Quote of the Day: Southwest Pilots "Sick-in" edition

This quote (and the post it is from) makes no mention of the pilots, and was written from the point of view of the working man.  But it explains clearly what is going on (you'll have to read the whole thing to see how this applies to pilots as well):

I think that in retrospect, the decision to lock down entire societies to stop the coronavirus will end up in the history books as one of the most spectacular blunders ever committed by a ruling class. Partly, of course, the lockdowns didn’t work—look at graphs of case numbers over time from places that locked down vs. places that didn’t, and you’ll find that locking down societies and putting millions of people out of work didn’t do a thing to change the size and duration of the outbreak. Partly, the economic damage inflicted by the lockdowns would have taken years to heal even if the global industrial economy wasn’t already choking on excessive debt and running short of a galaxy of crucial raw materials. But there’s more to it than that.

If you want people to put up patiently with long hours of drudgery at miserably low wages, subject to wretched conditions and humiliating policies, so that their self-proclaimed betters can enjoy lifestyles they will never be able to share, it’s a really bad idea to make them stop work and give them a good long period of solitude, in which they can think about what they want out of life and how little of it they’re getting from the role you want them to play. It’s an especially bad idea to do it so that they have no way of knowing when, or if, they will ever be allowed to return to their former lives, thus forcing them to look for other options in order to stay fed, clothed, housed, and the like.

Like I said, no mention of the pilots.  But when a corporation makes you merely one of the factors of production, you had damn well better be replaceable or they have a problem bigger than they think.

This is an outstanding post from The Blogger Formerly Known As The Archdruid.  I cannot recommend this more highly.  The Revolution will not be televised, but it sure as shootin' will be blogged.