G'day Brad,
>And we have gone from having one serious commercial aviation accident
>per 140 million miles flown in 1970 to having one serious commercial
>aviation accident per 1.4 billion miles flown today. You can indict
>capitalism for many reasons, but an increased likelihood of dying in
>an airliner crash is not one of them...
I don't question your figures, but would point out that capitalism is not a
static thing. We haven't had a fatal Qantas crash yet (as the Dustin the
Rainman told Tom the Wally), but we seem to be recording an amazing
increase in 'technical problems' and 'near-misses' (who was it said a near
miss must mean a hit? But I digress) in Australia of late. And
capitalism's dynamics have lately contributed to corporatisation,
privatisation and merger in an industry marked by some real world-wide
profit problems over the last decade and a bit. Planes are getting better,
sure - capitalism should be about market-selected innovations. But the
quality of the newly built plane ain't the only determinant in the
equation. You use a 1970 v. 1999 comparison, but for much of the world,
airlines were publicly owned / tightly regulated for most of that time
(during which a fair bit of that improvement must have manifested), and the
consequences of the great transformation might be some time in imposing
themselves statistically. It might be that we have some hairy moments to
look forward to (I notice the almost coincidental Cote d'Ivoire crash, with
twice the LA crash body-count, hasn't rated much of a mention) as the
deregulatory/privateering moment gradually works away at all those wires,
welds, pilots and ground crews. It eventually happened with Yorkshire
water, Auckland electricity, Melbourne gas, Sydney trains and outback
telephones - or so it seems to me.
Waddyareckon?
Cheers,
Rob.
