Nightmare
Another comment from facebook. This obviously derives from the discussion on flying that I posted yesterday.
There is a story, which may or may not be true, about frozen orange juice. When it first came out, people were used to fresh orange juice. So Minute Maid, or whichever company was first, had to work to make their product taste like fresh juice. As time went on, people got used to drinking frozen juice and no longer remembered what the fresh juice was like. So it was possible to make the frozen juice more economically, paying less attention to flavor. Till finally it had its own flavor, that people thought was the taste of orange juice.
Flying is like that. When it began, it was in competition with trains and transatlantic steamers, and it was a luxury. Gradually, as flying became common and people became used it, it turned into a experience like riding a Grayhound bus. Now, it is -- if anything -- worse than riding a bus. I'd take a Jefferson Line bus like a shot. I have to brace myself to fly.
This may be typical of capitalist competition. Economic forces, especially the need to be cheap, drive the quality of the product down -- unless it is aimed at the seriously rich. But even they have to go through the TSA.
Another clear sunny day. I was going to sleep in, because I have a slow day ahead of me, but I ended in one of those dreams where you are running to catch a plane and aren't going to get it. It was the Pittsburgh airport, I think, which I may have been to, but I don't remember it. The concourses were gigantic and looked like an old train station or maybe a factory and were very complex, rising into various levels, and very badly marked, so we couldn't find our gate. Patrick and I lost the rest of our party, and then I realized I didn't have my baggage. And then we ended at a TSA checkpoint.This is the police dystopia which flying is becoming. Flying as it would be done in 1984.
It was running to catch a plane in an Escher print with the TSA.
So I got up.
Most of the dream was ordinary, but the building was remarkable: huge and complex and old and dirty with lots of bare girders visible. The TSA agent who was giving Patrick a hard time had a computer out of the 1980s.
There is a story, which may or may not be true, about frozen orange juice. When it first came out, people were used to fresh orange juice. So Minute Maid, or whichever company was first, had to work to make their product taste like fresh juice. As time went on, people got used to drinking frozen juice and no longer remembered what the fresh juice was like. So it was possible to make the frozen juice more economically, paying less attention to flavor. Till finally it had its own flavor, that people thought was the taste of orange juice.
Flying is like that. When it began, it was in competition with trains and transatlantic steamers, and it was a luxury. Gradually, as flying became common and people became used it, it turned into a experience like riding a Grayhound bus. Now, it is -- if anything -- worse than riding a bus. I'd take a Jefferson Line bus like a shot. I have to brace myself to fly.
This may be typical of capitalist competition. Economic forces, especially the need to be cheap, drive the quality of the product down -- unless it is aimed at the seriously rich. But even they have to go through the TSA.
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