1 00:00:00,501 --> 00:00:08,264 Samantha Henson is standing at a gate in Sacramento International Airport, and she's holding a guitar. 2 00:00:08,684 --> 00:00:12,265 Not a chainsaw, not a car battery. 3 00:00:12,526 --> 00:00:13,686 A guitar. 4 00:00:13,687 --> 00:00:14,688 One she cares about. 5 00:00:14,688 --> 00:00:15,948 It's in a bag. 6 00:00:16,268 --> 00:00:17,189 It's padded. 7 00:00:17,189 --> 00:00:19,409 It's not one of those fancy cases. 8 00:00:19,810 --> 00:00:24,791 It's a bag that she's flown with on this same airline for about five years. 9 00:00:24,951 --> 00:00:29,467 No incident, no problem, just a woman and her instrument. 10 00:00:29,467 --> 00:00:32,118 She makes her living on, waiting to get on a plane. 11 00:00:32,599 --> 00:00:36,240 And a gate agent tells her that she's not getting on that flight. 12 00:00:36,240 --> 00:00:37,581 You know that, right? 13 00:00:37,582 --> 00:00:40,424 And then sheriff's deputies show up. 14 00:00:40,424 --> 00:00:42,165 Forget the shouting for a second. 15 00:00:42,165 --> 00:00:43,545 I mean forget the viral video. 16 00:00:43,545 --> 00:00:46,907 If you haven't seen it, you can check it out on social media, it's trending. 17 00:00:46,907 --> 00:00:55,451 Forget the part where a Southwest employee looks at a working musician in the eye and tells her that she should be ashamed of herself. 18 00:00:55,752 --> 00:00:59,153 Set it all aside and look at the shape underneath. 19 00:00:59,476 --> 00:01:03,648 There's a federal law actually from two thousand twelve. 20 00:01:03,788 --> 00:01:14,853 It says a US airline has to let you carry a musical instrument into the cabin, no extra fee, as long as it fits and there's room when you board. 21 00:01:14,853 --> 00:01:19,014 Congress wrote it down, a president signed it, it's the law. 22 00:01:19,275 --> 00:01:27,758 And a woman standing in a gate with a guitar that fits on a day when there's room gets the police called on her anyway. 23 00:01:27,759 --> 00:01:30,231 The law didn't fail because someone broke it. 24 00:01:30,231 --> 00:01:42,941 It failed because the thing it protects a seat, a bag, the ordinary dignity of getting somewhere you're going with your stuff has been quietly turned into something you buy, 25 00:01:43,102 --> 00:01:46,344 piece by piece by piece. 26 00:01:46,765 --> 00:01:53,471 And once everything is something that you buy, the person who won't buy it looks like the problem. 27 00:01:53,471 --> 00:01:55,272 She wasn't the problem. 28 00:01:55,532 --> 00:01:56,303 She was the tell. 29 00:02:11,871 --> 00:02:12,941 Welcome to the overlap. 30 00:02:12,941 --> 00:02:14,002 I am Joshua. 31 00:02:14,002 --> 00:02:20,646 This is a show about the systems that run your life while insisting they're just the weather. 32 00:02:21,026 --> 00:02:23,548 This is not a guitar episode. 33 00:02:23,548 --> 00:02:28,370 It would be really easy to do a guitar episode or a banjo episode if you know me. 34 00:02:28,370 --> 00:02:34,214 A bad gate agent, a viral clip, everyone feels righteous for 90 seconds, and then the world moves on. 35 00:02:34,214 --> 00:02:35,694 That's not the show. 36 00:02:36,055 --> 00:02:40,597 Today we're doing the machine that made that gate inevitable, the slow. 37 00:02:40,787 --> 00:02:53,606 Deliberate, extremely profitable process of taking things that used to just come with what you bought a checked bag, a seat next to your kid, a movie without four ad breaks, and 38 00:02:53,606 --> 00:02:56,948 turning every one of them into an upcharge. 39 00:02:57,168 --> 00:03:01,971 There's actually a word for it now, you've probably already heard it, in shitification. 40 00:03:02,452 --> 00:03:08,496 A writer named Cory Doctorow coined it in twenty twenty two and it caught fire. 41 00:03:08,658 --> 00:03:12,550 Because everybody felt it and nobody really had the word. 42 00:03:12,930 --> 00:03:15,462 It was the word of the year in 2023. 43 00:03:15,462 --> 00:03:21,955 It's actually in the dictionary now, and it matters not because it's fun to say, though it really is kind of fun to say. 44 00:03:21,975 --> 00:03:27,097 It matters because it names a thing that exists in the world a pattern. 45 00:03:27,218 --> 00:03:30,960 And a pattern means somebody's running it on purpose. 46 00:03:30,960 --> 00:03:32,180 So why now? 47 00:03:32,581 --> 00:03:37,393 Well, May 2025, Southwest, the the last big airline that let you check. 48 00:03:37,393 --> 00:03:39,184 Two bags for free. 49 00:03:39,564 --> 00:03:42,906 The thing was practically their personality. 50 00:03:42,906 --> 00:03:44,186 They killed it. 51 00:03:44,267 --> 00:03:49,789 Bags fly free, gone, after fifty years being a de facto standard in the industry. 52 00:03:49,789 --> 00:03:51,911 And it's not because they were losing money. 53 00:03:51,911 --> 00:03:54,752 Southwest is a very profitable airline. 54 00:03:54,792 --> 00:03:56,353 It's because an investor showed up. 55 00:03:56,353 --> 00:04:01,836 Now we'll get into that asshole later, but first, back up, because none of this is new. 56 00:04:01,836 --> 00:04:04,217 And it did not start with an app. 57 00:04:04,218 --> 00:04:05,916 To understand the bag fee. 58 00:04:05,916 --> 00:04:08,638 You actually have to go back 30 years before the bag fee. 59 00:04:08,638 --> 00:04:09,679 I know, I know, I know. 60 00:04:09,679 --> 00:04:15,603 Um now, for those of us who are millennials, when I say 30 years ago, you immediately think the 1970s, right? 61 00:04:15,603 --> 00:04:17,404 1978. 62 00:04:17,545 --> 00:04:20,447 Picture the airline before then, right? 63 00:04:20,447 --> 00:04:28,712 For 40 years, uh, a board in Washington, the the Civil Aeronautics Board, ran airlines like a public utility. 64 00:04:29,253 --> 00:04:33,736 It ultimately set the fares, it decided who flew which routes. 65 00:04:34,029 --> 00:04:42,485 And a Cornell economist named Alfred Kahn looked at that and said reasonably enough that this is sclerotic. 66 00:04:42,485 --> 00:04:44,025 Let the market in. 67 00:04:44,286 --> 00:04:54,832 Jimmy Carter agreed with him and in October of nineteen seventy eight he signed the Airline Deregulation Act and stood there and made a promise to the American people. 68 00:04:55,013 --> 00:04:58,615 Get the government out, he said, and you'll get competition. 69 00:04:58,936 --> 00:05:02,800 New airlines, more passengers, lower fares, and 70 00:05:02,800 --> 00:05:07,172 He literally pitched it as a weapon against inflation. 71 00:05:07,172 --> 00:05:10,053 Set the market free and everybody wins. 72 00:05:10,273 --> 00:05:12,033 That's a beautiful pitch. 73 00:05:12,034 --> 00:05:13,935 And we're looking at how it aged. 74 00:05:13,935 --> 00:05:23,478 Between nineteen seventy eight and two thousand one, eight major airlines and more than a hundred smaller ones went bankrupt or got swallowed whole. 75 00:05:23,478 --> 00:05:31,311 Eastern, Braniff, Pan Am, TWA, names that used to mean something in the airline world are gone. 76 00:05:31,530 --> 00:05:42,017 Now the survivors dug in behind fortress hubs, the airports that they own so completely that you cannot fly out of your own city without paying them. 77 00:05:42,177 --> 00:05:46,520 And then they merged and merged and merged. 