12 ms·

The real thing to fear here is the normalization of violence. Good perspective in the WP comments: "The truly shocking thing here is that violence - with the

by vwcx 10y ago

The real thing to fear here is the normalization of violence. Good perspective in the WP comments: "The truly shocking thing here is that violence - with the real possibility of serious injury - was viewed as appropriate in a situation that was purely logistical. The airline wanted seats for its own employees. This was not an emergency - such as a terrorist attack or a drunk passenger endangering people. The lack of judgment is stunning. There is no way that violence was justified."

maxerickson 10y ago
Bah! Our society is less violent today than even recent history and continued reductions are more likely than not. Which I don't mean we shouldn't be concerned about unnecessary use of force, I mean that it requires very careful measurement to say that violence is being normalized (Rather than rejected).
67726e 10y ago
So what do you do when someone refuses to leave? I'm on the doctor's side, United should not overbook a plane and bump a customer to get their own people on board, but when someone refuses to leave what other options do you have? Taze him and drag him off? You'll have to use force to remove someone.
- crooked-v 10y ago
  Pick them up and carry them out. If necessary, bring in more people so that you can pick them up and carry them out without hurting them.
- gizmodo59 10y ago
  Why should he leave in the first place?
- KaoruAoiShiho 10y ago
  Raise the offer from $800, which is a low amount for an airline overbooking.
  - AdamJacobMuller 10y ago
    Reverse auction. Ok, we're offering $10,000 to anyone who gets off. I see twenty hands and we only need four. How about $8,000, ok, down to 19 hands. 10 minutes later, and they probably would have ended up paying LESS than $800/seat.
    - ksrm 10y ago
      What is to stop the four "winners" of this auction demanding more money? (Apart from the threat of assault of course!)
      - crooked-v 10y ago
        "Hey, so, these four are being jerks, so we're starting over again, but they're not allowed to participate."
        ksrm 10y ago
        So they're guaranteed a seat on the flight? Sounds like a winning strategy for them.
        mthoms 10y ago
        In this hypothetical scenario, they were already guaranteed a seat on the plane.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        acchow 10y ago
        Everyone gets a seat on the flight, except those volunteering to leave for the incentive...
  - antoniuschan99 10y ago
    From what I've read. Passengers offered $1500 to leave but the employees scoffed at that. Not sure how true though.
- mnglkhn2 10y ago
  You beat them senseless! No need to increase the incentives. Same should apply in employment contracts: Hey, Joe, listen here! I need to randomly cut your pay and if you don't take it I have security nearby to convince you! What else can you do?! Am I right?!
  - ajmurmann 10y ago
    Isn't that what we used to do with striking employees?
- avemg 10y ago
  There was no reason for this to even get to a point where physically removing a passenger who did nothing wrong was necessary. There was a very simple solution here: United wanted 4 seats, offered some vouchers, and got no takers. At that point, you start sweetening the deal for giving up your seat until you get some takers. I guarantee it wouldn't have taken much.
- mnglkhn2 10y ago
  If you pay me then you can come. It is called AirBnb. If you show up, settle in and then see me coming to you and asking you to go out since I need to use the room for myself for the night. Business-related stuff, you understand. How do you feel? It is dark, rainy and tomorrow at 8 you have a job interview in the city. You better pack up nicely and quickly, because I'll call the cops otherwise. Let me know if you feel like you'd understand the situation.
- devereaux 10y ago
  What you do when someone refuses to leave their seat? In the free market, you offer enough money until someone decides that the offer is good enough. Everybody has a price. In a fascist place, you call the thugs to punch an asian doctor unconscious, so that he can be dragged away from his (paid) seat, so that employees can take their (free) seats
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > So what do you do when someone refuses to leave? Pay another airline to ship your employees. This is nothing but horrible planning on United's part. Worst case: Google Maps says a 5-hour drive separates Chicago from Louisville.
- doktrin 10y ago
  Like the GP said : this was a logistical problem. They needed to get 4 employees from point A to point B 300 miles away. There are several ways of tackling this challenge : 1. continue escalating their shitty voucher bribes : sooner or later someone's gonna bite 2. arrange alternate air transport for the crew : they're already in an airport, and 2 of their competitors (American, Southwest) have multiple direct flights between Chicago and Louisville each day 3. arrange ground transport : otherwise known as renting a car and driving. Not super fun, but I've had ironically had United pull that shit on me from NYC to DC - i.e. they cancelled a flight and put us on an overnight coach bus. If it's good enough for customers, it's good enough for the crew. 4. suck it up and delay whatever flight that crew was scheduled for. It sucks, but it was their mistake to overbook and this isn't a safety-critical situation. Bottom line, there are about 951 different ways to tackle this problem and they chose the absolutely worst one out of the bunch. That kind of stupidity is legitimately impressive to behold.
  - flukus 10y ago
