The Uneasy Truth About Traveling While Fat

[Hardartery]

Same issue but less thought of: carryon bags. Fuckers all the time bring giant carry ones that in no way meet the size restrictions. This creates the overhead bin space shortage. Airlines do nothing to enforce their own size restriction rules. And simply put it on passengers to figure it out. On the same flight I saw someone put a guitar in an overhead bin (taking up the entire bin) while another passenger bought a seat for their guitar.

Airlines won't change until it hurts their bottom line. I would love to see a market solution. An airline needs to have the courage to enforce these rules and market themselves as the better flying experience. I'd pay more to know that I was guaranteed a full seat and overhead bin storage.

The bigger problem is the people putting the personal item (Usually a backpack) in the overhead as well as the carry on. That goes under the seat in front of you asshole, not in the carry on space that I paid for. And put your carry on in the bin above your seat, not somewhere near the front over my seat and then walk your retarded self to the back of the plane where you're living. There is plenty of overhead room if people follow instructions. Like up on edge in the newer 737's not flat, and not sideways taking up the space of 2 or 3 bags like a half-wit.

Okay but devil's advocate: you had the opportunity to purchase a more expensive ticket with priority boarding if it was important to you to put your shit up there. I mean it says right on your ticket that you are not entitled to a pro-rata amount of overhead space. I'm not sure this is the same thing at all. Though I agree 100% that people are douches in this regard.

It's 100% also stated, both in written form and verbally on every flight, that personal bags go under the seat in front of you. Period. If you want to pay for the carry-on and are only carrying something that qualifies as a personal item you are entitled to treat it as a carry on and put it overhead. Otherwise, personal bags go under the seat in front of you. Period. If you don't like it because that's where your feet also go, tough luck. other people payed for overhead space for their carry on and the reason they lack room is usually all of the people putting all of their bags plus their coats plus whatever they bought at Duty Free up there. Hint, if someone is stupid enough to think they are getting a deal at Duty Free they should be deemed too stupid to fly.

[dw]

And at least with civil rights, history shows that relatively few legal victories are enough to change the behavior of entire industries.

This is off topic but I 100% disagree. Civil disobedience, people willing to withstand State brutality, and/or willing to commit violence is why we have Civil Rights. It took a revolution to enact the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Women's suffrage was marked by a decades of civil disobedience (protests and the lady folk speaking in public). They were not always treated well... Workers' rights and basic protections came after decades of brutal violence from Capitalists and the State against striking workers. Civil Rights from the 1960's was a decade of civil disobedience, riots, State brutality, assassinations, and so forth. We have rights because a few were willing to pay the ultimate price.

Maybe we are just defining Rights differently.

He specified industries but in every case you mention you are referring to causes of legislation being passed rather than causes of it being obeyed, if I'm understanding you correctly.

The private sector changes its colors like a chameleon. Woke today, America First tomorrow, it'll go whichever way the opinion leaders it desires to placate go.

[aurelius]

He specified industries but in every case you mention you are referring to causes of legislation being passed rather than causes of it being obeyed, if I'm understanding you correctly.

Yes. Courts enforce existing rights under the Constitution and the law. Legislation must be passed to establish new rights.

The private sector changes its colors like a chameleon. Woke today, America First tomorrow, it'll go whichever way the opinion leaders it desires to placate go.

Corporations are amoral. And will act heinously in the ruthless pursuit of profit. History informs me the only restraint is the law. And even that restraint is somewhat limited by politics, enforcement, and what corporations believe they can get away with. Just Google Wells Fargo.

[mikeylikey]

He specified industries but in every case you mention you are referring to causes of legislation being passed rather than causes of it being obeyed, if I'm understanding you correctly.

Sometimes legislation has to get passed to make people do things they already should have been doing. One could argue that a lot of what the Voting Rights Act is just self-evident application of the 15th amendment, for example.