78 00:05:46,681 --> 00:05:52,064 That promised explosion of competition collapsed into a handful of giants. 79 00:05:52,064 --> 00:05:58,909 And by any real measure, the airline business is more concentrated today than it was before the law. 80 00:05:58,909 --> 00:06:01,790 was sold to increase competition. 81 00:06:01,790 --> 00:06:12,954 Khan himself, the the father of this whole idea, lived long enough to admit the turmoil and the consolidation were not the movie that he had been screening in his head. 82 00:06:13,055 --> 00:06:17,236 He never once saw this bag fee coming, and that's the root. 83 00:06:17,336 --> 00:06:22,578 Four years ago, they sold you competition and handed you an oligopoly. 84 00:06:23,019 --> 00:06:26,560 An oligopoly is the one thing you need 85 00:06:26,561 --> 00:06:32,105 In place before you can charge everyone the same fee and then dare them to walk away from it. 86 00:06:32,105 --> 00:06:34,537 Which brings us finally to 2008. 87 00:06:34,898 --> 00:06:45,145 When fuel prices were spiking, the economy was about to fall off of a cliff, and in May, American Airlines does something that no major US air carrier had ever done. 88 00:06:45,326 --> 00:06:52,051 They announced your first check bag now costs fifteen dollars each way. 89 00:06:52,052 --> 00:06:55,358 Now those of you who have flown recently know that. 90 00:06:55,358 --> 00:07:00,199 You would love if they only charged fifteen dollars each way. 91 00:07:00,200 --> 00:07:06,041 Because for the entire history of flight up until that point, your bag came with your ticket. 92 00:07:06,241 --> 00:07:08,602 You bought a seat, your stuff came too. 93 00:07:08,602 --> 00:07:13,283 American takes that apart and says, look, the bag is a separate product now. 94 00:07:13,283 --> 00:07:18,505 We'll sell you the flight and then sell you the flight's ability to carry your suitcase. 95 00:07:18,505 --> 00:07:20,325 And people lost it. 96 00:07:20,485 --> 00:07:22,766 Greedy, insane, ridiculous. 97 00:07:22,766 --> 00:07:25,829 They swore they would never ever fly American Airlines again. 98 00:07:25,829 --> 00:07:27,940 And nothing happened to American Airlines, right? 99 00:07:27,940 --> 00:07:31,713 Because every other airline did it too. 100 00:07:31,753 --> 00:07:32,654 Within months. 101 00:07:32,654 --> 00:07:36,297 Delta, United, all of them. 102 00:07:36,298 --> 00:07:43,464 That handful of survivors from 1978, by 2008, it's basically four airlines that matter in this country. 103 00:07:43,464 --> 00:07:44,464 Four. 104 00:07:44,465 --> 00:07:46,214 When there are four players 105 00:07:46,214 --> 00:07:50,875 Watching each other's earnings calls, they don't need a back room to conspire in. 106 00:07:50,875 --> 00:07:56,517 They just need to see American, try it, and then the sky not fall. 107 00:07:56,517 --> 00:08:08,051 And then everybody does the profitable thing at once, and your anger has nowhere to go because every door that you would get pissed off and storm out of has the same fee taped 108 00:08:08,051 --> 00:08:09,041 onto it. 109 00:08:09,361 --> 00:08:13,032 Consolidation first, then the fee. 110 00:08:13,033 --> 00:08:18,256 You can't force a fee on everyone until you've made sure that there's nowhere else to go. 111 00:08:18,256 --> 00:08:20,537 Remember that order, because it comes up again. 112 00:08:20,538 --> 00:08:23,620 The industry has a name for the move. 113 00:08:23,620 --> 00:08:25,801 It's called unbundling. 114 00:08:25,802 --> 00:08:28,143 That sounds like a spreadsheet word. 115 00:08:28,444 --> 00:08:37,290 It means take the thing that was once one price, break it into twelve pieces, and then charge for each one. 116 00:08:37,590 --> 00:08:40,534 And from their side, it's a beautiful thing because people are 117 00:08:40,534 --> 00:08:42,267 are sensitive to the price of a ticket. 118 00:08:42,267 --> 00:08:49,231 They will shop, they'll switch for twenty bucks, but but not to the price of a bag once they've already bought the ticket, right? 119 00:08:49,231 --> 00:08:50,143 You're at the airport. 120 00:08:50,143 --> 00:08:51,444 Your kid's tired. 121 00:08:51,444 --> 00:08:52,337 What are you gonna do? 122 00:08:52,337 --> 00:08:53,248 Leave? 123 00:08:53,249 --> 00:09:03,211 The hall in two thousand seven US Airlines pulled in about four hundred and sixty four million dollars give or take in bag fees. 124 00:09:03,212 --> 00:09:16,795 By twenty ten, three point four billion, seven times in two years global ancillary revenue, that means all of the fees together went from about two and a half billion 125 00:09:16,795 --> 00:09:22,126 dollars in two thousand seven to thirty eight billion by twenty fourteen. 126 00:09:22,596 --> 00:09:26,638 Fuel prices came back down, but the fees did not. 127 00:09:26,639 --> 00:09:30,860 And here's the number that tells you it was never really about your suitcase. 128 00:09:31,081 --> 00:09:34,483 There's a federal excise tax on airfare. 129 00:09:34,483 --> 00:09:36,064 It's seven and a half percent. 130 00:09:36,064 --> 00:09:38,114 And it funds the the FAA, right? 131 00:09:38,114 --> 00:09:44,248 Like air traffic control, the system that literally keeps your planes from hitting each other or falling out of the sky. 132 00:09:44,248 --> 00:09:47,330 But that atta that tax it actually applies to the ticket, right? 133 00:09:47,330 --> 00:09:49,971 It does not apply to the fees. 134 00:09:49,972 --> 00:10:03,033 So when an airline moves a billion dollars out of the ticket and into bag fees, they get your billion and they dodge about seventy five million in taxes on it. 135 00:10:03,033 --> 00:10:05,434 Taxes that would have funded the sky. 136 00:10:05,535 --> 00:10:09,658 A bag fee is a tax shelter wearing a customer service costume. 137 00:10:09,998 --> 00:10:12,460 And economists have looked into this, right? 138 00:10:12,881 --> 00:10:18,705 Unbundling made the base ticket cheaper on paper and the whole trip. 139 00:10:18,751 --> 00:10:21,522 Costs more once you add the fees back in. 140 00:10:21,763 --> 00:10:23,123 It really was never a discount. 141 00:10:23,123 --> 00:10:24,464 It was a shell game. 142 00:10:24,464 --> 00:10:37,392 Tattooed 2008 somewhere, and you'll see it every morning because every ad break and checkout upsell at at and guitar, right, at a gate, since then is the same trick in a 143 00:10:37,392 --> 00:10:38,492 different hat. 144 00:10:38,492 --> 00:10:43,715 American just did it first in public with a suitcase. 145 00:10:43,716 --> 00:10:44,486 Now. 146 00:10:44,487 --> 00:10:47,378 Who's running this today and why is it speeding up? 147 00:10:47,378 --> 00:10:48,618 So to Dr. 148 00:10:48,618 --> 00:10:58,480 O's point we talked about earlier, the reason in shidification is a theory and not just a gripe is that platforms decay in a predictable order. 149 00:10:58,801 --> 00:11:00,982 First, they're good to you, right? 150 00:11:00,982 --> 00:11:02,083 Like they get you hooked. 151 00:11:02,083 --> 00:11:05,003 Facebook shows you your friends, no junk. 152 00:11:05,103 --> 00:11:07,804 Amazon's cheap and fast and great. 153 00:11:07,804 --> 00:11:09,664 That stage is real. 154 00:11:09,905 --> 00:11:11,593 The product has to be good. 155 00:11:11,593 --> 00:11:12,553 To get you in the door, right? 