The airplanes literally have >10x as many seats for economy. You know, airplane seats don’t get spaced out in ways that are literally hazardous to human life on accident. And as a culture, we decided things that threaten human life enough are worth making illegal even if they infringe on personal freedoms. Lots of people wouldn’t wear seatbelts or helmets without them.

IOW: it is absolutely the airline’s fault. And one of them, Spirit to be exact, is pushing the boundaries even further. Is there a limit to how far this will go? Probably not, left on its own.

And no, my job doesn’t ask me to smoke 40 packs a day, amazingly, and the two things you listed are not equivalent. It was, at one point in history, not unreasonable to ask employees to fly to other locations on company dime. It is slowly becoming unreasonable because there are no checks preventing this and people literally can’t just stop flying, this isn’t a real solution, the world would collapse with the absence of air travel, we can stop entertaining this thought.