[mikeylikey]

Corporations are amoral. And will act heinously in the ruthless pursuit of profit. History informs me the only restraint is the law. And even that restraint is somewhat limited by politics, enforcement, and what corporations believe they can get away with. Just Google Wells Fargo.

I'll see your Wells Fargo, and I'll raise you the Nonpareil Cork Works:

Prior to the invention of cheap and extremely buoyant synthetic materials, life preservers were filled with cork. Physics dictates you need a certain volume of typical cork to reliably float a person, but since volume is inconvenient to measure, and inspectors need to have a life, government regulations at the time instead specified a minimum WEIGHT of 6 lbs per life preserver.

Cork being a somewhat expensive material, if an amoral corporation wanted to increase profits on the sly, it could do so by concealing a cheaper material of appropriate weight within some amount of real cork. The substitute material simply needed to be lower cost per oz than cork. Say for example, *Iron* *Bars*. The Nonpareil Cork Works of Camden NJ actually did this. In 1904 the steamboat General Slocum sank in the East River, and something like a thousand people drowned, many wearing life preservers weighted with *Iron* *Bars*.

4 officers of the company were charged, but not with murder, not with negligent homicide, not with reckless endangerment of the public... they were charged with "conspiring to defraud the government and prejudice of the administration of the steamboat inspection laws".

[Hiphopapotamus]

^
I always think of stories like this when people talk about cutting "red tape" and getting regulations "out of the way" of business. Sure, plenty of regulations are bs but many are absolutely needed because without them companies will use iron to make life preservers.

[mikeylikey]

^
I always think of stories like this when people talk about cutting "red tape" and getting regulations "out of the way" of business. Sure, plenty of regulations are bs but many are absolutely needed because without them companies will use iron to make life preservers.

You missed the whole point.

Without the regulations there would have been no incentive to make life preservers HEAVIER, (the stupidest imaginable quality in a life preserver). The iron bars were put there *to satisfy the regulation*. I'd certainly rather have a coconut-island life preserver with only 4 lbs of cork than one with 6 lbs of "cork-and-iron-bars".

There's a certain logical incongruence in trying to reconcile the simultaneous notions that:

a) Corporations are evil enough that if left to their own devices they will knowingly market useless life saving equipment
b) A corporation ^that^evil^ will follow the letter - and spirit - of regulations put in place to prevent (A)

...and what is incongruent in the abstract becomes absurd in the real world where regulations are primarily written by lobbyists on the corporate/political/corporate carousel.

[aurelius]

You missed the whole point.

Without the regulations there would have been no incentive to make life preservers HEAVIER, (the stupidest imaginable quality in a life preserver). The iron bars were put there *to satisfy the regulation*. I'd certainly rather have a coconut-island life preserver with only 4 lbs of cork than one with 6 lbs of "cork-and-iron-bars".

There's a certain logical incongruence in trying to reconcile the simultaneous notions that:

a) Corporations are evil enough that if left to their own devices they will knowingly market useless life saving equipment
b) A corporation ^that^evil^ will follow the letter - and spirit - of regulations put in place to prevent (A)

...and what is incongruent in the abstract becomes absurd in the real world where regulations are primarily written by lobbyists on the corporate/political/corporate carousel.

I don't see an incongruence between A and B. When one considers that corporations will perform B IF IT IS IN THEIR BEST INTEREST TO DO SO. There are numerous, too many to recount, examples of legislation changing the behavior of industries. You previously made a statement that civil cases (enforcement of laws) change entire industry behaviors. Before they were doing something harmful, now they aren't. The difference was the legislation. Where is the incongruence?

Call back to what you said about the political process: lobbyists write the rules in such a way to assure this is the outcome. The incongruence happens here: A) Significant Penalties + B) Significant chance of getting caught = Compliance
There will not be compliance if A and B are not significant. Wells Fargo and other banks (didn't Chase get caught recently?) regularly engages in fraud as a common business practice. They have been caught multiple times (like almost every year). But because the A) penalty is not significant enough, they continue the fraudulent practices.

