[appreciatorBus]

If airlines didn’t exist, people and goods would continue to move around the globe as they have done for thousands of years. There’s nothing magical about air travel (or any other transport mode) that makes it worthy of subsidy .

[striking]

Listen, I'm the type of fella who'd gladly take the Amtrak from the East Bay to Portland, 18 hours each way, and I'm telling you even I'd do so only as a novelty. If I actually had somewhere to be, spending basically an entire day on a train would be a non-starter. And that's just on the same coast! If I had to take the Amtrak back east to see my family for the holidays I would probably just not go. My travel to the other coast (not to mention back to the country where I was born, an additional ocean's worth of distance) would only be worth the trip for like a life change or a death in the family.

I'm clearly not the only one who thinks so, judging by both Amtrak ridership statistics and the cost ineffective nature of my attempts to travel on it.

[appreciatorBus]

I didn’t say anything about trains or Amtrak?

People and goods have travelled around the world long for thousands of years before air air travel and train travel. And people have made decisions above the trade-offs of travel to see family for thousands of years before air travel and train travel.

If air travel was unavailable or unsubsidized, people would continue to make those decisions and life would go on.

[kelnos]

> People and goods have travelled around the world long for thousands of years before air air travel and train travel.

Yes, and it really, really sucked back then. And the number of people who could actually do that travel was much, much smaller than today. Air travel (and train travel, to some extent, though it mostly sucks in the US) has enabled people to travel around the globe who never would have been able to in the past.

What a bizarre argument.

[vel0city]

I'd like to see a revival of trains in the US, but I agree their impacts will be limited. I think they make sense for regional travel (Texas triangle, New England area, West coast, Midwest, maybe NM/Colorado/South Wyoming, etc.) Hopping between these regions seem like planes are the obvious choice. The distances are just so high, with often very limited regional centers connecting them in between.

I'd love to take some HSR to Austin or Houston or San Antonio from DFW, but I just can't imagine the network to make a train work competitively to get from DFW to NYC or LAX.

[hakunin]

When something is that drastically different, it becomes different in kind. For example, if you have high network latency, you cannot jam (play live music) with friends remotely. If you have low latency, you can. Just because the difference is in a single value (I.e. net speed) doesn’t mean it doesn’t change the fundamental nature of what’s possible. Air travel makes the kind of business, shipping, and attendance possible that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise, because our collective lifetimes and risk tolerances are limited.

[rendaw]

I think you're saying that there are businesses that rely on cheap air transportation that are very valuable, but at the same time couldn't afford higher air fees.

But that's a contradiction. If they are valuable, their customers would pay more for their services - that's the definition of valuable. And if their customers would pay more, they could afford higher air fees.

[hakunin]

No, all I’m saying is that air travel is so different than any other kind of travel, that it is very special, and borderline magical. Saying something like “nothing magical about air travel, things and people would still travel around the globe” is very reductive. I’m not giving my opinion on subsidies.

[jodrellblank]

How are you not giving an opinion on subsidies?

Person 1. "Airline service is more valuable than people will pay for, it's a genuine force multiplier that is unaffordable without being subsidized"

Person 2. "Airlines are not magical, people and goods will move another way, so it doesn't need subsidy".

You: "Airlines are magical. Those things cannot happen another way."

There's three conclusions for what you think: 1) that airlines are special and magical and doing something which cannot be done another way, but that has no value and airlines can go away. That's incoherent. 2) Airlines are both affordable and profitable. That doesn't seem to be true and needs some supporting. 3) Airlines are doing something uniquely 'magically' valuable, they are not profitable, then they need subsidising.

[hakunin]

Your point 3 is a non sequitur. If air travel is magical and valuable, that doesn’t automatically mean it needs subsidizing. We sometimes allow magical and valuable things to go away if we find them not to be popular enough to garner widespread political support.

My statement is correcting a fact (descriptive) not proposing what to do about it (I.e. not prescriptive).

It’s very hard to imagine what the world would look like without subsidized air travel. I have to think long and hard to figure out if subsidies would actually be sensible for something like this. I can be convinced either way right now, but it would take a lot of good historical data on something very similar, perhaps has to be specifically air travel in countries that do and don’t subsidize it, and their economic outcomes, controlled for other factors.

But saying that air travel is somehow the same in kind as other kinds of travel is incredibly shallow and reductive. We get to travel orders of magnitude faster and to places we wouldn’t even be able to reach otherwise.

[eru]

That doesn't mean we should subsidise it.

[hakunin]

I’m responding to a claim that there’s nothing “magical” about air travel. It literally enables things otherwise impossible.

[kelnos]

There absolutely is something magical about air travel! We can get places much faster and much safer than we could before. I live in California, and another part of my family lives in Maryland. Are you saying that when I want to visit my family, instead of spending 5-6 hours in a metal tube in the air, I should spend a week (or more) either driving or taking various trains and buses?

If air travel didn't exist, I likely wouldn't move around the globe at all. Hell, I wouldn't move around the country even.

In the US, roads are mostly publicly-owned (the ultimate subsidy). Local bus and rail transit is usually also publicly-owned, though when it isn't, it's done through public-private partnership and/or subsidy. Regional and long-distance rail is subsidized. Why shouldn't air travel follow the pattern?