    > 4. suck it up and delay whatever flight that crew was scheduled for. It sucks, but it was their mistake to overbook and this isn't a safety-critical situation. Isn't there a good chance this happened anyway? I heard the plane was grounded for 2 hours.
  - FabHK 10y ago
    United might not have gotten their crew there in time to fly the next day given legal rest requirements, in which case a whole planeload of people (and possibly more, due to knock-on effects) might have been denied a flight.
- ptero 10y ago
  > So what do you do when someone refuses to leave? They should not get into this situation. At ALL. They should, like they normally do, handle overbooking at the boarding stage -- by either offering compensation or by issuing IDB checks to people they choose to prevent from boarding. What happened is major mistake and is morally despicable. I hope the passenger gets punitive damages.
rdtsc 10y ago
I think United were wrong here (maybe not legally) but morally and, even from their self-interest they took a major PR hit. People involved in this should be getting termination letters immediately. However, I am curious. Once they made the decision to remove him. How could they have done so if he didn't want to move? A taser?
- pbiggar 10y ago
  Revisited the decision to remove him.
- tomp 10y ago
  Maybe they could arrest him first? (Handcuffs and everything.) At least he would then realize that the situation is serious. Maybe also flash a gun or something...
  - devereaux 10y ago
    yeah let's start toting gun at people who refuse to give up their paid seats.
- pera 10y ago
  Randomly selecting passengers is not a bright idea, specially after they boarded into the airplane and are already seated. Just offer more money until you find a real volunteer: even if you have to pay $10k that's going to be much better economically and morally than forcing a random client out of a plane.
  - gdubs 10y ago
    Plus, there's no way it would get that high. Likely people were willing to be bought out, but wanted it to be "worth it". Fear of missing out would intervene very quickly, once the vouchers reached a certain point. Even on a plane full of game theorists, willing to bid up to a million dollars, you're still probably miles away from the amount this will cost in negative PR, to say the least.
inputcoffee 10y ago
I agree. I will point out that it is not United that "chose" violence. They asked the police to intervene. The state is supposed to have a monopoly on physical force, so they did. Now, for the police, violence has always been normal, or normalized. Consider the appropriate responses: 1. An airline should not call in the police when dealing with customers because they can reasonably expect violence. 2. The police should be retrained not to use violence. (Is this reasonable? You can imagine other instances where this where this would endanger them.) 3. As a society, we should not let police deal with "civil" situations where violence might occur. Perhaps we need another "force"? And so on. edit: clarity of last point
- mcv 10y ago
  > The police should be retrained not to use violence. (Is this reasonable? You can imagine other instances where this where this would endanger them.) That is absolutely reasonable. In many countries, police are trained to de-escalate potentially hostile situations. Only in the US and probably a couple of police states are police officers required to escalate to violence. And it's that tendency to escalate to violence that makes police a threat to society.
  - chimeracoder 10y ago
    > In many countries, police are trained to de-escalate potentially hostile situations. Only in the US and probably a couple of police states are police officers required to escalate to violence. It's not that simple. The police in the US are trained to de-escalate situations too. That doesn't stop police violence from occurring either in the US or elsewhere (there is no shortage of horrific stories of police abuse from western/central Europe as well, for example).
    - MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
      >The police in the US are trained to de-escalate situations too. Sure, but practically speaking if you have a realistic understanding of how most US police forces operate, you know that involving them in any kind of dispute greatly increases the chance of violence and harm for all involved. YMMV per locality and situation, but it's a pretty sensible rule of thumb that police involvement equals increased risk of violence, even in previously nonviolent conflicts. Which is sad and unnecessary. I think it directly results from the prevalence of "warrior mentality" in US police training and operations. They are trained to view all citizens as potential enemy combatants to be dominated, rather than innocents to be protected; they are trained to put the safety of themselves and other officers above the safety of the citizenry; and they are trained to, if not always escalate, certainly to err on the side of escalation if there is any hint of violent action or ill intent from the citizens they interact with.
Cshelton 10y ago
Agreed. I for one will never fly United again. I hope many others do the same. The way that was handled just goes to show the culture and way things are done at that airline. Nobody had the logic to say, wait a minute, this is wrong. Calling the police to throw a passenger who did nothing wrong off? Countless ways to handle this better. In the end, this is going to cost United a TON. United could have flown a plane with only those 4 employees on it for way less than the hit they are about to take.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- yeukhon 10y ago
