You generally seem pretty sharp, but your viewpoint here (and elsewhere) seems to be me to be (to use your occasional bluntness) simple contrarian idiocy.

What you say is true but irrelevant. More than that, if you paid attention to the actual issue at hand instead of performing, I dunno, some basic cost-efficiency exercise, you'd see that "Manned aircraft are prohibitively expensive" is a source of pressure in the system.

Manned aircraft are increasingly flown largely by machine. The recent San Francisco crash may have been prevented if a computer had been more active (if not in full control).

Cost-efficiency might indicate we should push for such a thing, but we're comforted by the thought of a man at the helm.

Why's that? Because that means a man has oversight of the automatic system.

But we're going to want our planes to be fully automated at some point.

So a drone flown by a man elsewhere may well be replaced by a drone flown by a drone elsewhere.

And cost-efficiency means that there can be a great many of these drones in play.

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All of this would be fine if it were an earnest conversation about the role of government in society. This is not the case.

The rule of law is being violated and it is an affront.

Now I'm not exhorting you to share my viewpoint. I'm quite honestly just contemptuous of what I see as your waffling grey in a situation that is increasingly black and white.