I will add: it is a VERY interesting take to assign blame to the government regulation because people, under the auspices of a corporation, chose to put lead in a life preserver. Come on man. Besides, the regulation makes sense. Assuming 6 pounds of cork floats a 250 pound person, weighing the life jackets was the easiest method to determine if the life preservers had enough cork. They probably passed this law in response to manufacturers putting too little cork in a life preserver. The people passing the laws underestimated how evil people really are when dealing with 'others'. That was/is the problem. Corporations allow people to gamify and abstract real consequences. Of course these people would not give a lead life jacket to a loved one or friend. Or even someone they know. But create the layer of separation to 'others', gamify with a profit incentive, and whammo...normal human beings do evil things. The underlined is where we interrupt this process.

[mikeylikey]

I will add: it is a VERY interesting take to assign blame to the government regulation because people, under the auspices of a corporation, chose to put lead in a life preserver. Come on man.

I didn't blame the government. The regulation was well meaning. I said they wouldn't have done it absent the regulation. Which is not wrong. I stand by the notion that I would prefer a merely cork-deficient life preserver to a cork-deficient-plus-lead life preserver. Your call I guess.

The whole thing was, I hope obviously, somewhat hyperbolic in service of my point. I would say this with sincerity: regulation is akin to the old adage about locking your doors. It keeps honest people honest, and that's about it.

[Philbert]

What kind of odds will you give me on a bet that a population dumb enough to buy life preservers with too little cork to float an adult will be too dumb to elect a representative government capable of preventing corporations from selling cork deficient life preservers? I do not believe humans can vote themselves out of being stupid. As for holding corporation employees personally responsible for their own actions, I am all for it, but the current societal ethic is that when a violent criminal is held personally responsible for violating a restraining order it is a tragedy. Politicians are not going to go up against the deep pockets to legislate for more frequent tragedies.

[mbasic]

Fuck flying anyway. Like, a Melbourne to Adelaide flight is supposed to be 1 hour, vs 10 hours of driving or taking the train. But throw in driving to and from each of the airports, early checkin, baggage, security and general airline fuckery, and now it's 4 hours instead. Then you have fat bastards and squawking kids (I have squawking kids at home, I don't need more when I travel) and stinky cramped toilets and bad food and noisy engines and dry air on top of it all.

Yes. DIA in Denver is a nightmare of an airport where it takes 2+ hours to get through security on any holiday. My hometown in Texas is a 10 hour drive. It takes an hour to get to the airport (it is in BFE) and 2 hours to get through stressful/dehumanizing security. Add in a flight time of 2 hours and another hour of waiting around bullshit and flying saves me 4 hours. I just drive it now.

...then the obvs thing that if you flew you would have to rent a car or rely on public/private transport on the other side.

Phoenix to LA is interesting, because normally I would say this same thing: you might as well drive. But now, the last 10-15 years, the traffic is SO bad SO far out from downtown LA I'm not sure driving over flying in the right choice.

Either way, fuck cali in general.

[Hardartery]

Fuck flying anyway. Like, a Melbourne to Adelaide flight is supposed to be 1 hour, vs 10 hours of driving or taking the train. But throw in driving to and from each of the airports, early checkin, baggage, security and general airline fuckery, and now it's 4 hours instead. Then you have fat bastards and squawking kids (I have squawking kids at home, I don't need more when I travel) and stinky cramped toilets and bad food and noisy engines and dry air on top of it all.

Yes. DIA in Denver is a nightmare of an airport where it takes 2+ hours to get through security on any holiday. My hometown in Texas is a 10 hour drive. It takes an hour to get to the airport (it is in BFE) and 2 hours to get through stressful/dehumanizing security. Add in a flight time of 2 hours and another hour of waiting around bullshit and flying saves me 4 hours. I just drive it now.

...then the obvs thing that if you flew you would have to rent a car or rely on public/private transport on the other side.

