility.
But what if you don't know them? Shouldn't somebody tell you?
You are being fascist.
Me? A state-worshiper? A member of a pagan, völkisch blood-and-soil cult? Not a chance. I'm a monarchist.
By all means underwrite an airline venture offering all-first-class service and see if it, ahem, takes off.
I'll need any army of lawyers and lobbyists to convince the Powers That Be to rig the game in my favor.
If people don’t want something bad enough to buy it when the market offers it to them, then they shouldn’t have it forced upon them.
Why not? Where is that eternal principle engraved in stone?
Fact: Most people don't know what they want. They are not intellectually equipped to discover their best interests via reason. Instead, they "want" what Lady Gaga or Oprah or Al Gore tell them they want. And, therefore, since someone is going to be telling the average Joe what he wants in any case, who better than an educated, Christian elite with a sense of noblesse oblige? That system worked great for 1800 years. It could work again.
But if I'm out and about and want the next best thing, it's Hardee's sourdough bacon cheeseburger for me.
Private jet service siphoned off the high end traffic.
Ahem...always room for a second opinion....
Maybe, tell us more.
One good thing about Michigan, though, is Buddy's Pizza.
1970s type service is still (sort of) available.
But you have to pay for a first-class fare to get it.
I’m unwilling to pay for that service.
Unfortunately, coach class is little more than a cattle car.
So I will drive as much as 8 hours instead of flying.
You’re confused. That Old World air travel you miss so much? It still exists, right here in America: it’s called the private jet. The people who could afford to fly back then are the people who can afford to fly private jets today. Back then, the flying elite looked down on bus travelers the same way private jet passengers look down on commercial flight today.
Commercial airplanes are flying Greyhounds now.
And deregulation wasn’t the cause. You note that they used to charge Neiman Marcus prices, and now deregulation forces them to charge Walmart prices. But retail isn’t regulated, and Neiman Marcus still charges Neiman Marcus prices. But it’s only for the elite.
So here’s the solution: buy your own jet. You get to dress your 23-year-old stewardess however you want. Hell, she’ll sit in your lap if you pay her enough. And you can eat and drink like a king.
Can’t afford it? Then get in the cattle car with the rest of the Great Unwashed.
There actually might be a market for such a thing. I understand there are some European airlines that offer this kind of service. I never heard of anything like it until someone else mentioned it to me.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.