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I would like to point to a topic about extending pilots’ mandatory retirement ages. Most pilots plus or minus retirement age are unable to pass the physical or

I would like to point to a topic about extending pilots’ mandatory retirement ages. Most pilots plus or minus retirement age are unable to pass the physical or mental demands of the job, so only 25-30% are able to work and not on short- or long-term disability. Some choose to work privately past retirement age. I don’t have any numbers for pilots who decided to leave, were forced out, or could not pass the training. Extending the retirement age doesn’t really help the situation much, as you need younger and cheaper pilots to fulfill the roles of pilots who are retiring. The problem is, becoming a pilot takes a fair amount of time, over $100k in training fees, low pay for a while until fully certified with hours in, a very mobile lifestyle, and now you are subjected to physical as well as mental demands of the job certification standards.

bombcar 1y ago
There are quite a few highly paid professions where the main purpose of that profession’s union seems to be to prevent there being an adequate supply of the professionals.
- aaomidi 1y ago
  Is that what’s happening here?
  - agilob 1y ago
    It's happening everywhere, and it's completely intentional.
    - 1oooqooq 1y ago
      happening everywhere, except Cuba.
      - autobodie 1y ago
        Yes, against all odds, Cuba has a great surpous of doctors. How do they do it, I wonder!?!?!?!?!?! (it has something to do with profit)
        LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
        I'd call this soft power projection by medical means. Which is absolutely OK IMO, compared to lets say producing AK-47, or meddling in other countries internal affairs, invading and destroying them, and whatnot else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_School_of_Medicine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_School_of_Medic... A recent form of profit seems to be offering cheap treatment/medical tourism https://www.cubamundomedico.com/en/university-of-medical-sciences-of-havana https://www.cubamundomedico.com/en/university-of-medical-sci... Seems impractical for USians, though.
        autobodie 1y ago
        I think you're overcomplicating things. Castro was very vocal about medical care being a top proority during and after the revolution. There's no coincidence or conspiracy. When you try to build a society around human needs instead of capital needs, you end up with different priorities. It's that simple. If anyone thinks they're making the big bucks and accumulating "soft power" by training a bunch of doctors then selling treatments to Americans for cheap, I'm not sure they can be helped.
        LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
        Yah. Maybe I can't be helped. Shrug. I got aware of this, I don't know exactly when anymore, has to be about 15 years ago now, or even longer. I wondered about why there were almost always cuban medics, doctors, nurses etc. in action, when there has been some larger catastropic event in the world, and you could see them in the media. Why is that, I thought? That doesn't fit being sanctioned by the US(and vassals), being poor in general, and so on. That's how I became aware of ELAM. And made up my mind the way I described. Can't help it :-)
  - lyu07282 1y ago
    Of course, we just aren't doing neoliberalism hard enough yet! Lets get rid of all the unions, that must be the reason everything is falling apart.
  - coldtea 1y ago
    no, but why not waste an opportunity for Reagan-era style anti-union drivel?
- reliabilityguy 1y ago
  Like med schools in the US
  - PieTime 1y ago
    Yup, limit residents and percentage grading ensure that doctors are in short supply. Compare to the extremely streamline jr Doctor programs in the UK.
  - Calavar 1y ago
    The US docotor shortage is a myth. Wait times are the result of beauracratic nonsense has reduced the efficiency of the existing physician workforce [1, 2]. [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2613209 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26132... [2] https://hbr.org/2020/03/the-problem-with-u-s-health-care-isnt-a-shortage-of-doctors https://hbr.org/2020/03/the-problem-with-u-s-health-care-isn...
    - ndileas 1y ago
      Do you have evidence for this? Seems plausible, although I would have thought mis allocation also happens across specialties
    - 0_____0 1y ago
      :. urban areas do not have a physician shortage?
    - leereeves 1y ago
      I think it would be more accurate to say that there is no shortage of healthcare providers, because there are many NPs and PAs. Without NPs and PAs, I'm sure there would be a shortage of healthcare providers.
      - cameldrv 1y ago
        In my experience a big part of the problem is specialists. I remember many years ago people were saying that we shouldn't go to a Canadian style single-payer system because Canadians had rationed care and they had to wait six months for a hip replacement. Well, guess what? I now also have rationed care. I have to wait six months just for a colonoscopy, plus I pay twice as much for the privilege!