156 00:11:12,553 --> 00:11:19,038 Then once you're locked in, once leaving means abandoning every photo, every contact. 157 00:11:19,038 --> 00:11:23,401 They make it worse for you to make it better for business customers. 158 00:11:23,401 --> 00:11:30,145 Your feed fills up with boosted posts, your your searches, ads that look like results. 159 00:11:30,145 --> 00:11:30,845 What are you gonna do? 160 00:11:30,845 --> 00:11:31,686 Leave? 161 00:11:31,686 --> 00:11:32,587 You can't. 162 00:11:32,587 --> 00:11:33,967 That was the point. 163 00:11:34,228 --> 00:11:41,172 And then the final stage, they claw the value back from everyone and hand it to shareholders. 164 00:11:41,173 --> 00:11:52,072 And what's left is a thing that barely works that you use anyway, because all of the other products that you would use or all of the other services that you would choose, they don't 165 00:11:52,072 --> 00:11:52,722 exist anymore. 166 00:11:52,722 --> 00:11:59,116 They were purchased because they got the market share by being nice to you, and there's nowhere else for you to go. 167 00:11:59,117 --> 00:12:02,399 And so this is where like the lazy explanation, right? 168 00:12:02,399 --> 00:12:04,742 Like, oh greedy corporations, what are you gonna do? 169 00:12:04,742 --> 00:12:06,762 kind of runs out of road. 170 00:12:06,982 --> 00:12:08,427 Because it's not 171 00:12:08,427 --> 00:12:09,408 Just greed, right? 172 00:12:09,408 --> 00:12:10,328 Greed is constant. 173 00:12:10,328 --> 00:12:13,850 Greed is is apparently human. 174 00:12:13,851 --> 00:12:20,696 If greed by itself explained all of this away, then that would have always been like this. 175 00:12:20,696 --> 00:12:23,207 It would have just been bad all the time. 176 00:12:23,207 --> 00:12:25,459 And there never would have been a happy period. 177 00:12:25,459 --> 00:12:28,000 But that's not true. 178 00:12:28,421 --> 00:12:34,845 What changed is that four things that used to punish a company for treating you that like this got dismantled entirely. 179 00:12:34,845 --> 00:12:36,466 One was competition, right? 180 00:12:36,466 --> 00:12:37,079 That's 181 00:12:37,079 --> 00:12:44,084 Anytime they tell you about the free market, that's what they're talking about is the idea of competition, right? 182 00:12:44,084 --> 00:12:48,046 So we stopped enforcing antitrust in like the eighties. 183 00:12:48,046 --> 00:12:56,492 We've had a couple of big things since then, but it has to be so big and so egregious and so absolutely gross. 184 00:12:56,692 --> 00:13:00,354 But then it's just like, you gotta split up into a couple different pieces. 185 00:13:00,355 --> 00:13:02,036 Then two, we had regulations. 186 00:13:02,036 --> 00:13:03,859 All of that has been gutted. 187 00:13:03,859 --> 00:13:04,879 Why? 188 00:13:05,462 --> 00:13:07,823 Because we're making America great again, I guess. 189 00:13:08,144 --> 00:13:15,029 And then three, your ability to leave and actually take your data with you is walled off on purpose. 190 00:13:15,030 --> 00:13:16,431 Then four, the workers. 191 00:13:16,431 --> 00:13:23,456 The engineers who used to have the leverage and the pride to refuse got laid off by tens of thousands. 192 00:13:23,456 --> 00:13:32,492 You take away everyone who could say, Stop, you know, this is gross, and and the greed that was always there just runs rampant. 193 00:13:32,493 --> 00:13:32,863 Dr. 194 00:13:32,863 --> 00:13:35,174 O's word is is unchecked, right? 195 00:13:35,174 --> 00:13:40,966 The water always wanted to flow downhill, and then they just removed every dam. 196 00:13:40,966 --> 00:13:45,207 So who's holding the whip on Southwest? 197 00:13:45,208 --> 00:13:55,251 In 2024, a hedge fund called Elliott Management took a stake from Southwest worth about two billion dollars. 198 00:13:55,811 --> 00:13:57,192 Activist investor. 199 00:13:57,192 --> 00:13:57,952 That's a 200 00:13:57,952 --> 00:14:01,143 Another word that sounds like a clean spreadsheet phrase, right? 201 00:14:01,143 --> 00:14:07,875 It sounds like they march in with a cause and it means that they they buy enough of your company to force changes. 202 00:14:08,015 --> 00:14:10,745 And the change is almost always the same. 203 00:14:10,745 --> 00:14:13,056 More money out, faster and now. 204 00:14:13,057 --> 00:14:17,458 And the first thing on the chopping block for airlines, well, bags fly free. 205 00:14:17,459 --> 00:14:26,267 The 50 year old policy customers actually loved that Southwest's own executives called a competitive advantage no longer matters. 206 00:14:26,763 --> 00:14:29,304 The fund ran the math, money left on the table. 207 00:14:29,304 --> 00:14:36,416 So in May of twenty twenty five, the last single solitary holdout folds. 208 00:14:36,417 --> 00:14:39,858 And now every single airline charges for bags. 209 00:14:39,938 --> 00:14:40,889 There's nowhere left to go. 210 00:14:40,889 --> 00:14:48,249 If you want to fly, you you gotta you know you gotta pay up forty five dollars on the last flight I took. 211 00:14:48,249 --> 00:14:51,060 Consolidation first, then the fee. 212 00:14:51,060 --> 00:14:52,270 One more time. 213 00:14:52,270 --> 00:14:54,111 The last free door. 214 00:14:54,111 --> 00:14:59,494 got a lock installed by a hedge fund that had owned the company under a year. 215 00:14:59,494 --> 00:15:00,974 That's the mechanism. 216 00:15:00,995 --> 00:15:02,255 It's nothing special. 217 00:15:02,255 --> 00:15:16,482 It's not some mustache twilling, you know, twirling villain that's like, uh a fund, a stake, a couple of board seats, a a policy people loved dying quietly so a quarterly 218 00:15:16,482 --> 00:15:18,023 number ticks up. 219 00:15:18,323 --> 00:15:19,964 And then scale it. 220 00:15:19,964 --> 00:15:23,828 Every company you deal with either has an Elliott, 221 00:15:23,828 --> 00:15:27,820 at the table or they're afraid that one's actually coming. 222 00:15:27,821 --> 00:15:32,464 And you get the whole economy organized around one instruction. 223 00:15:32,464 --> 00:15:34,385 Get money out. 224 00:15:34,385 --> 00:15:36,006 Extract it. 225 00:15:36,006 --> 00:15:37,197 That's what capitalism is. 226 00:15:37,197 --> 00:15:40,559 It's extracting money from a system. 227 00:15:40,560 --> 00:15:43,203 The free market is supposed to be what balances that, right? 228 00:15:43,203 --> 00:15:48,008 The idea of a free market, which includes regulation, which includes anti monopolization, those sorts of things. 229 00:15:48,008 --> 00:16:00,100 That's supposed to balance out that line between I don't have anywhere to go, let's extract as much as we can from the people who use our services, and they're not going to 230 00:16:00,100 --> 00:16:03,323 take it anymore, and they can't afford to buy it. 231 00:16:03,324 --> 00:16:07,195 So they all say, let's just let's pull the money out as fast as possible. 232 00:16:07,195 --> 00:16:11,296 So included the idea of, oh, it's included. 233 00:16:11,296 --> 00:16:18,418 Batteries, bags, whatever, whatever that might be in your world, you know, an ad-free experience, that becomes a line item. 234 00:16:18,418 --> 00:16:21,859 Free becomes, it's a free trial. 235 00:16:21,860 --> 00:16:26,601 Owning a piece of music becomes renting a piece of music. 