Comments on: THE MARK OF QUALITY

By: tenacitus

tenacitus — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:43:05 +0000

What you are saying here makes me think that America's airline industry acts the same as Nigeria's when it comes to scheduling routes and on their profit making practices. Unfortunately they don't mask what they do over here as well since don't have to.

By: Aslan Maskhadov

Aslan Maskhadov — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:42:12 +0000

Jule outsourcing has nothing to do with any one country's obsession with cheapness. The main source of profit in a capitalist system is the exploitation of labor. Beyond that, anything that cuts expenses puts more money in the pocket of the shareholders and owners. It's not like this is some kind of behavior or cultural thing which can be reformed. To do so would bring the economy to ruin.

By: jazzbumpa

jazzbumpa — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:47:21 +0000

I like cheap gin and expensive Scotch. Stay away from cheap Scotch.

I can't get my wife on an airplane. We go from MI to FLA by car, a decision which looks better all the time.

Cheers!
JzB

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:54:25 +0000

Once upon a time a buddy of mine left town to become a pilot for Colgan, which I'd never heard of until then. A few months later he was telling me some rather unbelievable things about his experiences with them. A few months after that he was back home again, having recently quit. What he was telling me just didn't ring entirely true, so I figured that in reality he couldn't quite make it in the big leagues, didn't do so well with not being in charge (he's normally a flight instructor) and made them out to be shockingly incompetent to rationalize it all.

Then about a month later they dropped a plane on a house, and what started coming out in the news matched up *perfectly* with what he'd been telling me. (And to his credit as an instructor, when the bit about pushing the stick the wrong way during a stall came to light, I was instantly able to understand and explain why it was both wrong and counterintuitive.) Fun fact: on some regional flights the pilots earn less than the senior flight attendant.

By: Julie

Julie — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 06:07:07 +0000

@Aslan Maskhadov
I don't know what things are like in Moscow, but it's disingenuous to reduce the quality of life in many places in the world (see: deforestation, strip mining, obscene factory conditions, etc) to have a very temporary increase here. But our demand for cheapness is our undoing; companies are forced to outsource, leaving us with no resource but our own buying power. Then when the dust settles we wonder where all the jobs went.

By: Desargues

Desargues — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 23:04:50 +0000

Like PS, I also think pussy is awesome. I'm glad we haven't outsourced it yet.

By: Pan Sapiens

Pan Sapiens — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:45:14 +0000

Wrong, Jorcheim.

It's PUSSY that's awesome.

Now then, back you go, little pixie, to World of Warcraft.

By: Hobbes

Hobbes — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:41:28 +0000

I just purchased tickets to visit my family over Memorial Day weekend. Now, granted, I'm leaving at 7am and getting back at midnight, and I purchased my tickets three months in advance, but the fact remains that I will be flying from the east coast to the west coast for $303.

I am likely to be eaten by a grue.

By: displaced Capitalist

displaced Capitalist — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:32:14 +0000

+1 what Johnnyboy said.