- mrtksn 1y ago
  Its just like nationality based employment rights(need to be citizens or have a visa/permit to work) but more granular. It can have its place, i.e. a way to balance bargaining power with the employer. It’s inherently anti meritocratic though. In some cases it’s not about merit or about limiting supply however. In some cases it’s impractical to test someones work continuously, so instead it becomes honor based. That is, you are expected to go through an elite track and succeed in an exam once and then you are good for life unless you commit fraud or show gross incompetency.
- dehrmann 1y ago
  This is a good listen on the topic: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-professional-licensing-a-racket/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-professional-licensing-a...
- AdrianB1 1y ago
  The cost of training is real. 15 ago a colleague did the training slowly while working for some training companies and it costed him just $42,000 to get ATPL, but you need to take trainings and flight hours and that is most of the cost. There are enough people willing to become airline pilots, but most don't have the money and the cost is not an artificial barrier. Even the cost of PPL, the lowest license on the path, is around $10,000 while the ultralight (European)/sport pilot (US) is over $6,000. From that you need CPL (commercial), multi-engine, complex aircrafts, instrument rating (bad weather or night) etc., that takes time and money most people cannot afford.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  What I find interesting is how often casual discussions about unionization on the internet will organically reinvent this concept. Especially on HN, Reddit, and Twitter the banter about unionization always seems to pivot toward using the union to force companies not to hire certain developers. The obvious one that comes up in every discussion is thinking that unions will protect their jobs from being outsourced to other countries. People like to layer various more palatable explanations on top of this to make it sound better, but when you ask them if the employees who receive the outsourced jobs should get the same union protections you usually get their real motivation: They want to keep the jobs local to their own market and exclude foreign labor supply in order to improve demand for their services (and therefore their leverage, and therefore their own wages) It gets interesting when different demographics start imagining that their ideal union would protect them from other demographics: Commonly, older people like to think of unions that will protect them from losing their jobs to young people. Then when I’m working with college students and they start discussing hypothetical unionization, they come up with ways to think the union will give them more jobs by protecting them from the old people “hoarding” the jobs. (Sorry, that’s the least likely outcome for a union) What’s most interesting is that the people I know who are in unions (non-tech industries) don’t hide the fact that decreasing labor supply to increase their own demand is exactly what they expect from a union. The first time you hear someone complain that a non-union worker is “taking food off their table” by simply doing their job you realize that it’s not as simple as Unions versus Corporations like we’ve been led to believe. The Unions are advocating for the people in the union, not workers everywhere.
  - lmm 1y ago
    > The obvious one that comes up in every discussion is thinking that unions will protect their jobs from being outsourced to other countries. People like to layer various more palatable explanations on top of this to make it sound better, but when you ask them if the employees who receive the outsourced jobs should get the same union protections you usually get their real motivation: They want to keep the jobs local to their own market and exclude foreign labor supply in order to improve demand for their services (and therefore their leverage, and therefore their own wages) Bear in mind it's completely normalised for companies to charge higher prices in one market than another, and put barriers in place to make sure customers in the more expensive market can't just pay the lower price. So all the union is doing here is bringing it closer to a level playing field.
nradov 1y ago
The broken pilot training pipeline is mainly a US problem. Airlines got spoiled because the military trained thousands of pilots every year for "free", then some would go on to get civilian flying jobs. Now the military is smaller and there aren't enough experienced pilots coming out. But there's nothing preventing airlines from hiring pilot candidates with zero experience and paying them to go through flight training. Some other countries do this and it works fine.
- brigade 1y ago
  For pipeline capacity, it's not even really broken in the US. The airline problem is that they have to whipsaw between "growth is stalling, time to furlough our junior pilots" and "growth is now, time to hire all junior pilots with ATP minimums". But there's enough pilots being trained to handle the average.

