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Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

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Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#131

Post by fennecfoxen »

madaxe_again wrote: post #115
flukus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This rubbish is everywhere. Contract cleaning (offices etc) for instance, used to be a profitable small business. Not enough to be rich, but enough for a big house with some decent amenities and to raise a family on a single income. Then in the 90's these gigs went into a pyramid of contracting and sub contracting companies where the company buying the service is paying more but the grunt doing the work is lucky to b…

Everything is marketing bullshit - I spent a decade running an ecommerce agency and got to see the bellies of many beasts. For instance, there's a pig related tea brand in the UK which is universally seen as funky and independent and all that shite. They're owned by tetley, who are in turn owned by tata. The ownership structure is sufficiently complex to make them look independent - but they aren't. It's just good ma…

Oh, TeaPigs? With the dachshund mascot on the Darjeeling Earl Grey, and the brown-paper boxes, and the overpriced wares? Yeah, you can get those everywhere; they're clearly _way_ too mass-market to be properly independent. If you're spending cash money the on indie feel of things, you'll be buying BigCorp sooner or later. Better to just buy quality.

> Then... where do you draw the line? Is private equity backing problematic when its obfuscated? Or just contract primacy?

Well, we're taught that the free market is efficient only when you have property rights, low barriers to entry, and low transaction costs. While monopoly issues get most of the antitrust press, I suspect that a lot of the other things people don't like about BigCorp world and the gig economy is the way that high transaction costs around hiring, firing, and most especially, contracts of all sorts. Any time these issues are complex and involve expensive lawyers, BigCorp tends to win. It's at the roots of a lot of problems these days.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#132

Post by patrickk »

flukus wrote: post #123
maze-le wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not an economist, but I think it is a problem with information assymetry. The cleaning worker does not have many connections to CEOs, to wich he can sell his services, but the middle men have. The middle men can leverage this situation to gain the profit, the cleaning worker would have gained. But I have no idea, why this would evolve into a pyramid scheme. One level of "management" would have solved the "inform…

> The cleaning worker does not have many connections to CEOs, to wich he can sell his services I think you might of hit on a possible explanation there, maybe it's wealth inequality? When there was more equality that CEO (or company owner, or just someone near the top) might have been going to the same bars or been part of the same local sports clubs as the cleaner, their kids might have gone to the same school. Now…

> might have been going to the same bars or been part of the same local sports clubs as the cleaner, their kids might have gone to the same school. Now they probably live in other parts of the city.

I don't think this ever the case, in any era. Rich people in many countries definitely send their kids to posh schools through their connections (e.g. slots available for those with a parent who attended), go to different bars and follow different sports (e.g. rugby union vs football/soccer, depending on the country obviously).

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#133

Post by makomk »

narag wrote: post #124
maze-le wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not an economist, but I think it is a problem with information assymetry. The cleaning worker does not have many connections to CEOs, to wich he can sell his services, but the middle men have. The middle men can leverage this situation to gain the profit, the cleaning worker would have gained. But I have no idea, why this would evolve into a pyramid scheme. One level of "management" would have solved the "inform…

Not a free market if there is information assymetry, it's there in the first paragraph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market It says that there is a less assuming version, but I'd always heard the information thing.

Since there is inevitably going to be information asymmetry, this is rather a "no true scotsman" approach to redirecting blame away for the problems that plague free markets in the real world.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#134

Post by coldtea »

leni536 wrote: post #92
maze-le wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a nice example of why the free market is not neccessarily the guarantor of efficiency.

But why? It exactly looks like a problem that free market should be able to solve.

Because "free market" in practice means "what the big fish allow to happen with the help from their friends at office".

The only one who can guarantee a free market (e.g. big players not monopolizing, abusing their position, underbidding and then killing small more efficient players, etc) is the government/law.

But the government is also often in the hands of big players, and passes laws to their favor.

And even when it isn't, they have the upper edge in other ways (purchasing and negotiating power, better lawyers, more money to burn, etc).

Heck, even the simple fact that "bigger player = more advertising money" can make free competition from a newcomer a non-starter. Even if the new company can make something for cheaper (despite the better economies of scale of the big players) people don't buy cheaper, they mostly buy what they know.

Hence, free market is a myth, perhaps even more so than communism.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#135

Post by patrickk »

maze-le wrote: post #99
leni536 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why? It exactly looks like a problem that free market should be able to solve.

I am not an economist, but I think it is a problem with information assymetry. The cleaning worker does not have many connections to CEOs, to wich he can sell his services, but the middle men have. The middle men can leverage this situation to gain the profit, the cleaning worker would have gained. But I have no idea, why this would evolve into a pyramid scheme. One level of "management" would have solved the "inform…

> The cleaning worker does not have many connections to CEOs, to wich he can sell his services, but the middle men have.

Bingo.