  I don't know. I won't for sure, but will this news just die off after a week? I hope politicians step up and media pound on #unitedairline for weeks ripping up their past ugly treatments.
- ajmurmann 10y ago
  Good luck avoiding them. So frequently there are few options or you end up booking a flight with some alliance that then gets changed to be operated by someone else.
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  Will it really hurt them financially though? Significantly that is? Of course very few people will defend the airline's actions here, but while saying you won't ever fly United again is easy, is competition really strong enough among (in this case) US domestic airlines to enforce that boycott? I am guessing most people will simply opt for United if their flights are the most convenient for them, and leave the boycotting to someone else. I suspect not just because talk is cheap, but also because we have come to accept the current state of affairs surround air travel. From the moment you step into an airport until you depart at your destination, you submit. You'll docilely submit to standing in a queue being treated as a potential terrorist to the point of being shouted at if you don't comply fast enough or simply don't understand what is required of you, and (for most of us who can't afford first or business class) you'll submit to being treated as a third rate citizen. Flying means keeping your head down and submitting until you regain your sovereignty at your point of destination. Flying sucks, and we grudgingly accept it in lieu of alternatives, or because we actually believe that this treatment is necessary for our safety. Next week people will have mostly forgotten about this incident and will fly United without a second thought if the need arises.
ars 10y ago
> The real thing to fear here is the normalization of violence. Then there's not much to fear, because I don't see anyone at all finding this normal. It's on every news site and social network, everyone is deeply disturbed about these events. If anything this clearly shows that violence is FAR from normal in peoples' mind.
- randallsquared 10y ago
  The folks carrying out the orders found it normal. At least, we have no suggestion of any kind of extraordinary situation that justified them using violence.
djsumdog 10y ago
You should read "Debt the First 5,000 Years". It's an amazing book, and one of the things the author talks about is how debt requires violence. You can't put a man into debt unless you have the capacity for violence to enforce it. He doesn't pay you back, you break his legs, or take his sons and daughters as slaves. Today we have reduced the violence. Now companies ruin credit, get a Sheriff to evict someone from a house foreclosure, harass you with phone calls .. it's a less violence but it's still a form of it. This violence is also the origin of money (and debt). A conqueror takes a country. That leader needs to pay his army (they are expensive). So you take the area you took and they can only pay taxes with coins; your coins specifically. Only soldiers have those coins, so you leave a garrison that gets paid from the debt you put the people in. Before the US destroyed Libya, it had the highest GDP in Africa and no debt to the WMF. Today, the "rebels" the US imported are now in debt to the WMF and the people no longer have free electricity or education.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  > debt requires violence Any kind of property requires violence to exist. If I say "this is my land" and you disagree, the only way I can enforce my claim is through violence. Debt is just a specific case of a general phenomenon. (This applies to communal property, too.) > Before the US destroyed Libya, it had the highest GDP in Africa Do you have a source for this? I see Libya's GDP circa 2005 at $41 billion (in 2005 U.S. dollars) [1]. South Africa's 2005 GDP was $260 billion in current U.S. dollars [2] (bit over $200 billion in 2005 U.S. dollars [3]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Libya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Libya [2] http://data.worldbank.org/country/south-africa http://data.worldbank.org/country/south-africa [3] http://www.usinflationcalculator.com http://www.usinflationcalculator.com
  - muro 10y ago
    Maybe per person
  - sheepdestroyer 10y ago
    Property is theft already if you believe Proudhon.
panarky 10y ago
They're not just normalizing violence, they're routinely using state power as an agent of the corporation to resolve issues that don't involve criminal activity. This is an internal business matter for a private company, and United had several alternatives. United didn't have to overbook the flight in the first place. United could have accommodated their additional crew on a competing airline or private plane. United could have offered more compensation to volunteers to leave the flight. There is absolutely no reason for a taxpayer-funded police force to intervene in this private matter. The passenger violated no laws.
- nzlgraham 10y ago
  Actually the passenger did violate laws by refusing to leave when he was asked by a part who had the right to ask and the Police. He became a trespasser and can be removed by force if necessary.
cmurf 10y ago
I do not see how the passenger violated the contract of carriage. Section 25 doesn't apply, they were not denied boarding. And I don't see anything in section 21 they've violated either. Their forced removal seems to be the airline violating their own contract, not the passenger. https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriage.aspx#sec21 https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriag...
anon263626 10y ago
Exactly. Lining up intellectuals, journalists and others against the wall is one fewer, finite normalizations away from occurring.

