If I may put my career in serious jeopardy here, I'd like address a comment made by my boss Mark Murphy on a recent edition of Trending on TravelPulse.
Mark, Rich Thomaselli and I were discussing the new tiered class system on Delta Airlines. Rich likened it to a caste system, where the rich people up front sneer over their champagne flutes as the poor people shuffle to their cramped seats in the back. I'm paraphrasing, of course, but that was kind of the gist of his argument.
Personally, I'm no class warrior. The way I see it, you get what you pay for. But among the most American of rights is the right to complain. And me, I like to exercise my rights. That's also the only thing I like to exercise, which means I have a pretty hard time squeezing into those economy seats.
Anyway, it was at this point that Mark made the comment I'd like to address. Specifically at the 1:48 mark, when he tells us we "sound like socialists."
Now I don't want to come across as offended. I've certainly been called worse. But it got me thinking. Is it socialist to want bigger seats? Is it socialist to chafe at the rich snobs enjoying their top-shelf liquor and infinite legroom in business class while I'm stuck trading elbow jabs with my fellow plebeians in the back?
Yeah, kind of. But not in the way you're thinking.
You see, if we're really going to complain about how good they have it up in business class, we have to realize that at one point the entire plane looked like that. In the good old days of Pan Am, every seat let you stretch out, the beverages were plentiful and no one ever had to fight for an arm rest. It was glorious, but it was also completely inaccessible to the common man.
So the airlines created smaller seats; they eliminated frills here and there. They created a brand-new class of seating, all to give the proletariat a chance to afford a plane ticket. Sure they made money off the deal, but taking seats away from the rich to give to the poor? Sounds pretty socialist.
So is it socialist to want bigger seats? Yes, but not as socialist as having those smaller seats in the first place.
But here's the beautiful part. There is a revolution coming to the common man in steerage class. And this revolution will not be your typical socialist/anarchist uprising of the poor against the rich.
Instead, this revolution has capitalism written all over it.
You need only look at items like the knee defender and soarigami to see how the common man at the back of the plane is fighting back against his airline oppressor. We're buying these devices, strapping them to our seatbacks, folding them over our armrests and we are taking back our freedom one inch at a time. And in true American fashion, we are making someone rich while doing it.
Because who gave us the tools to fight back against the scourge of economy class oppression? Capitalists. All it took was a few brilliant entrepreneurs who saw a gap in the market and suddenly we had the tools we needed to create our own legroom, carving it out through technological superiority like the rugged American individualists we are.
With one purchase, you can fight the socialist tools of too-close seatbacks and armrest encroachment. Rather than let the airlines get all the money for larger seats, these capitalists saw a way to give us the bigger seats we needed, but made sure they got a cut.
You can expect that as the airlines continue to squeeze more and more room out of the cheap seats, more and more budding entrepreneurs are going to make their fortune on the growing black market of airline space defenders. A friend of mine already extolled the virtues of a device he'd dreamed up that would turn the humble economy seat into a personal home theatre.
And for my part, I wish him well. Him and every other capitalist out there looking to help their brothers and sisters in economy class. May your devices give me a little more room, and may they make you rich enough that you never have to sit back here with the unwashed masses again.
After all, it's the American way.
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