The unasked question here (and in the case of ISPs, health care, and other domains where constructing a working market is difficult) is "Should all enterprises be investor-owned and capitalized through private markets?"
Air travel is such a heavily subsidized and generally government-involved business that investor-owned, TBTF airlines are a travesty of capitalism. Why not cut through the bullshit and make airlines into competing cooperatives chartered by the government? Or some other structure that is not a charade covering what amounts to a skimming of subsidies into investors', or in this case pilots', pockets or outright rescue of investors from a situation of their own making?
The situation is inherently corrupting. The only way to win is to tilt the flow of subsidies in your direction. In this case the senior pilots win because they institutionalized their levers of power.
Many people here fantasize about a libertarian approach to problems like this. Does anyone here have a serious libertarian model for air travel? Land acquisition for airports and surrounding infrastructure? Would Boeing exist without airplanes being a superpower strategic good?
Air travel is such a heavily subsidized and generally government-involved business that investor-owned, TBTF airlines are a travesty of capitalism. Why not cut through the bullshit and make airlines into competing cooperatives chartered by the government? Or some other structure that is not a charade covering what amounts to a skimming of subsidies into investors', or in this case pilots', pockets or outright rescue of investors from a situation of their own making?
The situation is inherently corrupting. The only way to win is to tilt the flow of subsidies in your direction. In this case the senior pilots win because they institutionalized their levers of power.
Many people here fantasize about a libertarian approach to problems like this. Does anyone here have a serious libertarian model for air travel? Land acquisition for airports and surrounding infrastructure? Would Boeing exist without airplanes being a superpower strategic good?