So, I was on a half empty flight last week. There were 7 exit row seats open and some passengers asked the flight cops (formerly known as flight attendants) if they could move up to a more comfotable seat. "Nope, you'd have to pay. This would have resulted in a small riot 20 years ago. Not so, now. We're all being broken to the reins.
So, its not just, not even mostly, about government (I am getting so tired of people focusing on slow-moving targets). Its about a society in which invidious distinctions have somehow become necessary (I won't dive into why here), in which even marginal temporary comfort has to be monetized. An airline that valued its customers would make all seats equally comfortable and seat passengers by layover time, so that the family who has only 50 minutes to get from one concourse to another would be first off the plane.
To the extent they exist, (my town has good customer service, but I iunderstand that is not always the case) the failures of our political institutions are mirrors of our increasingly desperate clinging to an economic model that cannot, by definition, put people first.
I think you bring up a really salient case. You'll notice most of these are examples of places where there IS no alternative. There is only one Disneyland, if you don't want to travel to the opposite end of the country / world. There is only one DMV or local or federal government providing services.
Similarly, airlines are accountable to nobody, and there's no alternative because every airline maximally screws their customers, and because they're in bed with politics at the top level and heavily regulatorily captured, nobody can really spin up a new airline to compete, and there's no way to deliver clear feedback about bad practices because there's usually no option to go to a competitor airline that does it better (but if you can, definitely choose Southwest or JSX, they usually genuinely do better).
The big problem here is LACK of competition and alternatives, and lack of feedback mechanisms.
For Disneyland and airlines - good luck, there's no hope for any feedback mechanism for for-profit companies with no alternatives that is within the Overton Window (if you want to step outside the Overton Window, I would unironically like to have assassination markets for airline executives, and I would be *pouring* money into those every time I flew, because it's a very clear and direct feedback mechanism that will strongly incentivize more customer-oriented behavior and prioritization from the top down).
For governments, local and federal, I like a "direct democracy" solution: QR codes people can scan and fill out a survey with how unhappy they are, and if enough give it the lowest ranking, some elected official in the "responsibility chain" gets recalled and special-electioned against. Every person who's taken the survey gets notified if there's a recall and special election, so they can vote for somebody better. Each time it happens, it goes up the chain one level, so it will eventually land at a level of power / responsibility that will take things seriously enough to change things for the better.
These are both just dreams, of course. Nobody in power is going to enable any system where they have greater responsibility and / or the ability to be recalled. But in a just world, we might get mechanisms like this.
So, I was on a half empty flight last week. There were 7 exit row seats open and some passengers asked the flight cops (formerly known as flight attendants) if they could move up to a more comfotable seat. "Nope, you'd have to pay. This would have resulted in a small riot 20 years ago. Not so, now. We're all being broken to the reins.
So, its not just, not even mostly, about government (I am getting so tired of people focusing on slow-moving targets). Its about a society in which invidious distinctions have somehow become necessary (I won't dive into why here), in which even marginal temporary comfort has to be monetized. An airline that valued its customers would make all seats equally comfortable and seat passengers by layover time, so that the family who has only 50 minutes to get from one concourse to another would be first off the plane.
To the extent they exist, (my town has good customer service, but I iunderstand that is not always the case) the failures of our political institutions are mirrors of our increasingly desperate clinging to an economic model that cannot, by definition, put people first.
I think you bring up a really salient case. You'll notice most of these are examples of places where there IS no alternative. There is only one Disneyland, if you don't want to travel to the opposite end of the country / world. There is only one DMV or local or federal government providing services.
Similarly, airlines are accountable to nobody, and there's no alternative because every airline maximally screws their customers, and because they're in bed with politics at the top level and heavily regulatorily captured, nobody can really spin up a new airline to compete, and there's no way to deliver clear feedback about bad practices because there's usually no option to go to a competitor airline that does it better (but if you can, definitely choose Southwest or JSX, they usually genuinely do better).
The big problem here is LACK of competition and alternatives, and lack of feedback mechanisms.
For Disneyland and airlines - good luck, there's no hope for any feedback mechanism for for-profit companies with no alternatives that is within the Overton Window (if you want to step outside the Overton Window, I would unironically like to have assassination markets for airline executives, and I would be *pouring* money into those every time I flew, because it's a very clear and direct feedback mechanism that will strongly incentivize more customer-oriented behavior and prioritization from the top down).
For governments, local and federal, I like a "direct democracy" solution: QR codes people can scan and fill out a survey with how unhappy they are, and if enough give it the lowest ranking, some elected official in the "responsibility chain" gets recalled and special-electioned against. Every person who's taken the survey gets notified if there's a recall and special election, so they can vote for somebody better. Each time it happens, it goes up the chain one level, so it will eventually land at a level of power / responsibility that will take things seriously enough to change things for the better.
These are both just dreams, of course. Nobody in power is going to enable any system where they have greater responsibility and / or the ability to be recalled. But in a just world, we might get mechanisms like this.