by vwcx 10y ago

maxerickson 10y ago

Bah! Our society is less violent today than even recent history and continued reductions are more likely than not. Which I don't mean we shouldn't be concerned about unnecessary use of force, I mean that it requires very careful measurement to say that violence is being normalized (Rather than rejected).

67726e 10y ago

So what do you do when someone refuses to leave? I'm on the doctor's side, United should not overbook a plane and bump a customer to get their own people on board, but when someone refuses to leave what other options do you have? Taze him and drag him off? You'll have to use force to remove someone.

crooked-v 10y ago
Pick them up and carry them out. If necessary, bring in more people so that you can pick them up and carry them out without hurting them.
gizmodo59 10y ago
Why should he leave in the first place?
KaoruAoiShiho 10y ago
Raise the offer from $800, which is a low amount for an airline overbooking.
- AdamJacobMuller 10y ago
  Reverse auction. Ok, we're offering $10,000 to anyone who gets off. I see twenty hands and we only need four. How about $8,000, ok, down to 19 hands. 10 minutes later, and they probably would have ended up paying LESS than $800/seat.
  - ksrm 10y ago
    What is to stop the four "winners" of this auction demanding more money? (Apart from the threat of assault of course!)
    - crooked-v 10y ago
      "Hey, so, these four are being jerks, so we're starting over again, but they're not allowed to participate."
      - ksrm 10y ago
        So they're guaranteed a seat on the flight? Sounds like a winning strategy for them.
        mthoms 10y ago
        In this hypothetical scenario, they were already guaranteed a seat on the plane.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        acchow 10y ago
        Everyone gets a seat on the flight, except those volunteering to leave for the incentive...
- antoniuschan99 10y ago
  From what I've read. Passengers offered $1500 to leave but the employees scoffed at that. Not sure how true though.
mnglkhn2 10y ago
You beat them senseless! No need to increase the incentives. Same should apply in employment contracts: Hey, Joe, listen here! I need to randomly cut your pay and if you don't take it I have security nearby to convince you! What else can you do?! Am I right?!
- ajmurmann 10y ago
  Isn't that what we used to do with striking employees?
avemg 10y ago
There was no reason for this to even get to a point where physically removing a passenger who did nothing wrong was necessary. There was a very simple solution here: United wanted 4 seats, offered some vouchers, and got no takers. At that point, you start sweetening the deal for giving up your seat until you get some takers. I guarantee it wouldn't have taken much.
mnglkhn2 10y ago
If you pay me then you can come. It is called AirBnb. If you show up, settle in and then see me coming to you and asking you to go out since I need to use the room for myself for the night. Business-related stuff, you understand. How do you feel? It is dark, rainy and tomorrow at 8 you have a job interview in the city. You better pack up nicely and quickly, because I'll call the cops otherwise. Let me know if you feel like you'd understand the situation.
devereaux 10y ago
What you do when someone refuses to leave their seat? In the free market, you offer enough money until someone decides that the offer is good enough. Everybody has a price. In a fascist place, you call the thugs to punch an asian doctor unconscious, so that he can be dragged away from his (paid) seat, so that employees can take their (free) seats
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> So what do you do when someone refuses to leave? Pay another airline to ship your employees. This is nothing but horrible planning on United's part. Worst case: Google Maps says a 5-hour drive separates Chicago from Louisville.
doktrin 10y ago
Like the GP said : this was a logistical problem. They needed to get 4 employees from point A to point B 300 miles away. There are several ways of tackling this challenge : 1. continue escalating their shitty voucher bribes : sooner or later someone's gonna bite 2. arrange alternate air transport for the crew : they're already in an airport, and 2 of their competitors (American, Southwest) have multiple direct flights between Chicago and Louisville each day 3. arrange ground transport : otherwise known as renting a car and driving. Not super fun, but I've had ironically had United pull that shit on me from NYC to DC - i.e. they cancelled a flight and put us on an overnight coach bus. If it's good enough for customers, it's good enough for the crew. 4. suck it up and delay whatever flight that crew was scheduled for. It sucks, but it was their mistake to overbook and this isn't a safety-critical situation. Bottom line, there are about 951 different ways to tackle this problem and they chose the absolutely worst one out of the bunch. That kind of stupidity is legitimately impressive to behold.
- flukus 10y ago
  > 4. suck it up and delay whatever flight that crew was scheduled for. It sucks, but it was their mistake to overbook and this isn't a safety-critical situation. Isn't there a good chance this happened anyway? I heard the plane was grounded for 2 hours.
- FabHK 10y ago
  United might not have gotten their crew there in time to fly the next day given legal rest requirements, in which case a whole planeload of people (and possibly more, due to knock-on effects) might have been denied a flight.
ptero 10y ago
> So what do you do when someone refuses to leave? They should not get into this situation. At ALL. They should, like they normally do, handle overbooking at the boarding stage -- by either offering compensation or by issuing IDB checks to people they choose to prevent from boarding. What happened is major mistake and is morally despicable. I hope the passenger gets punitive damages.

