REH:
I can't believe I'm agreeing with Harry but I do on this
one.
Your statement is not correct from my
experience. It is not the fear of flying that stops my
friends and students from using the planes. It is a $400 one way
ticket to Tulsa or Chicago (coach class) from New York that makes it
impossible. You can forget about trying to get to Knoxville or
Chattanooga. It is not really rational to consider
that air flight, with or without terrorists, can compete with transportation
systems that have up to 25,000 deaths a year, one at a time, when considering
fear.
It is not more rational to take a car. You just
believe yourself to be in control. If you could feel the highway
and the network of traffic then you would know what a tremendously dangerous
thing it is to drive on a network with varying degrees of competence, age and
substance abuse at the wheel, not to mention sizes of vehicles, compared to
the airlines.
It is the spectacular crash with the fireball and the
terrorist behind the wheel with the bound female attendant at his side with
her throat cut that gets everyone's attention. The great number of
people who died were not in the planes. Very few planes hit
buildings and very few planes fall from the sky.
Ray: I'm wasn't talking about anything rational,
like people making calculated estimates of the risk of not getting safely
from point A to point B via various modes of transportation. In an
actuarial sense,it is indeed true that flying is still far safer
than driving, but people are not actuaries or statisticians, and they're
not even really rational much of the time. They don't look at things that
way. It may largely be a matter of feeling you have control over your
circumstances. I've seen accidents on some fairly long highway
trips. While I told myself I'd better be careful so the same thing
doesn't happen to me, the accidents did not make me feel like pulling over,
getting out of the car and walking. On the other hand, I've been on some
very bad flights. I'm sure I was still safer than when in a car, but I
just wanted out of there. It's not a matter of actual risk, but of
perceived risk, and really a matter of emotional discomfort.
This is still a very genteel war and the plane tickets would
be sold if we could afford them. Airplanes are like
operas and good Broadway Tickets, the domain of the rich. (Note
that two good theater tickets can cost as much as that $400 one way coach
flight!) Airplanes should be simple methods of transportation that
tie commerce, cities, families and recreation together for a better more
humane society. Here I don't agree with Harry. I
believe government should stimulate transportation in the air just as they do
with highways on the ground. Air service should mix cultures,
provide interesting connections between professions and help cities to grow
and change through increased mixed traffic. Something that
economics has promised but never been able to deliver. There is
a better record for amounts of human happiness sitting on a 100 foot high
pole, praying to god for ecstasy, fasting and flaggelating one's
bottom than there is for money. Note that the size of the
population doing that for pleasure and the size of the population that gets to
experience the Fall Hijincks in Paris every year is roughly
equivelant.
I don't agree that it's a genteel war. It's a
war that will have people afraid for a very long time, and its economic
costs will be very large. It's already resulted in a general slowdown of
activity, massive layoffs, a reluctance to spend on consumers goods,
increased security costs, etc. And I don't agree that flying is the
preserve of the rich. The proportion of the general population which
depends on it has grown enormously over the years. I do agree with some
of the other things you say in the above paragraph, though I think I would
still rather have the choices money brings than sit on a 100 foot pole or
flaggelate my bottom!
You guys went to Russia, I lived among the Russians
who came here. There is definitely something that you are missing
that the Communist Socialist government gave their people.
Something that they resent not having here and if they could make a living
there they would return to in a minute. That is a pretty lousy
record for us in the area of human intelligence and cultural
depth.
I spent a month in Russia in 1995, well
after the collapse of the communist system, and many people I talked to
regreted the demise of that system. However, many others did
not. So it was a bit of mixed bag. When I was a kid, I knew
Ukranians who had lived through the famine of the early days of the
revolution, and had managed to get out. They did not want to go back,
and I doubt that any of them did.
As for death and destruction on the airlines or from
terrorists..... I have more trouble with the metal shavings that
you breath in the subways. A slow death from silicosis is not one
that I would choose over the spectacular fight with a terrorist in the
sky. I have many friends now who are dying from the results of
their breathing industrial pollutants. (Just like in the Socialist
industrialized countries. No one is an angel on this one.) It is
horrible and disgusting. Anyone who wants to give up their seats
on the airlines to the rest of us, when we can afford to fly,
would find that planes are just like buses. They would be well
used if you could get a seat and pay a reasonable fare. The
people you refer to are the rich cats who consider their tuchas worth more
then they really happen to be in the scheme of things and who are terribly
destressed at the destruction of the Fall Party season in
Paris.