[paganel]

> There’s nothing magical about air travel (or any other transport mode)

There kind of is. I can make it from here in Bucharest to Paris in about 3 hours by plane, while by car I'll need about 3 days (i.e. two sleepovers till I get there). This is magical to me. To say nothing of places like the Arabian peninsula or, I don't know, the Indian subcontinent, I wouldn't even think of getting there by car as it is close to impossible (at least when it comes to a land-route to India), but taking a plane is a 6-hour flight from nearby Istanbul to Delhi.

[devsda]

You can't think of a single situation where an airline route is infinitely better and probably the only viable option ?

Btw you don't need to completely disregard other modes of transport to appreciate bus :)

[appreciatorBus]

Buses and planes are both great! Both have advantages and disadvantages, and different cost structures. I trust people to make their own decisions about trade-offs for travel that work for them and their situation. When we arbitrarily pick one and shovel free money, land or infrastructure toward it, we are putting a thumb on the scale and depriving people of the power to make their own decisions.

Of course, we can argue that there are network effects or natural monopoly effects for fixed infrastructure like roads and rails, and thus there must be a public role. However policy rarely seems to remain at this reasonable position and instead quickly expands into something altogether different.

[kelnos]

> When we arbitrarily pick one

Aren't all modes of transportation in the US either subsidized or public-owned to some degree? We haven't arbitrarily picked one; we picked them all.

Air travel is maybe the least subsidized, though? Essential Air Service is probably the main thing? Long-distance bus like Greyhound is only minimally subsidized too.

But local transit (bus & rail), and regional and long-distance rail are all subsidized or publicly owned in the US. Most roads are publicly-owned, either locally or by the federal government. Long-distance bus and rail are actually unusual in how little they're subsidized.

[appreciatorBus]

You forgot that private cars are also creatures of subsidy. We like to think that the main input to go vroom vroom in cars is cheap gasoline, but IMO it’s realy cheap land. (aka subsidized public land)

A car with no gas could still be used to store stuff, or even roll downhill. A car with no land can’t be used at all for anything. And the amount of land required increases with the square of the velocity you want to travel out. But we never add that in.

As far as air travel, I haven’t done the math, but I suspect if you were to add up just the foregone property tax revenue associated with the land underneath the airports you’d end up with some pretty serious numbers.

Anyways, my basic point all of this is the same – we should be careful about subsidies because they tend to distort incentives and decision-making, whether we apply them to airplanes or horse buggies. It doesn’t mean that there’s no place for government involvement in transport, simply that we ought to be wise to the side effects and externalities. I could buy that the government should be involved in air travel, but I part ways with the idea that this should be extended such that if people get used cheap fares on Spirit then the government should guarantee Spirit operation forever. Maybe Spirit was just an anomaly, and we’ll be fine when it’s gone? Some people might fly a little less, some people will just eat the difference and not care, some people will take the bus, some people will buy a car. It’s all just normal people making normal trade-offs about decisions in their life.

[eru]

If they are so much better, why do they need subsidies?

[victorbjorklund]

Which transportation mode gets no direct or indirect subsides?

[eru]

Net or gross?

[folkrav]

This line of thinking assumes being profitable is the only thing that makes something desirable or not.

[eru]

If you desire something, you should be willing to put your money where your mouth is.

[folkrav]

What a reductive and narrow definition of desirability.

[1shooner]

Do you oppose the federal highway system (or rail systems) as well?

[appreciatorBus]

Basically yes.

[eru]

I guess at least when they are given away for free or severely underpriced to the user.

[kelnos]

Right, the externalities of those road systems aren't really paid for properly, by anyone.

But that's hard to do, because for many people/uses, they have to use those roads to get done what they need to do. The alternatives (like high speed rail) just largely don't exist in the US, or are painfully sub-par.

[eru]

We have to distinguish between several levels of externalities and between different timespans.

About the former: when you drive on the road, you cause congestion for other road users. But having the roads at all (and having them used) also causes externalities for others, who ain't on the road. Like cutting up nature or noise.

About the timespans:

In the very short term, demand for specific roads is inelastic: if you live in one place and work in another, you have to commute.

But over several years demand for specific roads is very elastic: people and jobs can and do move.

[kelnos]

Ah, you're one of those people who think we shouldn't have nice things. Got it.

(And no, the market often does not provide.)

[freedomben]

> people and goods would continue to move around the globe as they have done for thousands of years.

Indeed! We don't need air travel when we have perfectly good teams of oxen and covered wagons. We could even hunt and forage for our food along the way to save some money!

[carlosjobim]

Not advocating for subsidies, but there are things like patient transports to hospitals, where speed is a factor.

[thrance]

Just build hospitals closer to people. Or make people move closer to them. If it wasn't possible to fly to the hospital, people would just not live so far from them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

[komali2]

> people and goods would continue to move around the globe as they have done for thousands of years.

Would love to compare the economic throughput in raw dollars of the Oregon trail vs a single flight route.

Don't forget that the whole point of transportation under capitalism is enabling and stimulating economic activity. So sure, get rid of the airlines if you want to collapse a bunch of economic activity. Personally I'd hope for it to get replaced by high speed rail, but kinda hard to do that when economic activity is highly depressed.