236 00:16:26,601 --> 00:16:30,662 In 2024, airlines worldwide 237 00:16:30,782 --> 00:16:37,665 Pulled in around $150 billion from just fees and add-ons. 238 00:16:38,126 --> 00:16:41,708 For some of them, that is the business now. 239 00:16:41,709 --> 00:16:46,572 The flight is just kind of the cover charge to get in the door where the real selling happens. 240 00:16:46,572 --> 00:16:49,753 And once you see it, you can't unsee it. 241 00:16:50,034 --> 00:16:56,457 The streaming service that you subscribe to specifically to escape the ads now has ads. 242 00:16:56,457 --> 00:16:57,988 Unless you pay more. 243 00:16:57,989 --> 00:16:59,990 The software you bought, now you rent it, right? 244 00:16:59,990 --> 00:17:04,401 And the day you stop paying, it just stops working, it doesn't exist anymore. 245 00:17:04,402 --> 00:17:11,604 Mercedes actually floated charging a monthly fee for the accelerator response your car already has. 246 00:17:11,684 --> 00:17:14,625 Sitting there switched off until you pay. 247 00:17:14,825 --> 00:17:19,466 Tesla, heated seats, they're not selling you things anymore. 248 00:17:19,466 --> 00:17:24,167 They're selling you permission to use things that you thought you owned. 249 00:17:24,168 --> 00:17:25,808 But the version of 250 00:17:25,814 --> 00:17:38,269 I have to grudgingly admire the way you'd admire a really well built mouse trap, right up until you remember you're the mouse, isn't even about taking something away. 251 00:17:38,549 --> 00:17:39,529 Boarding. 252 00:17:39,529 --> 00:17:40,410 Just getting on the plane. 253 00:17:40,410 --> 00:17:47,633 Around 2005, an astrophysicist named Jason Stefan got stuck in a jet bridge line. 254 00:17:47,633 --> 00:17:53,995 He got annoyed, he went home, and he modeled the fastest way to board a plane because 255 00:17:54,187 --> 00:17:57,968 Right, that's what an astrophysicist does when he has a grudge. 256 00:17:58,109 --> 00:17:59,949 And by two thousand eight, he'd published it. 257 00:17:59,949 --> 00:18:07,813 Window seats first, spread out, two at a time, about twice as fast as back to front. 258 00:18:08,253 --> 00:18:14,055 By his estimate, four to ten times faster than what airports actually do. 259 00:18:14,056 --> 00:18:16,347 And here's the kicker: what airports do, right? 260 00:18:16,347 --> 00:18:21,149 Like hurting you on the plane in groups from front to back. 261 00:18:21,545 --> 00:18:23,816 Isn't the second worst method? 262 00:18:23,856 --> 00:18:28,818 Front to back is the single worst method there is, the slowest one. 263 00:18:28,818 --> 00:18:33,920 Out of every single option, they run with the one that takes the longest. 264 00:18:33,920 --> 00:18:34,840 Why? 265 00:18:34,940 --> 00:18:42,963 Well the airlines say families, logistics, people don't line up like tidy math. 266 00:18:43,363 --> 00:18:45,044 Now look, some of that's real. 267 00:18:45,364 --> 00:18:50,906 But notice the one thing that they will not touch with a ten foot pole, the groups. 268 00:18:51,114 --> 00:18:54,656 The tiers, priority, premiere. 269 00:18:54,717 --> 00:19:01,762 First in line this quarter, United actually rolled out a faster method and bragged it saved two minutes per flight. 270 00:19:01,882 --> 00:19:05,445 So they knew how to fix it, and mostly don't. 271 00:19:05,446 --> 00:19:14,872 Because if boarding were fast and fair, if everybody got on the plane in eleven minutes, what are you paying for when you buy priority boarding? 272 00:19:14,873 --> 00:19:17,274 What the hell is economy plus? 273 00:19:17,275 --> 00:19:18,836 The slowness is 274 00:19:18,836 --> 00:19:20,376 is the product. 275 00:19:20,779 --> 00:19:23,162 The misery is the inventory. 276 00:19:23,162 --> 00:19:28,209 You can't sell the fast lane unless the slow lane hurts. 277 00:19:28,230 --> 00:19:33,056 So the slow lane has to hurt forever on purpose. 278 00:19:33,057 --> 00:19:37,970 And look, the newest version doesn't even wait for the misery to naturally occur. 279 00:19:38,350 --> 00:19:39,091 It makes it. 280 00:19:39,091 --> 00:19:40,282 Amazon Prime Video, right? 281 00:19:40,282 --> 00:19:41,873 For years, ad free. 282 00:19:41,873 --> 00:19:42,523 That was the deal. 283 00:19:42,523 --> 00:19:44,514 You paid, no commercials. 284 00:19:44,715 --> 00:19:54,240 Then on one day, January twenty ninth, twenty twenty four, Amazon reached into a thing you were already paying for and put ads in it. 285 00:19:54,481 --> 00:20:00,545 They didn't lower your price, they didn't ask you, and they said, Do you want it the way it was last week? 286 00:20:00,545 --> 00:20:03,196 Yeah, that's gonna be two ninety nine a month. 287 00:20:03,314 --> 00:20:04,354 Extra. 288 00:20:04,435 --> 00:20:14,440 They took something that you already had, you were already paying for, made it worse, and then charged you to unmake it worse. 289 00:20:14,441 --> 00:20:17,903 And then they doubled the number of ads they put in. 290 00:20:18,163 --> 00:20:26,948 Then they quietly stripped the good picture and sound, the Dolby, out of your tier and moved it behind a paywall too. 291 00:20:27,188 --> 00:20:30,370 And people sued them, saying it was a bait and switch. 292 00:20:30,371 --> 00:20:33,332 Unfortunately, the judge threw that out in 2025. 293 00:20:33,332 --> 00:20:36,593 It ruled that the ads wasn't a price increase. 294 00:20:36,593 --> 00:20:44,414 The judge called it, and I swear on my life, I am not inventing this, a quote, benefit modification. 295 00:20:44,775 --> 00:20:47,695 Making your product worse is a benefit now. 296 00:20:47,695 --> 00:20:50,676 And the court just kind of nodded along. 297 00:20:50,677 --> 00:20:53,098 What's that uh the the Chicago, right? 298 00:20:53,098 --> 00:20:58,639 Where the the song he starts they start uh 299 00:20:58,769 --> 00:21:03,122 Mimicking along with him or mi mimicking along with the dance. 300 00:21:03,223 --> 00:21:04,754 So that's the frontier now, right? 301 00:21:04,754 --> 00:21:15,483 Pr printers that brick themselves unless you buy the the brand's ink and apps that get slower right until the upgrade button gets pressed and the problem isn't discovered 302 00:21:15,483 --> 00:21:16,013 anymore. 303 00:21:16,013 --> 00:21:17,835 It's actually built in. 304 00:21:17,836 --> 00:21:21,619 They're not solving your problems and charging you, that would make sense, that's value. 305 00:21:21,619 --> 00:21:26,923 They're manufacturing the problem and then charging you for the escape hatch. 306 00:21:26,924 --> 00:21:28,465 Take a breath for a second. 307 00:21:28,466 --> 00:21:35,819 Because look, this stops being clever the second it's a person and not just on paper. 308 00:21:35,959 --> 00:21:39,111 So let's go back to Samantha Henson at that gate. 309 00:21:39,111 --> 00:21:40,541 She's a musician. 310 00:21:40,861 --> 00:21:42,512 A guitar for her is not a hobby. 311 00:21:42,512 --> 00:21:44,963 It's it's like the tool of her trade. 312 00:21:45,043 --> 00:21:51,906 It's a laptop for a uh developer, it's a chef knife for a chef, and the it's the thing that that her living gets made on. 313 00:21:51,906 --> 00:21:53,216 And the law knows this. 314 00:21:53,216 --> 00:21:57,062 The FAA Modernization Act of twenty twelve says a US airline 315 00:21:57,062 --> 00:22:05,014 Has to let her carry it into the cabin no fee beyond a standard carry on, if it fits and there's room. 316 00:22:05,015 --> 00:22:06,686 And that law didn't come from nowhere. 