Again, it's a matter of how people perceive and
evaluate risks, not what those risks actually are.
*NOTE: This in no way means that I would agree with the
recent criticisms of America from the radical Muslem crowd. They would have had it much worse under the British 100
years ago and the Empire would have cared less than we do. Britain
would have marched to Mecca just to see what that Rock looked like and it
probably would have ended up in someone's private collection or maybe in the
British Museum of Natural History. (Been there and know it first
hand.) If you don't believe me, then read that
modern American "Tory" Constitutional Lawyer Ann Coulter's theory that we
should conquer them & require conversion to Christianity in a dopey sort
of neatness. Muslim fanatics have no original claim on idiocy
or dopeyness.
A second point about their Chauvinism.
What would happen to a Jew or Gentile who happened to wander
into Mecca or Medina???? And yet it is hard to find a
Muslim anywhere that doesn't agree with the Mecca closed
policy while everyone else's Sacred places are open to
colonization! They complain about Americans but they act in
Jerusalem like American Sportsmen do when they are told they can't climb
Devils Tower during the Sacred Ceremonials of the Sioux people being held
there. Thinking about all of this has really made me much more
radical. The cold hard fact is that most of the Evangelizing
religions of the world would be happier if Judaism and Cherokee Religion
didn't exist and we were all creatures of God according to their sacred
visions.
Is it amazing to you that Airplanes and provincialism
mix so poorly? Those terrorists made the old "deal with the
devil" to have a good life for a few months or years but when the jig was
up they had to pay the devil. How much would any of them paid to
get out of that deal? We will never know. How
much power would the Bin Ladens of the world have if everyone could afford an
airplaine ticket to go visit someplace different from their preconceptions and
get to know a few of the locals. Bin Laden or whoever
murdered those people got my attention. It is time for us to do
better at this thing we call living.
No comment on the above paragraphs, except that
fanaticism is fanaticism. I recall reading that early Christians
willingly entered Roman arenas to be eaten by lions because they would be
instantly rewarded with the riches of heaven. I guess they were dying to
get to a better place.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2001 1:18
PM
Subject: Re: A hypothetical exam essay
question
I'll take a wild guess. It's not really
health of the airlines or the airline industry that's at stake, but the
airline industry as a symbol of economic power, prestige and
certainty. An America without planes flying, even if those planes flew
mostly empty, would be a tremendous blow to the American self-image.
The American Government's strategy has to be one of saying: "Look, the
planes are flying. They're safe. Trust us, we'll keep them
safe. Now go back an use them."
Subsidizing individual consumers of air
travel probably wouldn't work. It's not an economic issue - something
that people would respond to rationally. Amercans who fly can afford
to do so. Given the shock of seeing four aircraft hijacked and crashed
within the space of a few hours, the issue is one of overcoming
tremendous fear and uncertainty and a reluctance to go anywhere near an
airport no matter how cheap the flight. The only way you can overcome
that in a relatively short period is by a symbolic demonstration that very
strongly appeals to emotion.
Ed Weick
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, September 28, 2001
11:35 AM
Subject: A hypothetical exam essay
question
Background:
(Excerpt
from an article forwarded to me today)
From Slate magazine, an article by
Steven E. Landsberg subtitled "The airline bailout enriches stockholders
at the expense of taxpayers:"
"Let's be clear about what this bailout
will do for the flying public: exactly nothing. It won't keep any planes
in the air that wouldn't have been there anyway. Airplanes are flown when
it's profitable to fly them, and they're not flown when it's not
profitable to fly them. Giving cash to the airlines doesn't change the
profitability of any given flight, so it doesn't affect any decision about
which flights to offer. <snip>
So, what does the airline
bailout accomplish? One thing and one thing only—it enriches the millions
of people who own airline stocks at the expense of the millions of others
who don't. And in the process, it undermines the very principles that we
uphold and our enemies want to destroy.
Hypothetical exam question:
Is Landsberg right? If so, why are
governments not bailing out the airlines by making it less expensive
for people to fly? Why is there no vociferous lobby for reducing ticket
prices, perhaps through a voucher system temporarily reducing the costs of
flying? Wouldn't this be a healthier form of bailout both for the airlines
and the public than just giving cash to the airlines? Wouldn't a
reduction in ticket prices to the consumer be more likely to
maintain jobs and lead to a resumption of normal airline activity? Are
resources that might be used against terrorism being needlessly
wasted by a straight "bailout" of the airlines? Discuss.
Regards,
Gail
