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Comment by paganel | Hacker News Reader

I really do hope that this event will give a big blow to the mass-tourism industry. It doesn't feel right to catch a flight from Europe to half-way around the world (Thailand, let's say) for just a few hundred euros, there are lots of externalities not included in that price. To say nothing of the Dutch-disease-like effects brought by mass tourism to those tourist places.

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Business travel is also something we should look to curtail. I expect there are a high number of business trips that could be replaced with virtual meetings if they needed to be (say, if there was a global pandemic restricting travel). In the US around 1/5 of domestic flights are for business purposes [0]. If you also include people who relocated for work, and are travelling to visit family, I expect it would be much higher.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/207103/forecasted-number...

Yes, although it’s worth saying that at least in Britain business trips are a strong minority of flights. With Heathrow expansion the case was made that it was vital because capacity was stretched, and businesses in general needed the extra flights, but in fact most flights are tourism. And even within that category there’s a lot of frivolous travel, people flying for a night or two, or even commuting by plane.

With respect, travelling to relocate for work or to visit family seem like they fall into the category of necessary flights - I mean, if you said to everyone "you can only take 10 return flights in your life from now on", people would spend them on relocating and family visits with considerable ease. They would think twice about that ski trip though.

As you say, the average business trip is more about status and could easily be dropped. But it's not fair to put relocation for work into that category.

My point about relocation is a lot of people relocate for jobs that they could easily do at home or in a satellite office. I get that some people want to move so they aren't stuck in the same town of pop. 1,200 all their life (that's my situation), but I don't think most people are in that situation.

Say you were raised in Wichita, KS. I've never been there, but given its size I assume you can have a pretty good lifestyle living there. However if you want to work in tech, media, journalism, law, finance or a whole bunch of other industries, you would really be limiting your opportunities if you stayed there.

It’s also unsustainable with our current capacity (both technology and logistics) to track and block the movement of diseases. We’ve already had problems happen with wildlife, moving trees or bees around without sufficiently advanced and rigorous tests has already created pandemic-like conditions for various species, and the same applies to humans.

Have to say our leaders, the EU and globalism in general seem to be looking decidedly worse off: many leaders are following rather than leading; the EU love-fest has disintegrated into closed borders and selfish refusals for assistance; and globalism looks to have delivered us a rapid, efficient and apparently unblockable conduit for spreading a dangerous disease to all corners of the earth. Yay open borders!

Was surprised to hear it was China that was offering help to the EU first, yet none of the other countries seemed to care for Italy. So much for the United States of Europe ever forming.

Its also surprising so many people thought globalism would be with no significant downsides whatsoever. A virus wreaking havoc was waiting to happen, and we never thought about creating a plan. You'd figure these are the times you'd call people to duty; not to go to war, but to do the small things (medical, transportation or other essential stuff) that others can't do or to help handle to load. In case of emergency, I'm sure I'd prove a lot more useful transporting hospital beds than fixing JIRA tickets for a SaaS company in finance. But maybe that's just me.

Well it's probably better for those of us who can continue business as usual to continue business as usual, and for those who can't (because their companies are closed frex) to voluntarily take up these emergency work roles. Once we run out of people looking for work, maybe then we can consider a bit of conscription.

But in general, yes. Governments are underresponding and underdelivering. There is no creativity left.

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