317 00:22:06,686 --> 00:22:17,864 Congress wrote it because musicians kept getting instruments smashed, destroyed in cargo holes, and shaken down at gates for years, and the government finally said, Look, this 318 00:22:17,864 --> 00:22:18,525 one's a right. 319 00:22:18,525 --> 00:22:20,736 Not an upcharge, it's it's a right. 320 00:22:20,737 --> 00:22:25,400 But look at the world that law has to survive inside. 321 00:22:25,401 --> 00:22:29,444 And remember the boarding tiers, the manufactured scarcity. 322 00:22:29,444 --> 00:22:32,226 Henson's standing right in that machine. 323 00:22:32,226 --> 00:22:34,867 Southwest didn't just kill free bags. 324 00:22:34,868 --> 00:22:44,316 Under the same pressure they killed, you know, open seating and brought in assigned seats and boarding tiers and priority upgrades and fat extra seat charges. 325 00:22:44,316 --> 00:22:47,798 The whole experience got rebuilt around one question. 326 00:22:48,282 --> 00:22:51,664 Who paid more to board first? 327 00:22:51,665 --> 00:22:53,586 God and the overhead bin. 328 00:22:53,647 --> 00:23:02,112 Ugh, that shared, finite, first come space became one more thing you compete for based on what you paid. 329 00:23:02,113 --> 00:23:06,696 It used to be kind of common, you know, like first come first serve. 330 00:23:06,696 --> 00:23:07,976 It made sense. 331 00:23:07,976 --> 00:23:09,207 Now it's zoned, right? 332 00:23:09,207 --> 00:23:11,108 That's a scarcity they built. 333 00:23:11,109 --> 00:23:18,505 And you know, kind of walked straight into it with a guitar, like you know, you do as a musician. 334 00:23:18,506 --> 00:23:21,148 And the law says it's supposed to get a spot. 335 00:23:21,148 --> 00:23:21,929 You see the trap? 336 00:23:21,929 --> 00:23:32,817 The person exercising a right and the person who just didn't pay look identical to a gate agent whose job is enforcing the tears. 337 00:23:32,818 --> 00:23:36,261 The agent isn't reading the FAA guidelines. 338 00:23:36,261 --> 00:23:39,113 The agent is running the hierarchy. 339 00:23:39,382 --> 00:23:43,903 And a right that doesn't fit the hierarchy gets processed as a freeloader. 340 00:23:44,323 --> 00:23:46,484 Someone trying to get something for nothing. 341 00:23:46,485 --> 00:23:56,048 The machine can't tell the difference between claiming what the law guarantees you and cutting the line because it was built on the assumption that nothing is guaranteed. 342 00:23:56,048 --> 00:24:04,010 Every single thing, every single hair on your head, every part, every piece, every parcel is for sale. 343 00:24:04,471 --> 00:24:06,681 And then they called the police on her. 344 00:24:06,682 --> 00:24:09,734 And that's the part that kind of shows you the shape of the punishment, right? 345 00:24:09,734 --> 00:24:12,356 This wasn't like a bad moment at one gate. 346 00:24:12,356 --> 00:24:15,018 The agent told her the next flight was off too. 347 00:24:15,018 --> 00:24:19,601 That if she kept insisting on her guitar, she wouldn't fly for another twenty-four hours. 348 00:24:19,601 --> 00:24:21,802 Maybe not until the day after tomorrow. 349 00:24:21,802 --> 00:24:27,807 Every time she stood on her rights, the system offered her a later flight and then a later one. 350 00:24:28,207 --> 00:24:34,191 So she spent the night in the airport, tried again the next morning, finally got where she was going a full day late. 351 00:24:34,191 --> 00:24:35,512 Now most of us 352 00:24:35,841 --> 00:24:48,470 Especially on, you know, with jobs that are you are lucky enough to have paid time off, you don't just get to take an extra day if that's the end of your PTO for the year or for 353 00:24:48,470 --> 00:24:51,083 the month or for the week or whatever you've got. 354 00:24:51,084 --> 00:24:59,007 And as far as anyone reporting this could tell, Southwest never once circled back with a real fix. 355 00:24:59,127 --> 00:25:00,738 Or a dollar of compensation. 356 00:25:00,738 --> 00:25:04,330 Not a not a voucher, not a free drink on the plane, nothing. 357 00:25:04,330 --> 00:25:08,011 She has been a loyal Southwest cardholder since 2021. 358 00:25:08,011 --> 00:25:13,253 She'd bought all the way in and it protected her for exactly zero seconds. 359 00:25:13,253 --> 00:25:19,576 Because the system that they built does not honor what it promised you. 360 00:25:19,576 --> 00:25:20,226 It's built. 361 00:25:20,226 --> 00:25:31,528 To find the next add on, the next upgrade, the next charge, and make it so that no charge cost you a day of your life. 362 00:25:31,529 --> 00:25:32,900 If you said no. 363 00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:34,901 So she got off easy, right? 364 00:25:34,902 --> 00:25:45,764 Strange word for having the cops called on you and but relatively, I mean she had a phone, she sought to film it and it went viral, and suddenly a a multi billion dollar airline has 365 00:25:45,764 --> 00:25:47,712 a a public relations fire. 366 00:25:47,712 --> 00:25:50,734 And I'm sure they've already started putting it out. 367 00:25:50,734 --> 00:26:00,302 But but what I what I've seen as of of reading this, uh I mean as of recording this, uh it was just basics, like, this is our our policy, these are the guidelines, there wasn't room 368 00:26:00,302 --> 00:26:00,834 and 369 00:26:00,834 --> 00:26:02,622 Despite the fact that there was 370 00:26:02,623 --> 00:26:04,344 Most people never get that, right? 371 00:26:04,344 --> 00:26:09,706 Most people just eat it alone, at the counter, frustrated one at a time. 372 00:26:10,107 --> 00:26:12,448 And that's really not slop sloppiness on their part. 373 00:26:12,448 --> 00:26:13,669 That's that's how it was built. 374 00:26:13,669 --> 00:26:15,209 It was craftsmanship. 375 00:26:15,450 --> 00:26:18,411 The humiliation is almost always private. 376 00:26:18,690 --> 00:26:22,753 Too small to fight, too quiet to see, too constant to escape. 377 00:26:22,754 --> 00:26:26,095 And Henson's guitar was just loud enough to hear. 378 00:26:26,115 --> 00:26:31,918 The machine was doing to her exactly what it does to millions of people like you and like me. 379 00:26:32,066 --> 00:26:33,087 A day. 380 00:26:33,369 --> 00:26:38,942 They treat a person like an obstacle between itself and a fee. 381 00:26:38,942 --> 00:26:42,700 And she just happened to be holding something that made a sound when it hit the floor. 382 00:26:42,783 --> 00:26:45,079 Let's zoom all the way back out. 383 00:26:45,080 --> 00:26:52,455 Because the line from two thousand eight to that gate is straighter than it has any right to be. 384 00:26:52,456 --> 00:26:53,717 And the move is always the same. 385 00:26:53,717 --> 00:27:00,602 Take something that was included that people understood was theirs and convert it into a charge. 386 00:27:00,602 --> 00:27:07,086 The bag, the seat, the bin, the ad free feed you've already paid for. 387 00:27:07,407 --> 00:27:12,610 And there there isn't enough misery to sell you the escape from. 388 00:27:12,611 --> 00:27:14,231 They build one. 389 00:27:14,491 --> 00:27:19,693 And every time they describe it in the same neutral, boring language. 