Phoenix to LA is interesting, because normally I would say this same thing: you might as well drive. But now, the last 10-15 years, the traffic is SO bad SO far out from downtown LA I'm not sure driving over flying in the right choice.

Either way, fuck cali in general.

Anybody that flies more than once a year should have Global Entry or PreCheck. My credit card pays for my Global Entry, so that was an easy decision and it's only $100 anyway for I think 5 years. You cut all of the lines, you leave your shoes on and everything stays in your bags and you have a special line at customs when entering the country that never has more than a handful of people and it's always "Welcome home!" and mere moments getting through. FLL airport in particular is brutal without it. No missed flights, no getting undressed and dressed again in the airport, no hassles. Best travel related thing I've ever done.

[mikeylikey]

What kind of odds will you give me on a bet that a population dumb enough to buy life preservers with too little cork to float an adult will be too dumb to elect a representative government capable of preventing corporations from selling cork deficient life preservers? I do not believe humans can vote themselves out of being stupid. As for holding corporation employees personally responsible for their own actions, I am all for it, but the current societal ethic is that when a violent criminal is held personally responsible for violating a restraining order it is a tragedy. Politicians are not going to go up against the deep pockets to legislate for more frequent tragedies.

To be fair, the population did not buy the life preservers. The ferry company procurement department bought them from the life preserver company. Only a handful of bad actors were in any position to be aware of the fraud. The population relied on the quite reasonable assumption that the life preservers conspicuously hung above the decks of a seagoing boat were serviceable as such. An individual traveler cannot inspect the life preservers, the hull welds, the engine room, crew training log, etc. of every boat before buying a ticket. Nor can he or she be expected to read hundreds of thousands of lines of MCAS code from a 737-maxplus to ensure the computer is not rendering an historically finicky sensor malfunctioning into a single point unrecoverable catastrophic failure opportunity when a simple software change could incorporate data from the multiple redundant systems which are already on the plane and already interfaced with said computer.

It is not wrong that we aspire to create mechanisms ensuring corporations take appropriate reasonable steps to provide safe products and services. But to belabor my prior analogy, trying to prevent every conceivable bad thing a bad person might do, using regulations, is like trying to stop your house getting robbed by having more and more locks. At some point you gotta relax and say this is why I have insurance/alarm/dog/1911 etc. And in my analogy those things are criminal and/or meaningful civil penalties, which we historically tend to shy away from doing. Again, the life jacket guys were charged with obstruction of sea regulation enforcement and not 1000 counts of reckless homicide.

Bringing this home, when people say "thErE shOuLd Be a LaW" about fat people on planes, I would submit that the real world effect of an attempt, by the government, to come up with regulatory scheme, consisting of weights/measures/procedures to address the problem would be about as effective as the 6 lb life jacket rule.

[mbasic]

Fuck flying anyway. Like, a Melbourne to Adelaide flight is supposed to be 1 hour, vs 10 hours of driving or taking the train. But throw in driving to and from each of the airports, early checkin, baggage, security and general airline fuckery, and now it's 4 hours instead. Then you have fat bastards and squawking kids (I have squawking kids at home, I don't need more when I travel) and stinky cramped toilets and bad food and noisy engines and dry air on top of it all.

Yes. DIA in Denver is a nightmare of an airport where it takes 2+ hours to get through security on any holiday. My hometown in Texas is a 10 hour drive. It takes an hour to get to the airport (it is in BFE) and 2 hours to get through stressful/dehumanizing security. Add in a flight time of 2 hours and another hour of waiting around bullshit and flying saves me 4 hours. I just drive it now.

...then the obvs thing that if you flew you would have to rent a car or rely on public/private transport on the other side.

Phoenix to LA is interesting, because normally I would say this same thing: you might as well drive. But now, the last 10-15 years, the traffic is SO bad SO far out from downtown LA I'm not sure driving over flying in the right choice.

Either way, fuck cali in general.

