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Comment by mehrdadn | Hacker News Reader

Definitely tax it, but I actually view a lot of the business travel as unnecessary compared to consumer travel, and that's what I'd want to get rid of first with a tax. I'm far more sympathetic to people trying to see their dying uncles or attend their sister's wedding or visiting their parents once a year than, say, professionals "needing" to attend conferences or whatever.

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!

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Vastly more business travel is done for sales or sales-support purposes than attending conference purposes.

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.

Well, to be blunt, so what? That sucks for sales stuff, it's not like I said conferences are the only things that need to change. Maybe the practices there need to change there just like for conferences and other stuff. Nobody said it's easy or nice or effective or whatever for humans to do long distance. Just that you need to start sacrificing somewhere and I sure as heck find it more reasonable and humane to start at business sales trips than family visits.

"So what?" Incentives. If subgroup A doesn't travel for sales, subgroup B who travels will likely outcompete them by more than the cost of the travel, or subgroup C who is large enough to have many local offices will outcompete A, making it harder for new entrants to a market to compete and concentrating business activities in select cities (which is great if you're rich enough to live in those prosperous cities).

I'm not making moral value judgments here; I'm making economic value judgments as that drives much more behavior I think.

Whatever you do, either some subgroup will find a way to take advantage of it, or you'll find a way to mess with taxes and incentives and prices enough to mostly compensate for the side effects. That's not a counterargument for a solution, it's already a given in the problem statement. If you find some magical way to avoid any and all collateral economic damage, I'm all for it, but I don't see why people should just wait for others to come up with miracles that may never come just because some businesses will inevitably win and others will inevitably lose.

As someone in sales, I think I would be EXTREMELY supportive of all of my competition deciding to do the eco conscious thing, and declining to fly to clients. It'd be great.

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.

Yeah, it'd be great, until your clients stop viewing it as a noble thing and start seeing it as a disgusting and wasteful thing. Then your competition will be happier than you.

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.

I'll happily take the opposite side of that bet.

The opposite side of that bet? So you won't change your tune and you'll happily continue to do this even after your clients find it disgusting? Be my guest I guess...

It needs to be viewed as distasteful as holding sales meetings in a strip club.

I have friends who have done this this year. Good luck with that.

Of course you are right. That's why a certificate trade is needed, to maintain a level the playing field between you and your competitors.

I agree with you there big time. You can virtually attend a conference. FaceTime with grandma from her deathbed is not an acceptable alternative.

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.

There are individual consumers that commute via plane in the UK. This shouldn't be the case and these aren't most people.

I don't really support arbitrary penalties on certain classes of travelers or banning, e.g., business class. Note that the corresponding inefficiency would be priced in to the carbon offset tax and business and first class travelers would still be paying their larger portion of the carbon externality.

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