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Given Boeing's market share the move would be to stay home rather then complaining to gate agents or re-booking. Elected officials will do almost nothing here.

Given Boeing's market share the move would be to stay home rather then complaining to gate agents or re-booking. Elected officials will do almost nothing here. Any government led solution will take years and be heavily managed to ensure the stability of the airline industry, meaning the government will do very little as any meaningful change will cause economic and political damage.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> the move would be to stay home rather then complaining to gate agents or re-booking Zero marginal effect. > Elected officials will do almost nothing here When did you last speak to your elected? I had senior staffers from a few Senators in my house the other week. This came up. The number of calls logged on the issue was minimal. If there had been interest, something—like expanded NTSB powers—would have gone into the funding bill. That didn’t happen because it’s clear voting Americans want cheap flights, not a fight with Boeing. If someone can’t bother to call, they won’ canvas or back a primary challenger. (They may not even vote.) That makes them safe to ignore. If someone is persistent, or more meaningfully, able to organise, that gets attention. This is a worn drum for me because I regularly see bursts of brilliance on HN epitaphed with a political nihilism that guarantees its ignorance.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  > Zero marginal effect. I'm not sure how customers deciding to stay home rather than fly on a Boeing plane would have zero marginal effect. That would leave something like half of the current flights empty. > That didn’t happen because it’s clear voting Americans want cheap flights, not a fight with Boeing. I agree with you here completely. My point is that there is an easy solution, if anyone actually cares. We get these news cycles of topics that people seem to get wound up about in the moment when they actually don't care at all. Where we disagree here is that elected officials couldn't fix this if they wanted to. At best they could ground all Max's for a period of time, but that won't fix the company. The government can't afford to lose Boeing, even for a period of a few years while the company gets it's shit together. Boeing has too much of an impact on both the airline industry and the military for the government to have any real room to deal with the problem.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > not sure how customers deciding to stay home rather than fly on a Boeing plane would have zero marginal effect The people who would do that are small in number and not frequent fliers. They would be summarily replaced by others on the margin due to price alone. > government can't afford to lose Boeing We couldn’t afford to lose the auto manufacturers. Didn’t stop us from forcing them into bankruptcy, wiping their shareholders in the process. When necessary, the U.S. government is incredibly powerful. It’s simply ordinarily restrained in its exercise. The problem is people don’t care about this issue, so an elected prioritising it over what voters do mobilise around is wasting political capital.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> the move would be to stay home rather then complaining to gate agents or re-booking Zero marginal effect. > Elected officials will do almost nothing here When did you last speak to your elected? I had senior staffers from a few Senators in my house the other week. This came up. The number of calls logged on the issue was minimal. If there had been interest, something—like expanded NTSB powers—would have gone into the funding bill. That didn’t happen because it’s clear voting Americans want cheap flights, not a fight with Boeing. If someone can’t bother to call, they won’ canvas or back a primary challenger. (They may not even vote.) That makes them safe to ignore. If someone is persistent, or more meaningfully, able to organise, that gets attention. This is a worn drum for me because I regularly see bursts of brilliance on HN epitaphed with a political nihilism that guarantees its ignorance.

_heimdall 3y ago
> Zero marginal effect. I'm not sure how customers deciding to stay home rather than fly on a Boeing plane would have zero marginal effect. That would leave something like half of the current flights empty. > That didn’t happen because it’s clear voting Americans want cheap flights, not a fight with Boeing. I agree with you here completely. My point is that there is an easy solution, if anyone actually cares. We get these news cycles of topics that people seem to get wound up about in the moment when they actually don't care at all. Where we disagree here is that elected officials couldn't fix this if they wanted to. At best they could ground all Max's for a period of time, but that won't fix the company. The government can't afford to lose Boeing, even for a period of a few years while the company gets it's shit together. Boeing has too much of an impact on both the airline industry and the military for the government to have any real room to deal with the problem.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > not sure how customers deciding to stay home rather than fly on a Boeing plane would have zero marginal effect The people who would do that are small in number and not frequent fliers. They would be summarily replaced by others on the margin due to price alone. > government can't afford to lose Boeing We couldn’t afford to lose the auto manufacturers. Didn’t stop us from forcing them into bankruptcy, wiping their shareholders in the process. When necessary, the U.S. government is incredibly powerful. It’s simply ordinarily restrained in its exercise. The problem is people don’t care about this issue, so an elected prioritising it over what voters do mobilise around is wasting political capital.