"Privilege" is a word I hear thrown around a lot today. Often times when people use that word, they do not realize they are making broad assumptions about other peoples' circumstances (typically) based on an ascribed attribute.
To go even further in relation to this and air travel, is obesity ascribed or achieved? If you get charged extra for being tall, that's not something really in your control. Discriminating against an ascribed trait isn't really fair and is the reason for civil rights legislation.
There are cases where it's difficult to determine if something is ascribed vs achieved. This is why laws for marriage equality have taken as long as they have in much of the world.
In terms of obesity, we see the trends and we see it's increasing. This is something we can measure. Homosexuality was something that could be hidden, and therefore the measurements could easily be off as people may have lied in previous decades to fit in with social norms.
Ultimately, fighting obesity has a lot to do with education, and changing some of the very wrong ideas we have about what is and isn't healthy food. But that's another matter.
In the article, they're mostly describing airlines that weigh people to distribute loads on planes. That seems logical. Now in regards to airlines charging them a different price due to weight and fuel consumption, that gets into a very grey area of how we deal with the reasoning behind obesity, choice, human rights and market costs.
Right, and it's also a problem when you consider height and weight to be intertwined. Even among people of a healthy weight, a 5' tall person is going to weigh less than a 6' tall person, on average. If you really wanted to allow for pricing based on the idea that extra weight requires extra fuel consumption, but not for ascribed traits, one would have to normalize weight based on height, or instead by BMI or something that really defines the weight as "extra" and not normal for a person of a particular stature. (Unless you really do want to charge based on ascribed traits.)
Also, thank you for the "ascribed vs. achieved" nomenclature. I'd never heard that before, and I like how it avoids sounding negative and boils down the distinction very clearly.
It ONLY is about properly distributing weight. It's not a fat tax. It's not "oh, this person is heavy compared to their height, let's charge them more because they're inferior!".
It's only "we need more weight in the front".
Bogus. At best, "... yet."
Entire sports teams of children board planes filled with adults, without redistribution. They need to weigh every passenger now, just in case they might need to move that 1 larger person? If you buy that then I've got some oil you'd be interested in.
As far as I can tell, 1 commercial plane in history has had an accident due to balance and only because of tragically bad maintenance at the same time.
This looks like one of the more obvious cases of groundwork being laid for future fees veiled in safety concerns.
The bottom line for me personally is that it's just one more bullshit thing to endure when traveling via plane, and I'm biased against them at this point. Airlines are the skeeziest companies in their attempts to capture market surplus.
The Norwegian regional carrier Widerøe (Whose slogan might well have been "We proudly fly where everyone else is scared s--tless to!", operating a fleet of small to mid-size aircraft always play a game of musical chairs in their smaller (<40pax or so) planes prior to takeoff.
Edit: Ninja'd by gragas.
I think the only reason one could come to your conclusion is that one does not understand the difference between being a lesser human being and simply being very misfortunate. Many are misfortunate; no one is lesser. I had cancer when I was little. Should everything in the world be modified to accommodate my specific needs? Should everything in the world be modified to accommodate the "average" person's needs? Perhaps that is how things should be in government, where the sole purpose of the entity is to serve its people. But it should not be the duty of any private entity to do such a thing.
I'm not really arguing one way or the other, just pointing out a number of cases that would likely lead to public outcry and therefore attention from regulators who do have the authority to impose their will on the airlines.
> I think the only reason one could come to your conclusion is that one does not understand the difference between being a lesser human being and simply being very misfortunate.
Or one could recognize that airlines are chartered as common carriers, and are therefore subject to regulatory oversight.
> But it should not be the duty of any private entity to do such a thing.
The private entity in question necessarily consumes public resources as part of its business model (ATC, takeoff/landing slots, ...). Hence the corresponding regulatory authority.
Based on the documentaries I have seen about US obesity, it also depends on your income. Its cheaper to buy junk food so lower income people prefer junk food to healthy food.
If the author had written that tall people should pay more because they are bigger and need a bigger space then that might have been more palatable, but in the end I'm not sure that the extra space is the significant factor, since I can sit upright easily in the vertical space allocated for everybody to walk through the plane. Do we also need to charge more for people with big hairstyles, or those who choose to wear high heels? Also, why is there a minimum cost for the average space needed, my partner (155cm) takes up less space than average!