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Comment by tomp | Hacker News Reader

As we've seen in the past 2 years, there's no real positive benefit to society to frequent business flying (at pre-pandemic levels).

Like smoking, we don't need to completely ban air travel. The equivalent would be severely limiting it (for example, prohibiting business flying).

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there's no real positive benefit to society to frequent business flying

I'm seeing a lot of communication and alignment issues because people can't get into one room and hash things out.

I've seen this firsthand many times, too. Having a meeting over beers and longstanding disagreements just melt away.

> The equivalent would be severely limiting it (for example, prohibiting business flying).

People fly to go on holiday and experience cultures other than their own which is something we should be encouraging rather than discouraging. I strongly agree with reducing needless business travel but if doing so also limited vacation travel I think it'd be a net negative.

We should be discouraging all air travel. All of it.

No, we shouldn’t. Instead, we should work on ensuring that as many people are able to enjoy new opportunities it provides if they do desire as possible. Everyone should be able to enjoy life.

Climate impact is significant. That's going to interfere with generations enjoying their lives.

We should then work on enabling people to fly with no climate impact. For example, using zero emissions energy to synthesize jet fuel. The goal should be to enable people, not to block them.

Sure, but not high on the list of priorities. How about enabling people to get healthcare, go to college, or to survive by addressing global warming.

"Stop everything above this line on Maslow's pyramid because some people fall below the line" is not a solution to any of the problems faces by people below the line. It's like demanding that an astrophysicist cure AIDS at once before ever using another telescope.

You don't help people climb a ladder by chopping off the top and declaring the ladder climbed.

flying isn't a step on maslow's heirarchy of needs.

> You don't help people climb a ladder by chopping off the top and declaring the ladder climbed.

Sounds like public schooling in the USA for the last 25 years :(

If someone said those crazy, extreme things, that would be a relevant comment.

You don't even have to be zero emissions. You just need net zero. If you're putting carbon into the air, you need to sink an equivalent amount of it. If you use biofuels for instance, so long as you replant/regrow the same biomass as you convert to fuel, you're closing the loop.

Zero emissions technologies are great where they're practical. Aircraft are one of those places where the energy density and overall density of your fuel source is very, very important.

If you care about climate, get cryptocurrency banned. Air travel has all sorts of bad consequences, but also has economic and social benefits. Crypto on the other hand is an endless black hole of energy that even when used for its intended purpose creates economic and social harm.

Talking about taking away things that people like, like airplanes and red meat and gas stoves just get people up in arms. Start with the low-hanging fruit: crypto has no value except to speculators and criminals and tax evaders. Concrete is like 10% of our energy use, and we use way too much of it for temporary structures. No one likes leaf blowers, just ban the gas-powered ones.

> Talking about taking away things that people like, like airplanes and red meat and gas stoves just get people up in arms. Start with the low-hanging fruit: crypto has no value except to speculators and criminals and tax evaders.

What distinction are you drawing here? Both flying and crypto have a handful of rabid fans who use them a lot (and seem to enjoy it) while most regular people barely think about them at all, except to get vaguely irritated when they hear them passing by.

(I'm in favour of punitively high taxes on both, FWIW)

The main distinction is that airlines generate economic activity via tourism, shipping, and cultural exchange. Cryptocoins generate mostly black market activity; corruption is generally considered bad. If airlines disappeared today, people would still travel, with more time but only one order of magnitude more energy efficiency. If BTC disappeared tomorrow, people would would make most of the same transactions with more time efficiency, and six orders of magnitude less energy.

5-10% of people take a flight every year. For the US and Australia, it’s roughly half of all people. [1] is from a climate interest group.

Supposedly 3.9% of people worldwide own cryptocoins. Thought that stays would support my argument more but I suspect lots of hodling and not much trading.

[1]: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d30896202a18c0001b49...

> Talking about taking away things that people like, like airplanes and red meat and gas stoves just get people up in arms.

Certain people will get up in arms regardless, partly due to certain people making up threats like 'someone is going to take away your ...!' But nobody here said that.

My favorite thing about air travel is the opportunities it takes away. Destroying the planet is so important to the future of humanity

In no way is air travel necessary for anyone to find enjoyment in their life or to seek new opportunities, even overseas.

> there's no real positive benefit to society to frequent business flying (at pre-pandemic levels).

I'm sorry but I don't buy that. Business flying has obvious benefits including, perhaps obviously, enabling businesses to be run efficiently.

I started a new job after the start of COVID, and it has been really hard to build the personal relationships to become fully effective (our offices are spread out globally). My manager has said that pre-COVID days, I would have had the chance to meet many of my colleagues face-to-face and have a few beers with them, which would have greased the wheel to creating some personal connections. It's always easier to request help from someone who has a good impression of you.

Similarly with clients. It's much easier for people to go on attack-mode when they are displeased when it's only through email or a video conference where people have their cameras off. Unhappy clients can be placated and turned towards working together to a solution much more easily in person, and happy clients can be turned into long term partners more easily over dinner and friendly chats. This is especially true of customers in Asia.

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