rdtsc 10y ago

I think United were wrong here (maybe not legally) but morally and, even from their self-interest they took a major PR hit. People involved in this should be getting termination letters immediately. However, I am curious. Once they made the decision to remove him. How could they have done so if he didn't want to move? A taser?

pbiggar 10y ago
Revisited the decision to remove him.
tomp 10y ago
Maybe they could arrest him first? (Handcuffs and everything.) At least he would then realize that the situation is serious. Maybe also flash a gun or something...
- devereaux 10y ago
  yeah let's start toting gun at people who refuse to give up their paid seats.
pera 10y ago
Randomly selecting passengers is not a bright idea, specially after they boarded into the airplane and are already seated. Just offer more money until you find a real volunteer: even if you have to pay $10k that's going to be much better economically and morally than forcing a random client out of a plane.
- gdubs 10y ago
  Plus, there's no way it would get that high. Likely people were willing to be bought out, but wanted it to be "worth it". Fear of missing out would intervene very quickly, once the vouchers reached a certain point. Even on a plane full of game theorists, willing to bid up to a million dollars, you're still probably miles away from the amount this will cost in negative PR, to say the least.

inputcoffee 10y ago

I agree. I will point out that it is not United that "chose" violence. They asked the police to intervene. The state is supposed to have a monopoly on physical force, so they did. Now, for the police, violence has always been normal, or normalized. Consider the appropriate responses: 1. An airline should not call in the police when dealing with customers because they can reasonably expect violence. 2. The police should be retrained not to use violence. (Is this reasonable? You can imagine other instances where this where this would endanger them.) 3. As a society, we should not let police deal with "civil" situations where violence might occur. Perhaps we need another "force"? And so on. edit: clarity of last point

mcv 10y ago
> The police should be retrained not to use violence. (Is this reasonable? You can imagine other instances where this where this would endanger them.) That is absolutely reasonable. In many countries, police are trained to de-escalate potentially hostile situations. Only in the US and probably a couple of police states are police officers required to escalate to violence. And it's that tendency to escalate to violence that makes police a threat to society.
- chimeracoder 10y ago
  > In many countries, police are trained to de-escalate potentially hostile situations. Only in the US and probably a couple of police states are police officers required to escalate to violence. It's not that simple. The police in the US are trained to de-escalate situations too. That doesn't stop police violence from occurring either in the US or elsewhere (there is no shortage of horrific stories of police abuse from western/central Europe as well, for example).
  - MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
    >The police in the US are trained to de-escalate situations too. Sure, but practically speaking if you have a realistic understanding of how most US police forces operate, you know that involving them in any kind of dispute greatly increases the chance of violence and harm for all involved. YMMV per locality and situation, but it's a pretty sensible rule of thumb that police involvement equals increased risk of violence, even in previously nonviolent conflicts. Which is sad and unnecessary. I think it directly results from the prevalence of "warrior mentality" in US police training and operations. They are trained to view all citizens as potential enemy combatants to be dominated, rather than innocents to be protected; they are trained to put the safety of themselves and other officers above the safety of the citizenry; and they are trained to, if not always escalate, certainly to err on the side of escalation if there is any hint of violent action or ill intent from the citizens they interact with.

