Private Pilot here (so obviously biased.) This is an excellent question to ask. There are good reasons to fly. Some places in the US are only accessible throu

Private Pilot here (so obviously biased.) This is an excellent question to ask. There are good reasons to fly. Some places in the US are only accessible through flight (I'm looking at you, Alaska.) Some places require insane amounts of time to commute/manage because of a lack of infrastructure. Some common low-flight hour jobs (eg: pipeline monitoring) are only feasible through flight. There are currently good reasons that most people don't fly. They usually come down to time, money and training (which is time, money and ability.) There is also significant risk (think: along the risk level of riding a motorcycle) I guarantee that flying will not get so safe and cheap that the average Joe will just start hopping in a plane for a hamburger every other day. I personally think the things we should be focusing on are making much more efficient GA aircraft. Also, getting rid of 100LL and gasoline would be nice. It's really hard to do though. As for the smartest and most-privileged people, there are much worse things to devote time to as an engineer. There are also a lot of engineers these days. Don't despair too much :)