{"id":4972,"date":"2010-08-19T09:23:36","date_gmt":"2010-08-19T09:23:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2010\/08\/19\/the-first-thing-we-do-lets-kil\/"},"modified":"2010-08-19T09:23:36","modified_gmt":"2010-08-19T09:23:36","slug":"the-first-thing-we-do-lets-kil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2010\/08\/19\/the-first-thing-we-do-lets-kil\/","title":{"rendered":"The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the ______"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin Drum posts about the latest outrage from the airline industry<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

To summarize, then: (1) Airlines spent years hassling customers about their carry-on bags and persuading them to check their luggage instead. (2) After that finally started to work, they suddenly began charging for checked luggage. (3) As customers scurried to adapt once again, overhead space disappeared. (4) So now they begin charging for early boarding to avoid the crush of bags in the overhead bin.<\/p>\n

Has there ever before been an industry that’s so actively tried to piss off their entire customer base? You almost have to admire it in a Bizarro-capitalism kind of way.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Airlines are near the top of my list of institutions that need to be completely demolished and then rebuilt from the ground up. There are days when I think that we ought to nationalize them all, deport all their executives to Iran, and then turn them over to a group of ordinary travelers chosen at random from the Boston phone book. They could hardly do a worse job of managing the business.<\/p>\n

They rotate through the top spot of the list of industries I’d like to see this done to, along with the insurance industry and the financial services industry. If I had to pick just one to see razed to the metaphorical ground and sown with metaphorical salt, I’d probably go with insurance– I have friends who are financiers, and for all their problems, airlines are the only one of those that provide a concrete and tangible good. <\/p>\n

I might well be missing some industry that richly deserves decimation, though, so I’ll throw this out for comment. If you could pick one industry to have all its current executives stranded on a deserted island with a ravenous polar bear, what would it be?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Drum posts about the latest outrage from the airline industry: To summarize, then: (1) Airlines spent years hassling customers about their carry-on bags and persuading them to check their luggage instead. (2) After that finally started to work, they suddenly began charging for checked luggage. (3) As customers scurried to adapt once again, overhead… Continue reading The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the ______<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,81,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-economics_1","category-society","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}