Cshelton 10y ago

Agreed. I for one will never fly United again. I hope many others do the same. The way that was handled just goes to show the culture and way things are done at that airline. Nobody had the logic to say, wait a minute, this is wrong. Calling the police to throw a passenger who did nothing wrong off? Countless ways to handle this better. In the end, this is going to cost United a TON. United could have flown a plane with only those 4 employees on it for way less than the hit they are about to take.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
yeukhon 10y ago
I don't know. I won't for sure, but will this news just die off after a week? I hope politicians step up and media pound on #unitedairline for weeks ripping up their past ugly treatments.
ajmurmann 10y ago
Good luck avoiding them. So frequently there are few options or you end up booking a flight with some alliance that then gets changed to be operated by someone else.
Freak_NL 10y ago
Will it really hurt them financially though? Significantly that is? Of course very few people will defend the airline's actions here, but while saying you won't ever fly United again is easy, is competition really strong enough among (in this case) US domestic airlines to enforce that boycott? I am guessing most people will simply opt for United if their flights are the most convenient for them, and leave the boycotting to someone else. I suspect not just because talk is cheap, but also because we have come to accept the current state of affairs surround air travel. From the moment you step into an airport until you depart at your destination, you submit. You'll docilely submit to standing in a queue being treated as a potential terrorist to the point of being shouted at if you don't comply fast enough or simply don't understand what is required of you, and (for most of us who can't afford first or business class) you'll submit to being treated as a third rate citizen. Flying means keeping your head down and submitting until you regain your sovereignty at your point of destination. Flying sucks, and we grudgingly accept it in lieu of alternatives, or because we actually believe that this treatment is necessary for our safety. Next week people will have mostly forgotten about this incident and will fly United without a second thought if the need arises.

ars 10y ago

> The real thing to fear here is the normalization of violence. Then there's not much to fear, because I don't see anyone at all finding this normal. It's on every news site and social network, everyone is deeply disturbed about these events. If anything this clearly shows that violence is FAR from normal in peoples' mind.

randallsquared 10y ago
The folks carrying out the orders found it normal. At least, we have no suggestion of any kind of extraordinary situation that justified them using violence.

djsumdog 10y ago

You should read "Debt the First 5,000 Years". It's an amazing book, and one of the things the author talks about is how debt requires violence. You can't put a man into debt unless you have the capacity for violence to enforce it. He doesn't pay you back, you break his legs, or take his sons and daughters as slaves. Today we have reduced the violence. Now companies ruin credit, get a Sheriff to evict someone from a house foreclosure, harass you with phone calls .. it's a less violence but it's still a form of it. This violence is also the origin of money (and debt). A conqueror takes a country. That leader needs to pay his army (they are expensive). So you take the area you took and they can only pay taxes with coins; your coins specifically. Only soldiers have those coins, so you leave a garrison that gets paid from the debt you put the people in. Before the US destroyed Libya, it had the highest GDP in Africa and no debt to the WMF. Today, the "rebels" the US imported are now in debt to the WMF and the people no longer have free electricity or education.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> debt requires violence Any kind of property requires violence to exist. If I say "this is my land" and you disagree, the only way I can enforce my claim is through violence. Debt is just a specific case of a general phenomenon. (This applies to communal property, too.) > Before the US destroyed Libya, it had the highest GDP in Africa Do you have a source for this? I see Libya's GDP circa 2005 at $41 billion (in 2005 U.S. dollars) [1]. South Africa's 2005 GDP was $260 billion in current U.S. dollars [2] (bit over $200 billion in 2005 U.S. dollars [3]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Libya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Libya [2] http://data.worldbank.org/country/south-africa http://data.worldbank.org/country/south-africa [3] http://www.usinflationcalculator.com http://www.usinflationcalculator.com
- muro 10y ago
  Maybe per person
- sheepdestroyer 10y ago
  Property is theft already if you believe Proudhon.

panarky 10y ago

They're not just normalizing violence, they're routinely using state power as an agent of the corporation to resolve issues that don't involve criminal activity. This is an internal business matter for a private company, and United had several alternatives. United didn't have to overbook the flight in the first place. United could have accommodated their additional crew on a competing airline or private plane. United could have offered more compensation to volunteers to leave the flight. There is absolutely no reason for a taxpayer-funded police force to intervene in this private matter. The passenger violated no laws.

nzlgraham 10y ago
Actually the passenger did violate laws by refusing to leave when he was asked by a part who had the right to ask and the Police. He became a trespasser and can be removed by force if necessary.

cmurf 10y ago

I do not see how the passenger violated the contract of carriage. Section 25 doesn't apply, they were not denied boarding. And I don't see anything in section 21 they've violated either. Their forced removal seems to be the airline violating their own contract, not the passenger. https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriage.aspx#sec21 https://www.united.com/web/en-US/content/contract-of-carriag...

anon263626 10y ago

Exactly. Lining up intellectuals, journalists and others against the wall is one fewer, finite normalizations away from occurring.