alexandraerin

In a past post, I argued that certain functions that aren't profitable for the private sector to carry out are necessary for the common good and are thus valid functions of the government, which is formed to promote the common welfare. In the discussion on an airline rant by Kate Harding, another commenter pointed out that airlines aren't a public service. My instinctive response to this is why not? If they can't make a profit doing it without tax money (and it really seems like they can't), and yet our way of life would be unsustainable without their presence (it really would be), then there's no reason not to treat them as a public service.

I wasn't planning on making a blog post about this, and then I saw this bouncing around the twittarverse. United Airlines makes a big show about helping elderly passengers to their destination gates with wheelchairs while ignoring a twentysomething woman with freaky colored hair who has requested such aid. It gets worse from there.

There are two points I'm going to make here and I'm going to make them briefly because I've got stuff to do.

One is that we pay tax money to airlines in part so that their services will be available to us. Also in part so that we don't have to cope with a whole industry going belly-up, but not in any part at all because they have a God-given Constitutional right to stay in business no matter how unprofitable that business is or how poor their practices are.

We're paying through our taxes for the right to fly on a somewhat convenient and somewhat affordable basis. There is room for disagreement about whether or not this is a good idea (said room can be found on your own Livejournal, because that is not the conversation we're having here) but it's not really disputable that this is what's happening now. Besides our not infrequent bailing out of airlines, our taxes also pay for important infrastructure and subsidize flights to lower-demand areas.

The other is that it's not acceptable that this right we're all paying for should be accessible only to able-bodied individuals. A flight attendant's assistance getting luggage into the overhead rack (something the pre-flight spiels used to tell us to seek out if we needed) is not something that everybody needs but the people who actually do need it actually do need it. This is reality; it is non-negotiable. Call it a "special need" if you must, but access to airplanes is not a "special right"... unless, that is, it's to be reserved for those who can either walk long distances unaided and sling heavy weights above their head or are elderly-looking enough for it to be socially acceptable for them to seek and accept aid.

First, more music via popelizbet... click here for a kick-awesome rendition of Silent Night. And by an astounding coincidence, you can buy the CD it's from on the same page. It's Ginger and Bekah, the two ladies who aren't s00j from the Eleanor Rigby video I linked to last time.

Second, FedEx tells me that my replacement-replacement computer is on the move. It touched down in the land of the delta blues in the middle of the pouring rain yesterday and it's scheduled for delivery tomorrow. Whee!

Some of my sites are down right now. I'm looking into that. Oh, looks like they're back up. Just needed a server reboot.

I'm going to be spending the first half of the month of January anywhere but Nebraska in the vicinity of Hagerstown, Maryland. It's a personal visit, but I'll be there for a couple weeks so there will probably be time to do a little meet-and-greet if any readers in the area want to get together. Lest anybody worry that there'll be a half-month wasteland of no updates, you can thank the person I'm visiting for whipping me into shape these last few days. One of the reasons that I'm spending so much time there is because it's January and I live in Nebraska that he'll be working normally while I'm there, and so will I.

And finally, as a little treat, this page is streaming my own thematic interpretation of Silent Night. Make sure your speakers are on and your volume is turned up.