For many reasons, I'm not inclined to think that cheap flying is a good thing:
- Tickets remain expensive by the standards of most households - even prohibitively so, as, in any given year, most Americans do not purchase a commercial airline ticket - so it is primarily a benefit to those who are at least sort of well off.
- There's no way to rack up a person's carbon emissions so quickly as a few flights around the world or even across the continent. Any sophisticate who weekends in Europe a couple of times annually, or who flies across the country regularly, is doing as much damage as the lowbrow who commutes 30 minutes in his F-350 five times per week.
- The hollowing-out effect that flying has had on other forms of transportation, especially rail, has been awful. There's no way that we'd lack the collective political will to build and maintain a better passenger rail system if flying were as inaccessible as it once was.
- Huge amounts of public funds have been wasted on airport construction as a "public benefit" that will catalyze "economic development." The benefits are obviously not as widely distributed as their proponents claim, and the result is almost always a massive, lavish facility built on the outskirts of town, that many citizens will never use or even visit, and that catalyzes the development of a sprawling mess of hotels and shopping centers well outside of the city center more than anything else. (Contrast this with the siting of most of the US's once-great train stations.)
And all of this for the sake of an industry that consistently fails to earn a profit! The idea that the biggest problem with today's airline industry is that you need to pay extra for your luggage is ridiculous. It is a dirty, corrupt, and inequitable business that would be unsustainable were it not for significant and protracted government largess. And it is disgusting.
That's an argument for...
- I'm really not sure, cartels are good so long as the burden is born by statistically better-off people
- a carbon tax
- also put in a carbon tax, and much more importantly stop subsidizing motordom, and you'll have much less hollowed out railroads. It's the roads that have hollowed out what should still be the useful functions of the rail network far more than flying has
- generally not subsidizing transportation as Americans are amongst the most fond.
Why that has anything to do with being asked to pay for the quantity of luggage you bring is beyond me.
Poll