Anybody that flies more than once a year should have Global Entry or PreCheck. My credit card pays for my Global Entry, so that was an easy decision and it's only $100 anyway for I think 5 years. You cut all of the lines, you leave your shoes on and everything stays in your bags and you have a special line at customs when entering the country that never has more than a handful of people and it's always "Welcome home!" and mere moments getting through. FLL airport in particular is brutal without it. No missed flights, no getting undressed and dressed again in the airport, no hassles. Best travel related thing I've ever done.

you are probably right, if you fly a bit and/or far (with multiple connecting flights).

Security is just one problem.

Airports are either downtown, or as auerlius said ....they put the new ones in BFE now.

Park at the airport? we have to take the tram/monorail thingy in from the parking structure that's 1/2 mile away.
I guess you can trouble a friend, relative, etc to drop you off at the curb.

Rental car on the other side? That sucks 90% of the time if you are a normie traveler.

I always try to do carry on, and compress all my shit into one small bag, if I can.
But if you opt for driving (say 10-15 hrs vs a 1-2 hour flight), you can carry as much luggage as you want.
(vs. baggage check-in, baggage getting lost, TSA stealing your stuff, etc).

Any over 18 hrs driving I'll fly if I can.

[aurelius]

Any over 18 hrs driving I'll fly if I can.

My basic math is I lose a day to the airport. If driving is a day (10 hours), I'll drive it. Going back home sometimes I'll break it up. Leave after work and stop in Amarillo. Then drive in from Amarillo in the morning. Get to my hometown about 12 or 1. I'm not drained or tired like I am after flying. For me, it is the better option.

[Hardartery]

you are probably right, if you fly a bit and/or far (with multiple connecting flights).

Security is just one problem.

Airports are either downtown, or as auerlius said ....they put the new ones in BFE now.

Park at the airport? we have to take the tram/monorail thingy in from the parking structure that's 1/2 mile away.
I guess you can trouble a friend, relative, etc to drop you off at the curb.

Rental car on the other side? That sucks 90% of the time if you are a normie traveler.

I always try to do carry on, and compress all my shit into one small bag, if I can.
But if you opt for driving (say 10-15 hrs vs a 1-2 hour flight), you can carry as much luggage as you want.
(vs. baggage check-in, baggage getting lost, TSA stealing your stuff, etc).

Any over 18 hrs driving I'll fly if I can.

I frequently fly into MIA or FLL from Central America, then drive to the in-laws in SC. The drive is usually over night, and Budget doesn't hit you with the whopping one-way fee. So, for around $100 plus gas I am where I want to go by car. The 12-13 hour drive is fine, so I am on board with what you guys say about just driving sometimes. I also tend to use miles leaving SC, because the miles cost is the same whether it's the regional airport or I go to Atlanta or Charlotte and the regional airport is 20 minutes from the in-laws house. Even given that, I generally like to rent a car for the day of the flight and drive myself to the airport and drop the car off there if the flight is at lousy time of day. I typically travel with very little either way, I prefer to buy small stuff wherever I land as opposed to paying for and dealing with the bags. The exception is flying back to Central America, I usually have bags with stuff that I can't get there or can't get easily. There will be a small mountain of boxes at the in-laws house when I land there at the end of October, they will leave the packaging and go into a bag or two that I pick up at Goodwill for $6-10 each and give away or throw away after I unpack in Central America. I rent cars frequently now, when I walk out of customs in Rome in a couple of weeks I'm getting into one that I have already reserved so I can drive around Tuscany.

[Philbert]

What kind of odds will you give me on a bet that a population dumb enough to buy life preservers with too little cork to float an adult will be too dumb to elect a representative government capable of preventing corporations from selling cork deficient life preservers? I do not believe humans can vote themselves out of being stupid. As for holding corporation employees personally responsible for their own actions, I am all for it, but the current societal ethic is that when a violent criminal is held personally responsible for violating a restraining order it is a tragedy. Politicians are not going to go up against the deep pockets to legislate for more frequent tragedies.