Additionally, in many cases the person/team carrying out a procurement process may require (often by law or company policy) a ridiculous set of documents that some sleazy company is an expert in navigating, and exploiting any loopholes or poorly-written selection criteria. They deliver crap service that barely qualifies, but the procurement person/team can say, "well technically they fit the criteria" so their ass is covered. The procurement team is not rewarded for selecting the best candidate, so they minimise their own exposure.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#136

Post by maze-le »

narag wrote: post #124
maze-le wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not an economist, but I think it is a problem with information assymetry. The cleaning worker does not have many connections to CEOs, to wich he can sell his services, but the middle men have. The middle men can leverage this situation to gain the profit, the cleaning worker would have gained. But I have no idea, why this would evolve into a pyramid scheme. One level of "management" would have solved the "inform…

Not a free market if there is information assymetry, it's there in the first paragraph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market It says that there is a less assuming version, but I'd always heard the information thing.

Well, if that is the case, the free market is a pureley theoretical concept, that is not realized anywhere in the world. And it cannot be realized, because there is always inevitable some form of information assymetry.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#137

Post by whazor »

dingaling wrote: post #118
chinathrow wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One such incident was Buffallo. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/nyregion/14pilot.html?_r=0 "Members of the board said that the crew of the twin-engine turboprop that crashed, killing all 49 people on board and one on the ground, was set up for fatigue and inattention before they even took off, partly because of the structure of the commuter airline business. "

But that wasn't related to their remuneration, rather the structure of the commuter airline business . The copilot was fatigued by living in Seattle but working in Newark for a paltry $24k. Paying her more wouldn't have helped, in fact it might have encouraged more new pilots to try the same. On the contrary side in Ireland last month we had two experienced pilots, each earning > 120k Euros, inadvertently and fatally…

Still, having depressed colleagues around you does not help with a persons well-being. It helps to have a healthy working environment with nice and permanent flight attendees. They could notice when a pilot gets depressed before something bad happens.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#138

Post by coldtea »

patrickk wrote: post #132
flukus wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The cleaning worker does not have many connections to CEOs, to wich he can sell his services I think you might of hit on a possible explanation there, maybe it's wealth inequality? When there was more equality that CEO (or company owner, or just someone near the top) might have been going to the same bars or been part of the same local sports clubs as the cleaner, their kids might have gone to the same school. Now…

> might have been going to the same bars or been part of the same local sports clubs as the cleaner, their kids might have gone to the same school. Now they probably live in other parts of the city. I don't think this ever the case, in any era. Rich people in many countries definitely send their kids to posh schools through their connections (e.g. slots available for those with a parent who attended), go to different…

>Rich people in many countries definitely send their kids to posh schools through their connections (e.g. slots available for those with a parent who attended), go to different bars and follow different sports (e.g. rugby union vs football/soccer, depending on the country obviously).

Yes, but company owners in many countries weren't that rich that the other people they provided services to. Consider a company with 10-20-100 people, serving a city.

Now, those jobs go to huge conglomerates and companies with 1000s upon 1000s of employees, and CEOs that are 100x as rich as the people buying their services.

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#139

Post by fennecfoxen »

djsumdog wrote: post #101
dba7dba wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can vouch for this story. My parents went through this scenario exactly. They had gotten into office cleaning because it was relatively well paying in the 90's. But in the 90's middle men came into the mix. Someone with better sales ability would win the contract for cleaning office, and subcontract it to someone else. And even that 2nd person might subcontract it to someone else. Eventually, the person really doin…

Read "Debt: The First 5,000 Years." I cannot endorse this book enough. It is the most influential non-fiction book I've ever read. Basically it's called using money as a means to make money, and this was frowned upon in many civilisations. Even today, in much of the Muslim world they do not charge interest. They do have higher bank fees (no free accounts, no free checking or electronic transfers). Keep in mind if we…

> Board executives at JPMorgan Chase, PNC and the other banks that caused so much destruction in 2008 should have been thrown in jail next to rapists, paedophiles and murders.

What strange ideas of justice the world has!

In an ostensibly advanced country, America, one side of the political spectrum would be have us remain willfully oblivious to police abuses, corrupt prosecutors withholding or fabricating evidence, and the systematic dehumanization not simply of prisoners, but of any peripherally involved with the machinery criminal justice system, especially for the purpose of deporting undesirables.

(The prison guards who put an inmate in the shower and turned on the hot water until the skin was peeling off his corpse? Normal. The immigrant detained by ICE for months and months, given aspirin for his developing penis cancer despite agency doctors' recommendation to get him to a proper examination until it was far, far too late? Incredibly normal. Predates Trump.)

The other side of this political spectrum skims over meaningful questions of actual fraudulent or unethical business practices, issuing instead a blanket equation of the practice of making loans to people who assumed their house would apprecuate in value with crimes such as murder and child abuse.

And these aren't even extremes. Both positions are pretty mainstream, real crowd-pleasers.

What the hell is wrong with us? Can we not aspire to build a world where there is actual justice, and not mere retribution against our political foes and other un-persons?

Re: Analysis of the United Airlines passenger removal incident

#140

Post by fennecfoxen »

leni536 wrote: post #92
maze-le wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a nice example of why the free market is not neccessarily the guarantor of efficiency.

But why? It exactly looks like a problem that free market should be able to solve.

The free market is only efficient when

- property rights exist, and are enforced

- there are few barriers to entry

- transaction costs are low

My money's on transaction cost issues. BigCorp has teams of people dedicated to making customer acquisition more effective and efficient.

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