390 00:27:19,933 --> 00:27:21,393 Unbundling. 391 00:27:21,394 --> 00:27:23,355 Ancillary revenue. 392 00:27:23,635 --> 00:27:25,635 Activist investment. 393 00:27:25,916 --> 00:27:27,296 Benefit modification. 394 00:27:27,296 --> 00:27:32,437 That's the one where the judge agreed to making your products worse counts as a benefit. 395 00:27:32,497 --> 00:27:39,609 Words built to make sure that when they take the thing you had, it sounds like 396 00:27:39,621 --> 00:27:45,253 An accounting adjustment instead of what it actually is, a transfer from you to them. 397 00:27:45,494 --> 00:27:49,175 Squeezing until they get out dollars. 398 00:27:49,176 --> 00:27:50,937 But they call that growth. 399 00:27:50,937 --> 00:27:53,457 See, the economy is actually growing. 400 00:27:53,458 --> 00:28:02,942 If you look at the GDP, if you look at revenue, and not just in the airline industry, but we're using that as the example here: $150 billion in fees. 401 00:28:02,942 --> 00:28:04,528 That's a number 402 00:28:04,528 --> 00:28:08,959 Politician stands in front of and a CEO gets a bonus for. 403 00:28:09,379 --> 00:28:11,560 But look at what produced it. 404 00:28:11,980 --> 00:28:13,560 Nothing got built, right? 405 00:28:13,560 --> 00:28:20,982 No, no flight got safer or faster or more convenient or easy to book. 406 00:28:20,982 --> 00:28:23,542 No problem got solved. 407 00:28:23,543 --> 00:28:25,383 They just moved the fence. 408 00:28:25,384 --> 00:28:33,556 They took away the public commons and they put uh a little gate on it, a little turnstile, like a toll way. 409 00:28:33,698 --> 00:28:36,349 And they counted the turnstile receipts as growth. 410 00:28:36,349 --> 00:28:38,000 That's not growth. 411 00:28:38,140 --> 00:28:42,062 That's encapsulation, it's enclosure, it's entrapment. 412 00:28:42,063 --> 00:28:51,608 They take something shared, they lock it away, and charge admission, and then they write the admissions down as prosperity. 413 00:28:51,928 --> 00:28:55,050 It's a growing economy that feels like drowning. 414 00:28:55,051 --> 00:28:58,553 And it feels that way because the economy's not really growing. 415 00:28:58,553 --> 00:29:00,374 See, it's extracting. 416 00:29:00,755 --> 00:29:02,115 There's a difference. 417 00:29:02,311 --> 00:29:06,596 One we've been explicitly trained not to see. 418 00:29:06,877 --> 00:29:19,852 Between an economy that makes more and one that just gets better at charging you for what used to be free air, water, land, national parks. 419 00:29:19,853 --> 00:29:28,755 One creates wealth, the other transfers it upward and hands you the receipt like you uh like it should be good news, like a birthday card. 420 00:29:28,756 --> 00:29:33,157 And up to now, for some of us, this has been survivable. 421 00:29:33,557 --> 00:29:36,238 Deeply annoying, yes, but survivable. 422 00:29:36,238 --> 00:29:40,039 A bag, a movie, a boarding line. 423 00:29:40,040 --> 00:29:43,141 And here's where it stops being either and it's already happening. 424 00:29:43,141 --> 00:29:44,441 For a while. 425 00:29:44,835 --> 00:29:49,907 This was aimed at like things you could in theory walk away from, or you don't have to fly. 426 00:29:49,908 --> 00:29:52,968 You don't have to have have Amazon Prime. 427 00:29:53,130 --> 00:29:54,050 That's over. 428 00:29:54,050 --> 00:29:59,193 They figured out the real money isn't in what you can refuse, it's in what you can't. 429 00:29:59,413 --> 00:30:00,473 Housing. 430 00:30:00,474 --> 00:30:07,097 There's a company called RealPage that took the private rent data from landlords all over a city. 431 00:30:07,178 --> 00:30:10,639 Technically in a free market, those people are called competitors. 432 00:30:10,780 --> 00:30:13,931 They're legally not supposed to coordinate. 433 00:30:14,319 --> 00:30:22,134 And it they fed it into one big, gigantic algorithm that told every one of them what to charge. 434 00:30:22,554 --> 00:30:28,268 Collusion used to need like a uh secret smoky back room, a cigar and a handshake. 435 00:30:28,268 --> 00:30:30,939 Now it just needs like a software subscription. 436 00:30:31,200 --> 00:30:39,405 One landlord admitted that within eleven months of turning it on, they had raised rents more than twenty five percent in less than a year. 437 00:30:39,405 --> 00:30:44,298 The Justice Department and a stack of state attorneys general sued. 438 00:30:44,772 --> 00:30:47,114 And cities started banning it, right? 439 00:30:47,114 --> 00:30:50,076 They pointed this machine at shelter. 440 00:30:50,437 --> 00:30:55,160 The one thing that a human being cannot opt out of. 441 00:30:55,161 --> 00:30:57,782 And it's everywhere the essentials are. 442 00:30:57,783 --> 00:31:09,623 Insulin, a drug whose inventors sold the patent for a dollar because they believed that nobody should die for being unable to afford to stay alive, became a monthly bill that 443 00:31:09,623 --> 00:31:12,395 people have to ration themselves against. 444 00:31:12,396 --> 00:31:15,377 Your bank charging you a fee for not having enough money. 445 00:31:15,517 --> 00:31:18,437 That's a penalty for being poor. 446 00:31:18,858 --> 00:31:21,158 Only billed to the poor. 447 00:31:21,159 --> 00:31:23,359 This is the frontier now. 448 00:31:23,359 --> 00:31:28,020 Not luxuries, necessities, subscriptions to live. 449 00:31:28,376 --> 00:31:31,521 And it hits you differently depending on your bank balance. 450 00:31:31,521 --> 00:31:34,062 If you have money, all of this is just a rounding error. 451 00:31:34,062 --> 00:31:41,484 You auto pay, you don't notice the three dollars, you pay someone to handle it, but if you're broke, every one of these is a fight. 452 00:31:41,485 --> 00:31:52,849 Price compare every fee, cancel and resign to dodge the loyalty penalty, sit on hold to reverse a charge that shouldn't exist, appeal the denial, refill the ink. 453 00:31:52,849 --> 00:31:59,112 It's a second job on top of the four that you already have to have to pay the rent in the damn first place. 454 00:31:59,112 --> 00:32:00,612 And it's unpaid. 455 00:32:00,613 --> 00:32:04,664 And the truth is it lands hardest on the people with the least room to carry it. 456 00:32:04,664 --> 00:32:09,916 Economists actually have a acute, polite name for the money side. 457 00:32:09,917 --> 00:32:11,809 It's called the poverty premium. 458 00:32:11,810 --> 00:32:15,103 The fact that it costs more to be poor. 459 00:32:15,104 --> 00:32:17,906 But the crueler tax of this is time. 460 00:32:17,906 --> 00:32:27,954 The hours you f f burn, right, fighting 15 tiny extractions, are the exact hours you'd need to climb out from underneath them. 461 00:32:27,955 --> 00:32:32,929 The squeeze steals the time you'd use to escape the squeeze. 462 00:32:32,929 --> 00:32:34,140 That's the loop. 463 00:32:34,141 --> 00:32:40,931 You run just to stay in place, and they've built an economy that runs on your running. 464 00:32:40,932 --> 00:32:44,365 And I'll be honest about how it feels because I feel it too. 465 00:32:44,366 --> 00:32:46,167 Damn it it feels futile. 466 00:32:46,168 --> 00:32:52,695 Another fee, another tier, another thing that used to be included, and y you're tired. 