To be fair, the population did not buy the life preservers. The ferry company procurement department bought them from the life preserver company. Only a handful of bad actors were in any position to be aware of the fraud. The population relied on the quite reasonable assumption that the life preservers conspicuously hung above the decks of a seagoing boat were serviceable as such. An individual traveler cannot inspect the life preservers, the hull welds, the engine room, crew training log, etc. of every boat before buying a ticket. Nor can he or she be expected to read hundreds of thousands of lines of MCAS code from a 737-maxplus to ensure the computer is not rendering an historically finicky sensor malfunctioning into a single point unrecoverable catastrophic failure opportunity when a simple software change could incorporate data from the multiple redundant systems which are already on the plane and already interfaced with said computer.

It is not wrong that we aspire to create mechanisms ensuring corporations take appropriate reasonable steps to provide safe products and services. But to belabor my prior analogy, trying to prevent every conceivable bad thing a bad person might do, using regulations, is like trying to stop your house getting robbed by having more and more locks. At some point you gotta relax and say this is why I have insurance/alarm/dog/1911 etc. And in my analogy those things are criminal and/or meaningful civil penalties, which we historically tend to shy away from doing. Again, the life jacket guys were charged with obstruction of sea regulation enforcement and not 1000 counts of reckless homicide.

Bringing this home, when people say "thErE shOuLd Be a LaW" about fat people on planes, I would submit that the real world effect of an attempt, by the government, to come up with regulatory scheme, consisting of weights/measures/procedures to address the problem would be about as effective as the 6 lb life jacket rule.

Yes, To repeat my statement, if you cannot yourself parse the code on a 737, don't expect to be able to elect a government which can effectively produce safety by regulating the code on a 737. Tracing down who was involved in the decision to run defective software and burning them at the stake (with jet fuel, of course) is a comparatively simple task. It does not bring back the dead, but helps focus the minds of future safety engineers on safety. If government tweaks the incentives heavily toward avoiding undesired outcomes, the market will respond. If government tweaks the incentives toward compliance with the letter of the regulation, the market will respond to that instead. Writing a regulation which will consistently avoid the undesired outcome when followed to the letter requires an extremely high level of expertise. You cannot get that in elected representatives, and career "civil servants" are more easily influenced by the industry they are tasked with regulating than by either the electorate or the electorate's representatives.

[mikeylikey]

Yes, To repeat my statement, if you cannot yourself parse the code on a 737, don't expect to be able to elect a government which can effectively produce safety by regulating the code on a 737. Tracing down who was involved in the decision to run defective software and burning them at the stake (with jet fuel, of course) is a comparatively simple task. It does not bring back the dead, but helps focus the minds of future safety engineers on safety. If government tweaks the incentives heavily toward avoiding undesired outcomes, the market will respond. If government tweaks the incentives toward compliance with the letter of the regulation, the market will respond to that instead. Writing a regulation which will consistently avoid the undesired outcome when followed to the letter requires an extremely high level of expertise. You cannot get that in elected representatives, and career "civil servants" are more easily influenced by the industry they are tasked with regulating than by either the electorate or the electorate's representatives.

Reminds me of this discussion:

[alek]

Firefox suggested I read this article. Seemed appropriate to go here.

https://www.romper.com/life/what-to-kno ... wtab-en-us

[CheekiBreekiFitness]

Firefox suggested I read this article. Seemed appropriate to go here.

https://www.romper.com/life/what-to-kno ... wtab-en-us

My opinion is that, because of the modern food environment, there is a fraction of people who will not be able to lose weight through dieting and exercising. For this fraction of people, if their weight is a long term health risk, I feel that them being able to access a weight loss drug is a good thing. Now I'm not sure about the long term side effects of those drugs, but if they are not as bad as the long term side effects of being severely obese (which are pretty bad and very well documented).

Now you could argue that this is solving the wrong problem, and the actual problem would be to pass actual legislation to impose change in the food environment, but that's probably never going to ever happen, at least as long as politicians are owned by corporate interests.