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Comment by bradleyjg | Hacker News Reader

There's a thing we do as a society which I think is unfortunate. We decide the someone ought to get help, that part is totally reasonable. But then instead of providing that help out of our collective resources we instead pass a law requiring random third parties to provide it.

So in this case we decide that disabled people ought to be able to take their assistance animals on planes. Fine. But then we the people should be paying the airlines to carry the disabled person and their service animal without depriving other passengers of the flight experience that they bought and paid for. We've collectively decided to help and we should collectively bear the cost.

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Or just pass another law forbidding the 'depriving [any] passengers of the flight experience that they bought and paid for'. I see no compelling reason for taxes to subsidize companies just to help them follow the law, i get no subsidies to help me not steal things or to obey traffic lights. And I'm not posting millions in profits.

There is a huge difference between laws that require you not to do something, and ones that require you to spend limited resources providing affirmative benefits to people.

No there isn’t. You can logically construct one set from the other.

If you are unable to run a business that provides equal access to the level required by regulation, then your business is unsustainable and cannot function. This is the same situation as running a business that cannot afford to provide a service while meeting environmental regulations.

From the politician's point of view there is a very important difference. If you raise taxes and then use that money to pay for something then you are responsible for a tax increase. Opposition politicians can point to your tax increase and complain that this is costing the average taxpayer $N per year.

However if you make a regulation which does the same thing then the cost does not cross the government's books, so nobody can say that you are costing anybody anything in particular. Its much better politics, regardless of the economics.

By forcing airlines to allow horses, that means the airlines have to expend effort for that. That means they have to raise prices. That means all airline fliers are paying for it. I don't see a reason why all US citizens should pay for it instead of all US fliers paying for it.

As far as depriving other passengers, it's up to the airlines how to do that. They are incentivized to provide a good experience to fliers in order to keep people willing to fly with them.

The set of all US citizens, not the subset of US fliers, is the set that democratically elected the reps that enacted this law. They should be willing to pay for it.

Too many laws are enacted on the basis that they will be popular only because a majority of people will not have to pay for them and thus see no downsides.

When the government pays for things, it distorts the economics, because the true cost of that thing is being hidden from the consumers. By including the cost of enforcement in the cost of the service itself, the market can balance better.

For example, when allowing horses, that means the plane uses additional fuel. Usually the cost of the fuel is included in the ticket, so as fuel becomes scarcer, prices go up, and less people fly. But when the government starts paying for some of that fuel, it will hide that price increase from consumers, so they will fly more than they should, and use fuel faster than they should.

Also, almost 90% of Americans have flown[1], so it's not like filers are some tiny minority.

[1] http://survey.airlines.org/

Yes, but how else will you be able to pull out your phone and start a video call with: “I’m on an aeroplane. Look down. I’m on a horse.”

People are more willing to spend other peoples’ money than their own. News at 11.

There's a difference between getting help, and getting enabled.

People with mental illness often make terrible decisions, but there's a trend to say we have to tolerate these terrible decisions because that's helping them, when it might do the opposite.

OK, so service animals might be effective. But for a non-permanent disability, couldn't travelling without one be a milestone to work towards, rather than an unalienable right? Obviously it depends on individual circumstances, but who should make the call?

It's unlikely to be a goal for people with a service animal. It takes years and a lot of money to train a service animal - it's not a quick fix.

Probably a doctor and not an airline should make the call? It seems like a useful principle that airlines should not be in charge of medical decisions, which would imply that airlines should never question traveling with a horse (besides checking the doctor's authorization) - if we think that someone is being overprescribed a horse, we-as-society should follow up with the prescribing doctor and perhaps medical licensing boards, but we-as-society shouldn't put indirect pressure on the doctor via the patient themselves via a flight attendant.

I agree. I wonder if any doctor has ever been disciplined by a licensing board for his or her substantive judgment in one of these accommodation cases. (That is for an inappropriate decision rather than for some procedural lapse like not doing an examination or something.)

I think it's reasonable for a doctor to prescribe a horse, and it's also reasonable for an airline to not accommodate someone flying with a horse.

More generally, I don't think all of society needs to be forced to accommodate any possible prescription by a doctor.

Sure, that's a reasonable argument, but that's different from the argument of "should we, as society, try to wean people off horses". If airlines want to discourage passengers who need horses for practical reasons / for the good of the airline, that's one thing, and we can discuss what the airline's needs are (and even whether there's a way that the airline would be happy to accommodate it, e.g. with some flights designed for pets or something, which I'm sure a lot of pet owners without medical needs would be delighted to pay for). If they want to discourage those passengers for the alleged good of the passengers, that's quite different.

> I think it's reasonable for a doctor to prescribe a horse

And that's where you and I disagree. This therapy animal business seems to be exploding in popularity, and maybe there's something to it, though it seems too popular too quick to be properly vetted. But even if animals are the ultimate therapy, this idea that any and all animals should now be accepted as therapy is over the top.

My mom is scared of dogs, and I dislike dogs and cats due to their smell, bad owners, and possibility of being attacked by certain breeds (which may or may not be due to bad owners, but that doesn’t matter to me). The physical disability service animals, I was okay with due to it being easy to verify legitimate use and being rare enough. But this ESA nonsense is out of hand, where it’s very easy to make something up or even make yourself believe you need a pet and subject everyone else to it.

I guess my big problem is there’s no standards, and I have no security in knowing that someone sitting inches away from me or my family has an untrained pit bull that they’re claiming is an ESA, and I can’t do anything about it until after the damage is done.

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