I don't agree that we need airlines. Want yes, but need, no. I'd like to see the stats on the percentage of people flying because they have a real need to as opposed to flying because it is more convenient. I think there are on the order of 6000 aircraft in the air just over the US during an average hour.
Many planes fly above 20,000 feet. The exhaust persists at high altitudes until a big storm washes it out of the atmosphere. I have never understood why the “green” folks don’t protest airlines. If we would replace airlines with high speed rail we might be able to look up at night and see the Milky Way again. A $100 per flight tax might pay for it.
What we need is more socialism for the people who really need it.
And we need is less socialism for the people who don't really need it. Timb, I see potential for compromise in what you say.
I think the perceived problem with socialism is that it comes with more centralized control. More Federal control looks more like communism. I think the art of blending pure capitalism with pure communism to get satisfactory socialism has largely escaped us over the last few decades. People seem to get less excited about government control over their lives when it is set and administered at the State level.
I, and I believe many others, don’t like people telling me we’re going to do something this way or that way because that’s that’s the way it “should” be or “ought” to be. That’s the way most “progressive” ideas are received. If anyone, liberal or conservative, wants me on board then identify a problem and propose a solution, but don’t propose something that will just treat symptoms. If we can agree that there is a problem, and not just a fact, let’s fix it, but let’s not perpetuate it by treating symptoms.
If anyone were TRULY concerned about the perception of “more centralized control” (that you relate is associated with socialism), what about the centralized control of a chief executive that cannot be controlled by the law or the Constitution, who has simply taken broad and extensive executive power to himself and who aspires for more. He doesn’t give a flip about terms such as socialism, except to use to bludgeon opponents. But he has and will use (what are actually “socialist”) practices any time, if it gives him more power.