467 00:32:53,116 --> 00:32:54,897 God, you're so tired. 468 00:32:54,898 --> 00:32:57,845 And the tools they hand you to fight it are a joke. 469 00:32:57,845 --> 00:33:01,978 Complain, boycott, vote with your wallet, and you do it. 470 00:33:01,978 --> 00:33:06,031 I I haven't been to Chick fil A since like two thousand and four. 471 00:33:06,032 --> 00:33:07,755 Nothing changes. 472 00:33:07,777 --> 00:33:09,740 There's still a line around the block. 473 00:33:09,741 --> 00:33:12,763 And then you decide nothing can change and you shut up. 474 00:33:12,944 --> 00:33:15,125 You sit down and you shut up. 475 00:33:15,546 --> 00:33:20,610 That exhausted hopelessness has a name. 476 00:33:20,611 --> 00:33:23,273 And the name is working as intended. 477 00:33:23,274 --> 00:33:24,997 That's not you being weak. 478 00:33:24,998 --> 00:33:30,573 That feeling that intrinsic ick 479 00:33:30,574 --> 00:33:32,004 Is the product. 480 00:33:32,005 --> 00:33:33,725 And it's manufactured. 481 00:33:33,726 --> 00:33:44,250 As deliberately as the ads in your prime video, because a population that believes resistance is pointless is one that you can charge anything. 482 00:33:44,251 --> 00:33:47,423 So no, we're not ending there because Dr. 483 00:33:47,423 --> 00:33:51,115 O's real point is that none of this was fate. 484 00:33:51,115 --> 00:33:53,035 It wasn't technology. 485 00:33:53,035 --> 00:33:55,777 It wasn't consumers making poor choices. 486 00:33:55,777 --> 00:33:57,274 It was policy. 487 00:33:57,274 --> 00:34:02,627 Specific decisions by specific people that stripped out every check. 488 00:34:02,708 --> 00:34:04,108 Which is grim. 489 00:34:04,209 --> 00:34:06,710 Don't get me wrong, but flip it over. 490 00:34:06,711 --> 00:34:11,214 A thing built on purpose can be taken apart on purpose. 491 00:34:11,214 --> 00:34:13,755 It was decided it can be undecided. 492 00:34:13,755 --> 00:34:19,981 And the futility you feel is only total if you keep fighting with the broken tools they handed you. 493 00:34:19,982 --> 00:34:22,924 So watch the word included. 494 00:34:22,925 --> 00:34:32,925 Watch what comes with the thing you buy and watch it get thinner and thinner slowly enough that you're not supposed to notice. 495 00:34:32,925 --> 00:34:36,518 It's sixty cents, it's twelve cents, it's a dollar. 496 00:34:36,519 --> 00:34:43,526 And watch for the sneakier version, the misery they keep on purpose so that they can sell you the way out. 497 00:34:43,527 --> 00:34:48,278 Keep a running list of what used to be free or quick or yours. 498 00:34:48,279 --> 00:34:52,780 Because they're counting on you to forget, and the forgetting is how they win. 499 00:34:52,780 --> 00:35:05,283 Gen Z is actually re-bringing back cassette tapes and LPs and physical media that they can purchase because you own that thing and they've realized it. 500 00:35:05,283 --> 00:35:11,948 We have amassed some of these things and we threw them away because we were guaranteed a world of audible and 501 00:35:11,948 --> 00:35:24,138 and Kindle and and all of these other services that you don't realize you don't own what you're purchasing until they change it or redact it or remove it entirely from the library 502 00:35:24,138 --> 00:35:25,799 without you ever noticing. 503 00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:31,686 So keep that running list of things that used to be free or quick or yours because they're counting on you to forget. 504 00:35:31,767 --> 00:35:33,328 And that is how they win. 505 00:35:33,329 --> 00:35:41,541 And the the crown jewel, the the shiniest turd in this shit pile, that bag fee is really partly a tax dodge, right? 506 00:35:41,541 --> 00:35:45,043 Uh airfare gets taxed to fund air traffic control. 507 00:35:45,383 --> 00:35:47,684 Raises for air traffic controllers. 508 00:35:47,684 --> 00:35:56,286 What have you heard about in the news recently with air traffic controllers constantly having to go on on strike to just get reasonable wage increases? 509 00:35:56,287 --> 00:36:00,608 That's because airfare gets taxed to fund air traffic control. 510 00:36:00,608 --> 00:36:01,454 Fees 511 00:36:01,454 --> 00:36:12,747 Don't get taxed to fund air traffic control, so the safe move on their spreadsheet is to shift your money out of the taxed ticket into the untaxed fee. 512 00:36:12,748 --> 00:36:20,570 Which means the thing that keeps planes from hitting each other quietly gets defunded so a suitcase can become a profit center. 513 00:36:20,571 --> 00:36:23,412 That's where fifteen years of this shit leads. 514 00:36:23,412 --> 00:36:26,993 We are underfunding the sky to upcharge the luggage. 515 00:36:26,994 --> 00:36:32,206 So let's talk real about fighting back because you've heard the fake version a hundred times and you're right to be sick of it. 516 00:36:32,206 --> 00:36:34,868 Call and complain, leave a review, vote with your wallet. 517 00:36:34,868 --> 00:36:41,750 And enough if enough of you do it, maybe, maybe someday they'll listen, but that's not a plan, that's a pacifier. 518 00:36:41,751 --> 00:36:47,334 You cannot outspend them or out unspend them. 519 00:36:47,334 --> 00:36:51,095 There may be a dozen people who run this economy and in 520 00:36:51,115 --> 00:36:57,539 A wallet election where the ballots are dollars, they win every time because they have all the dollars. 521 00:36:57,540 --> 00:37:00,262 Complaining is a sound you make. 522 00:37:00,522 --> 00:37:03,244 It costs them not nothing, not a dime. 523 00:37:03,364 --> 00:37:08,838 So it actually bites in three levels, and kind of take whatever you can reach from this, right? 524 00:37:08,838 --> 00:37:10,869 Level one is to starve it. 525 00:37:10,870 --> 00:37:16,404 Not call the company, that's their kind of retention theater, a department built to talk you down. 526 00:37:16,404 --> 00:37:17,204 Go over their heads. 527 00:37:17,204 --> 00:37:18,231 Chargebacks. 528 00:37:18,231 --> 00:37:20,743 Complaints to the regulator, not the business. 529 00:37:20,743 --> 00:37:27,278 Transportation for airlines, that's the CFPB for banks, the FTC for your state attorneys general for the rest. 530 00:37:27,359 --> 00:37:30,361 Those cost real money and real attention. 531 00:37:30,642 --> 00:37:35,205 Small claims court for a junk fee where half the time they don't show up. 532 00:37:35,846 --> 00:37:46,985 Route around the recurring bleed, refill the ink, buy the dumb TV, block the ads, keep the software you bought, use the library. 533 00:37:46,986 --> 00:37:48,856 And kill your loyalty. 534 00:37:49,077 --> 00:37:55,019 Loyalty and auto pay are not like virtuous equalities here, right? 535 00:37:55,019 --> 00:38:00,161 They're the vulnerabilities these people farm like a crop. 536 00:38:00,162 --> 00:38:01,923 Quit being corn. 537 00:38:01,924 --> 00:38:04,575 The loyal customer is the easiest to charge, right? 538 00:38:04,575 --> 00:38:08,387 Be a stranger, be a flight risk, make them earn it every single month. 539 00:38:08,387 --> 00:38:10,828 Install an ad blocker in your home network. 540 00:38:10,828 --> 00:38:14,879 Don't let 'em put in the the company Wi-Fi. 541 00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:15,952 Buy your own router. 