> If you need to travel long distances, there's little substitute for an airplane.
The emphasis here isn't on substitute, it's on "need". Not many people need to travel long distances on a regular basis; they're just made to believe they need do.
The emphasis here isn't on substitute, it's on "need". Not many people need to travel long distances on a regular basis; they're just made to believe they need do.
Heck, come to think of it, if I ever saw a legit use for VR, it might well be substituting for business travel?
Edit: And somewhat relevantly: business class is far less fuel-efficient too, which would suggest maybe we should get rid of first and business class altogether. Heck, forcing businesses to use economy minus for travel might itself be an easy way to get rid of some unnecessary business trips!
Kicking the price of this kind of policy down to individual consumers is a great way to just make everyone really mad and get more money from business customers who will still go on not-strictly-necessary trips.
Humans are tribal animals; we respond to communications in person better than over video conference and we tend to trust people with whom we've shared meals and drinks. Arguing that that just shouldn't be isn't likely to change anything about business behavior. I get on airplanes across oceans because it's effective. Believe me, I'd usually rather stay at home with my family and sleep in my own bed.
I'm not making moral value judgments here; I'm making economic value judgments as that drives much more behavior I think.
No chance that businesses will stop paying for people to travel. And their budgets are much bigger than individuals visiting family. Take a look at the entire private jet market - basically a very small wedge of HNWs and lots of executives flying for business.
People's expectations are malleable. It's not easy to change them, but it's necessary and it's possible. And once that happens, the game will change, and it will force you to change your tune accordingly.
A world with greatly reduced air travel is a more insular and less understanding world.
I don't think there is an evidence for that. It is more likely that immigration increases cultural understanding rather than travel.
In any case, emissions of travel can be greatly reduced by using other modes of transport and by making the stay in the target country longer. Such a cultural shift could actually even improve the understanding between nations.
What will the affect on immigration be if going back to the "old country" becomes significantly more difficult?
Disagree that travel doesn't matter, but even then, do you really think it being much harder to visit their home countries again will have no impact on immigration patterns?
> In any case, emissions of travel can be greatly reduced by using other modes of transport
Would love to hear how you propose to let Chinese and Indian immigrants in the states visit home sans airplanes
> by making the stay in the target country longer.
People would already take longer vacations if they could, dude. Making it harder and slower to get there isn't gonna help anything.
We know - you already made this point in the parent comment.
> sans airplanes
You've moved the goalposts from 'greatly reduced air travel' to 'sans airplanes'.
...is your point here that points can't reiterated or something?
> You've moved the goalposts from 'greatly reduced air travel' to 'sans airplanes'.
They're the one that talked about using other means of transport. I had already mentioned immigration. If you greatly reduce it by making it harder/more expensive, that impacts immigrants.
Is this a serious assertion? You think I can learn the culture of, say, Japan, from a book as well as by actually living there for a short period and experiencing it?
This strikes me as woefully naive. Learning things from books, from a distance is fine and good, but there's no true substitute for being there, for experiencing a thing in person.
Let me tell you of a night in Mardid.
I headed out to see the night Madrid around midnight. Going along a crowded street, I heard someone singing. I was carrying a portable synthesizer, so I played along. Three people, carrying two guitars and a saxophone were walking in the opposite direction; they stopped, and joined in.
Eventually, the girl who was singing left; and the trio asked me if I'd join them to hear a jazz jam. Something is still happening this late, I asked. Yeah, it starts at 2:30AM.
I thought it was an open jam, but it was mostly the house/invited bands playing. Still, I managed to persuade the saxophone player to take the stage with a solo: he played it to me in the corner, where nobody could hear it, and I thought it was really good.
When the jam was over, we resumed making music until sunrise, playing at a bus stop (no buses were running that late). Random people joined in at times.
When the night was over, I left carrying with me something that I'd have trouble putting in words, much less so reading from a text written by someone else. It's an impossible task, after all, to convert a person or a memory into a string of characters losslessly.
You can learn many things from books. And then there is so much more that you can't.
The suggestion of the comment I responded to was about learning. Traveling, on its own, doesn't do anything to help people learn anything substantial. It's still ultimately a consumerism-centric activity. The travel industry has done an amazing job of convincing people otherwise.
Nothing of this sort. Most of the US shuts down at 2AM, people don't walk the streets in most cities which makes bumping into people impossible, and so on. The life and the environment is totally different here.
(I say this as someone who drove through all states West of Iowa, with the exception of North Dakota, lived in NYC, TX, CA each for years, and moved to the US from another country).
Most importantly, interacting with people from another country in their environment gives you a unique perspective both on their culture and your own. It's not about "having and experience", it's that your understanding of the world around you changes substantially.
>doesn't do anything to help people learn anything substantial
You learn how another country works. You learn what a day in life of another person is like in that country. It's the countless little things that are different that you see. It's the everyday lives that shape everyday thinking, and that's what matters the most.
In short, you learn to be in a different way, by observing people who are in a different way.
Textbooks simply won't answer the question "What is it like to be a Parisian, in 2019?".
I mean, you are making a very strong statement, with not much to back it up with. I provided a single counter-example, but I really don't know where to even start.
The logic of your argument applies verbatim to pretty much anything: "There's no point in venturing outdoors. If you really want to learn about nature, hit the library. You're just enjoying yourselves out there."
Well, no. Maybe that's what you do, but perhaps you aren't getting as much out of it.
I'll also make a strong statement: you have no idea what another country is like until you travel there. You won't have a single shared experience that will make it possible for you to relate to someone living there. Until you go there, all your knowledge is just an abstraction that you built up in your head.
To make an analogy again: you can read up on Beethoven all your life, but from hearing his music once you learn more than from reading about it.
That's dubious and far more benign than the consequences of a world with climate change.
I'd rather have a connected world with climate change than a disconnected world with WW3... (and probably still climate change, because war is great for CO2 emissions)
For that matter, how many people will care about the Great Barrier Reef (etc) if there's no possibility of them ever being able to travel there?
There's a lot of ways for the world to fail here.
It's hard to disambiguate the causality, but it is probably fair to say that prior to the global information economy it took literally seeing the world to learn certain things. Of course, it also was/is fun for many, and projects power, wealth, and status.
But today with globally available information, truly frequent travelers (the ones with the most impact) arguably are really just doing it for status (and/or maybe trying to flee the inexorable inner void of the human psyche via endless novelty and distraction). More occasional travelers often pursue curated tourism experiences, and would gain more understanding from a book or even documentary.
Is there something ineffable about "smelling the Sistine chapel"? Possibly - but no more ineffable than appreciating the beauty right in your neck of the woods. Do you need to experience diversity in culture, race, and history? Absolutely - and it can be done firsthand in plenty of major cities around the world.
At least a bit of travel arguably is still good for education and appreciation. But the frequent travelers (who are oh-so-frequently tech employees), the ones who are constantly hopping on a plane to somewhere, are not really gaining anything intrinsic, and are exercising a huge footprint. And if anything, by devoting so much time and energy to travel, they tend to neglect their actual learning and education in other ways.