Noise canceling headsets. I never travel without them.
Also useful for things like mowing lawn, and more confortable than standard passive hearing protection. I don’t even have to be listening to music with them.
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Nobody’s harmed – at all – the price is completely transparent to everyone. Some people are going to value a nicer seat more than I do. They’re free to buy it.
I used to fly Reno Air up and down the West Coast and they used to do this thing for their first class seats – if they had room, they’d offer them up for $30 each, then $20, then $10 (I never saw them get to zero). No one ever bought a first class seat, of course, so they used this as away of hedging their overbooking. I typically would try to snag one at $20 because you usually could wait past the $30 mark.
10 years ago that was true. These days not so much.
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You and Sterling Hayden. I can’t seem to find it but I’ll never forget an interview he did on the Tom Snyder show. He talked about buying a rail car. He’d hitch it to a commercial train and just go wherever it took him, watching the countryside go by and smoking a joint.
The best part was you could hear at least one of the camera guys laughing.
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…he’s that fellow from Nantucket, he just curls into a ball…
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I guess where I am having trouble is if we are all oppressors, doesn’t the concept lose meaning? Who are we oppressing? If it is an economic scale, why not just say poor, middle class, rich? If it is social status, well, I’m with @popobawa4u, status can eff off :D. Can i, as an average (according to labor data) middle class person even be an effective oppressor if i wanted to?
My mode of transportation (flying) doesn’t enter into the oppressor/oppressed conversation. Lots of other things certainly do, but I think your argument that air travel == bourgie pig is a bit of a stretch.
All statements expressed here are opinions of Japhroaig and do not represent the views of, well, probably anyone else 
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Wouldn’t that be the best. Thing. Ever? I would buy an old mechanical typewriter, only wear silk robes/fez/slippers, and write unsolicited correspondence to B list actors on heavy parchment.
Gah, I can taste it.
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But…what of your tweed?
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Tweed is for off caboose. Silk is for… Err… On caboose? (That sounds vaguely dirty…)
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since my kids got past the age of inconsolable crying, no matter how loud the kids are I basically never feel anything but relief that I’m not the one dealing with it. Or occasional frustration with a parent whose stress is actually making the kid’s freakout worse. but mostly relief
re: trains - I’ve occasionally priced out taking a train to various locations in Canada, and it’s almost always more expensive than flying, which is bothersome. Basically, there’s no cheap way to get from Quebec to Saskatchewan. It’s $600 to fly, $700 by train, or $2400 to ship myself by fedex (return)
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Yup. Point taken, and my life is not devoid of luxuries by any means. However, I still don’t consider air travel a luxury since the only flying I get to do is work-related and having a job isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity to achieving any of the needs on Maslow’s hierarchy.
I also don’t share your we’re all oppressors outlook, though I do understand it. I don’t want to derail the thread, but to give you an idea of why, that would mean an act as simple as buying a loaf of bread is contributing to oppression, since that purchase is ultimately tied to the market economy. Simply put, I don’t think market economies are any more inherently exploitative than any other method of trade. I think how we as a civilization use and govern our markets is highly exploitative. But to use an analogy, a corner bakery isn’t responsible if the mob holds them hostage so it can launder dirty money through it, the bakery literally has no choice (or at least none that involves the survival of them or their loved ones, which is the same thing). So while I agree that we should all work for a more equitable world (and that a strong argument could be made that we even all have a responsibility to do what we can to work for it), that we are forced to participate in the inequitable world we do have does not automatically make us morally culpable for the system itself. Culpability comes from actively using the system to oppress others, not being hostage to the system in the first place, IMHO.
The companies that have tried to poach me seem to think so. But my current job has a benefit of being by the uni where I’m a post-doc, so I’m tied down.
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Sleeper trains are my preferred solution to this kind of problem. However, sleeper services throughout Europe are currently being cut, and a significant factor is that the full cost of air travel is not realised at the point of sale.
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I too have problems working out how to spell bourgeois.
I’ve never had the opportunity to book a sleeper train. On the west coast here rail is dominated by commercial and freight, not passenger (yeah, they share lines). So it turns out to be slow and only gets you to major hubs.
In the UK we have two main routes - London to Scotland (itself comprised of two routes, one stopping at Edinburgh and then continuing up the East Coast towns, the other going to Glasgow and then on into the Highlands). The other route goes to the far reaches of Cornwall, but cleverly, it deposits carriages at each of the stations it stops at, so that you can still get a full night’s sleep and rise in a civilised(ish) fashion the next morning.
I’ve used the London-Edinburgh service on several occasions, as far as Aberdeen sometimes, but the franchise was since sold to Serco so I’ve no doubt it’s going to the dogs.
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So what you’re saying is that you need better train lines? 
For long distance travel, if available, I prefer train; after that car. Airplanes are only because of where I live or usually because of time constraints. If I wanted to see my father before he died, an airplane was the only option. It’s more expensive, but I enjoyed the one time I was able to take an Amtrak sleeper across the country in a leisurely fashion.
p.s. All you Brits running down your train and Underground systems have never tried to drive around San Francisco. They’re all mad, I tell you, MAD!!!1111! 
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