542 00:38:15,952 --> 00:38:19,058 Yeah, it's a little bit more expensive, but you can buy a used one. 543 00:38:19,058 --> 00:38:21,011 Find a used one on Facebook Marketplace. 544 00:38:21,011 --> 00:38:23,845 That's another inshtified platform. 545 00:38:24,387 --> 00:38:26,770 Craigslist still exists, it's still out there. 546 00:38:26,771 --> 00:38:29,356 But the point is to be a flight risk. 547 00:38:29,356 --> 00:38:31,749 Make earn it every single month. 548 00:38:31,750 --> 00:38:36,042 And what do we talk about more than anything on this uh on this podcast? 549 00:38:36,102 --> 00:38:38,820 Level two, coordinate it. 550 00:38:38,820 --> 00:38:39,404 Right? 551 00:38:39,404 --> 00:38:41,415 One chargeback, that's a little mosquito bite. 552 00:38:41,415 --> 00:38:42,126 You don't notice that. 553 00:38:42,126 --> 00:38:46,768 Ten thousand chargebacks in the same week is a crisis meeting. 554 00:38:46,768 --> 00:38:54,432 Like they they will they will get into a boardroom and start discussing why they lost a million dollars in revenue yesterday. 555 00:38:54,433 --> 00:38:58,174 And they've spent a fortune making sure you've you you don't feel that, right? 556 00:38:58,174 --> 00:39:07,337 Like the the whole difference between complaining and organizing, like a tenant unit union is the real answer to to a real page problem. 557 00:39:07,337 --> 00:39:15,433 Not a strongly worded email, which I'm so incredibly guilty uh of doing, thinking that I I mean it makes me feel better. 558 00:39:15,433 --> 00:39:19,000 It makes it might make you feel better, and hey, do it too. 559 00:39:19,001 --> 00:39:20,412 But tell other people about it. 560 00:39:20,412 --> 00:39:22,016 Tell them not to use it. 561 00:39:22,016 --> 00:39:26,307 Don't fill out their dumb survey that says why did you leave or do you recommend this? 562 00:39:26,307 --> 00:39:27,778 Would you recommend this to a friend? 563 00:39:27,778 --> 00:39:28,658 No. 564 00:39:28,678 --> 00:39:31,258 Tell a friend not to use that. 565 00:39:31,259 --> 00:39:38,721 Help them set up some weird pirate network of DVDs that you're sharing between all your friends. 566 00:39:38,761 --> 00:39:43,882 Create your own little radical red library out in your front yard. 567 00:39:43,883 --> 00:39:46,704 Shout out to one of our previous guests. 568 00:39:46,705 --> 00:39:51,537 So build a union that holds together. 569 00:39:51,538 --> 00:39:53,739 And what they fear most is workers. 570 00:39:53,739 --> 00:40:02,303 The last like real break on all this was people on the inside that had enough leverage to refuse to build the shitty thing. 571 00:40:02,303 --> 00:40:03,884 Rebuild that. 572 00:40:03,885 --> 00:40:06,096 And you're not begging the machine to be nicer. 573 00:40:06,096 --> 00:40:09,808 You've got your hands on the controls physically. 574 00:40:09,809 --> 00:40:13,383 And then level three, change the rules, because that's the only permanent fix. 575 00:40:13,383 --> 00:40:21,261 And I know change the rules is the part where I usually lose most of you right after I finish, you know, riding my unicorn to work. 576 00:40:21,262 --> 00:40:23,373 Stay anyway because it works. 577 00:40:23,374 --> 00:40:27,607 Real Page didn't get stopped by a person writing an email and complaining. 578 00:40:27,607 --> 00:40:37,962 A newsroom exposed it, tenants sued, and the Justice Department and a bipartisan pile of state attorneys general came down on it and cities banned it. 579 00:40:37,962 --> 00:40:39,622 Not a perfect win. 580 00:40:40,003 --> 00:40:49,958 The settlement had zero damages and no admission of guilt, and they're already suing back, but the machine got reined in, which proves that the thing 581 00:40:49,958 --> 00:40:59,531 That they most need you to never learn is this isn't the weather, this isn't physics, this isn't isn't chemistry, it's policy. 582 00:40:59,531 --> 00:41:03,472 And policy is just a decision some asshole made. 583 00:41:03,473 --> 00:41:05,434 And decisions can get reversed. 584 00:41:05,434 --> 00:41:09,154 So here is the reframe, and then I'll let you go. 585 00:41:09,155 --> 00:41:16,938 It feels hopeless because they handed you the two tools designed to lose complain and boycott. 586 00:41:16,939 --> 00:41:18,930 And told you that that's the whole toolbox. 587 00:41:18,930 --> 00:41:19,890 It isn't. 588 00:41:20,050 --> 00:41:29,812 The tools that work, coordinate, organize, regulate got buried to make you feel naive. 589 00:41:29,813 --> 00:41:34,814 Made to feel like something for other people in some other decade. 590 00:41:34,814 --> 00:41:37,575 You can't you probably can't beat a hedge fund by yourself. 591 00:41:37,575 --> 00:41:39,215 I'm gonna be honest with you. 592 00:41:39,216 --> 00:41:44,593 If you stand at the register, you know, one angry customer yelling at your in the top of your lungs. 593 00:41:44,593 --> 00:41:48,835 You're just gonna get the police called on you, and you're gonna get a public disturbance charge. 594 00:41:48,836 --> 00:41:52,161 The register is an arena that they win. 595 00:41:52,162 --> 00:42:01,769 And the truth is the lady behind it is only making eight dollars an hour and she's doing her best to be there too, but she was told to stand between you and your anger and the 596 00:42:01,769 --> 00:42:02,590 borderers. 597 00:42:02,591 --> 00:42:04,163 Step out of that paradigm. 598 00:42:04,163 --> 00:42:07,685 This was never about being a smart shopper. 599 00:42:07,686 --> 00:42:21,389 It's about being a citizen of our country who noticed and who found the others who noticed because the one thing a dozen billionaires cannot survive is the rest of us realizing how 600 00:42:21,389 --> 00:42:23,581 badly we outnumber them. 601 00:42:23,582 --> 00:42:24,723 The guitar fit. 602 00:42:24,723 --> 00:42:25,894 There was room. 603 00:42:25,894 --> 00:42:27,495 It was the law. 604 00:42:27,495 --> 00:42:29,796 And they called the police anyway. 605 00:42:29,797 --> 00:42:30,898 Don't be ashamed. 606 00:42:30,898 --> 00:42:32,319 Don't be quiet. 607 00:42:32,319 --> 00:42:34,960 Be awake and a pain in the ass. 608 00:42:34,961 --> 00:42:35,882 I'm Joshua. 609 00:42:35,882 --> 00:42:37,203 This has been The Overlap. 610 00:42:37,203 --> 00:42:39,785 You can find us on FOF.foundation. 611 00:42:39,785 --> 00:42:48,391 And you can check us out on major streaming platforms: Apple Podcasts, Spotify Podcasting, Podbean, and there's a handful of others if you want to view it at our website, 612 00:42:48,391 --> 00:42:50,762 FOF.foundation. 613 00:42:50,763 --> 00:42:52,754 Now that is still free. 614 00:42:52,754 --> 00:42:59,657 You can have it all without any ads and subscribe to it through the RSS feed or however you'd like to receive it. 615 00:43:00,018 --> 00:43:01,588 That is all for me for this week. 616 00:43:01,588 --> 00:43:04,160 I hope to see you guys back again next week. 617 00:43:04,160 --> 00:43:08,132 Share this podcast with a friend and make sure you rate it five stars, please. 618 00:43:08,132 --> 00:43:09,802 It helps us out quite a bit. 619 00:43:09,963 --> 00:43:11,123 Have a good one. 620 00:43:11,343 --> 00:43:15,805 Be kind to each other and give some company some hell.