bombcar 1y ago

There are quite a few highly paid professions where the main purpose of that profession’s union seems to be to prevent there being an adequate supply of the professionals.

aaomidi 1y ago
Is that what’s happening here?
- agilob 1y ago
  It's happening everywhere, and it's completely intentional.
  - 1oooqooq 1y ago
    happening everywhere, except Cuba.
    - autobodie 1y ago
      Yes, against all odds, Cuba has a great surpous of doctors. How do they do it, I wonder!?!?!?!?!?! (it has something to do with profit)
      - LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
        I'd call this soft power projection by medical means. Which is absolutely OK IMO, compared to lets say producing AK-47, or meddling in other countries internal affairs, invading and destroying them, and whatnot else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_School_of_Medicine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_School_of_Medic... A recent form of profit seems to be offering cheap treatment/medical tourism https://www.cubamundomedico.com/en/university-of-medical-sciences-of-havana https://www.cubamundomedico.com/en/university-of-medical-sci... Seems impractical for USians, though.
        autobodie 1y ago
        I think you're overcomplicating things. Castro was very vocal about medical care being a top proority during and after the revolution. There's no coincidence or conspiracy. When you try to build a society around human needs instead of capital needs, you end up with different priorities. It's that simple. If anyone thinks they're making the big bucks and accumulating "soft power" by training a bunch of doctors then selling treatments to Americans for cheap, I'm not sure they can be helped.
        LargoLasskhyfv 1y ago
        Yah. Maybe I can't be helped. Shrug. I got aware of this, I don't know exactly when anymore, has to be about 15 years ago now, or even longer. I wondered about why there were almost always cuban medics, doctors, nurses etc. in action, when there has been some larger catastropic event in the world, and you could see them in the media. Why is that, I thought? That doesn't fit being sanctioned by the US(and vassals), being poor in general, and so on. That's how I became aware of ELAM. And made up my mind the way I described. Can't help it :-)
- lyu07282 1y ago
  Of course, we just aren't doing neoliberalism hard enough yet! Lets get rid of all the unions, that must be the reason everything is falling apart.
- coldtea 1y ago
  no, but why not waste an opportunity for Reagan-era style anti-union drivel?
reliabilityguy 1y ago
Like med schools in the US
- PieTime 1y ago
  Yup, limit residents and percentage grading ensure that doctors are in short supply. Compare to the extremely streamline jr Doctor programs in the UK.
- Calavar 1y ago
  The US docotor shortage is a myth. Wait times are the result of beauracratic nonsense has reduced the efficiency of the existing physician workforce [1, 2]. [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2613209 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26132... [2] https://hbr.org/2020/03/the-problem-with-u-s-health-care-isnt-a-shortage-of-doctors https://hbr.org/2020/03/the-problem-with-u-s-health-care-isn...
  - ndileas 1y ago
    Do you have evidence for this? Seems plausible, although I would have thought mis allocation also happens across specialties
  - 0_____0 1y ago
    :. urban areas do not have a physician shortage?
  - leereeves 1y ago
    I think it would be more accurate to say that there is no shortage of healthcare providers, because there are many NPs and PAs. Without NPs and PAs, I'm sure there would be a shortage of healthcare providers.
    - cameldrv 1y ago
      In my experience a big part of the problem is specialists. I remember many years ago people were saying that we shouldn't go to a Canadian style single-payer system because Canadians had rationed care and they had to wait six months for a hip replacement. Well, guess what? I now also have rationed care. I have to wait six months just for a colonoscopy, plus I pay twice as much for the privilege!
mrtksn 1y ago
Its just like nationality based employment rights(need to be citizens or have a visa/permit to work) but more granular. It can have its place, i.e. a way to balance bargaining power with the employer. It’s inherently anti meritocratic though. In some cases it’s not about merit or about limiting supply however. In some cases it’s impractical to test someones work continuously, so instead it becomes honor based. That is, you are expected to go through an elite track and succeed in an exam once and then you are good for life unless you commit fraud or show gross incompetency.
dehrmann 1y ago
This is a good listen on the topic: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-professional-licensing-a-racket/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-professional-licensing-a...
AdrianB1 1y ago
The cost of training is real. 15 ago a colleague did the training slowly while working for some training companies and it costed him just $42,000 to get ATPL, but you need to take trainings and flight hours and that is most of the cost. There are enough people willing to become airline pilots, but most don't have the money and the cost is not an artificial barrier. Even the cost of PPL, the lowest license on the path, is around $10,000 while the ultralight (European)/sport pilot (US) is over $6,000. From that you need CPL (commercial), multi-engine, complex aircrafts, instrument rating (bad weather or night) etc., that takes time and money most people cannot afford.
Aurornis 1y ago
What I find interesting is how often casual discussions about unionization on the internet will organically reinvent this concept. Especially on HN, Reddit, and Twitter the banter about unionization always seems to pivot toward using the union to force companies not to hire certain developers. The obvious one that comes up in every discussion is thinking that unions will protect their jobs from being outsourced to other countries. People like to layer various more palatable explanations on top of this to make it sound better, but when you ask them if the employees who receive the outsourced jobs should get the same union protections you usually get their real motivation: They want to keep the jobs local to their own market and exclude foreign labor supply in order to improve demand for their services (and therefore their leverage, and therefore their own wages) It gets interesting when different demographics start imagining that their ideal union would protect them from other demographics: Commonly, older people like to think of unions that will protect them from losing their jobs to young people. Then when I’m working with college students and they start discussing hypothetical unionization, they come up with ways to think the union will give them more jobs by protecting them from the old people “hoarding” the jobs. (Sorry, that’s the least likely outcome for a union) What’s most interesting is that the people I know who are in unions (non-tech industries) don’t hide the fact that decreasing labor supply to increase their own demand is exactly what they expect from a union. The first time you hear someone complain that a non-union worker is “taking food off their table” by simply doing their job you realize that it’s not as simple as Unions versus Corporations like we’ve been led to believe. The Unions are advocating for the people in the union, not workers everywhere.
- lmm 1y ago
  > The obvious one that comes up in every discussion is thinking that unions will protect their jobs from being outsourced to other countries. People like to layer various more palatable explanations on top of this to make it sound better, but when you ask them if the employees who receive the outsourced jobs should get the same union protections you usually get their real motivation: They want to keep the jobs local to their own market and exclude foreign labor supply in order to improve demand for their services (and therefore their leverage, and therefore their own wages) Bear in mind it's completely normalised for companies to charge higher prices in one market than another, and put barriers in place to make sure customers in the more expensive market can't just pay the lower price. So all the union is doing here is bringing it closer to a level playing field.

nradov 1y ago

The broken pilot training pipeline is mainly a US problem. Airlines got spoiled because the military trained thousands of pilots every year for "free", then some would go on to get civilian flying jobs. Now the military is smaller and there aren't enough experienced pilots coming out. But there's nothing preventing airlines from hiring pilot candidates with zero experience and paying them to go through flight training. Some other countries do this and it works fine.

brigade 1y ago
For pipeline capacity, it's not even really broken in the US. The airline problem is that they have to whipsaw between "growth is stalling, time to furlough our junior pilots" and "growth is now, time to hire all junior pilots with ATP minimums". But there's enough pilots being trained to handle the average.