We flew from Weeze. Just over the German border, the waiting time at customs was zero second. Moreover, for this trip – booked just before corona, to finally visit family in Andalusia – we had ‘priority boarding’.
But the priority line was much longer than the plebs. That’s how it goes with the better budget airline: you have to upgrade if you want more hand luggage than a ladies bag.
Privileged is the new average.
Schiphol’s baggage problems arose because several luggage carriers were allowed to compete with each other, resulting in starvation wages and subsequent strikes. Only: the traveler had no choice at all from those individual luggage farmers. Market forces only make sense if you can actually roam around a market, if you can compare. And how could a customer select on quality? What do those more expensive luggage porters give extra? Neck massages? Washing your underpants on the go?
In the drama series The Year of Fortuyn luckily there was also the anecdote in which Pim returns a spring roll that was not crispy enough. Why do we accept such mediocre quality in the Netherlands?
Market forces should give us freedom of choice, creating an optimum in price-quality. But now all kinds of institutions that feel like basic public facilities have become markets without stalls. Healthcare, education, rental housing, transport. And even energy. The very ones who were once seduced by a budget dealer are now getting the most insane raises, I notice around me. At the larger giants you pay a few tens more net. Transfer? Can not anymore. Did your budget farmer go bankrupt? Then all that remains is a peppery contract with a new supplier.
We are dependent on a market without stalls.
There are just as few variations in quality possible with gas and electricity as with lifting suitcases in an aircraft hold. You would therefore rather not allow market forces there. Unless you still build the stalls. Do you want to lift your suitcase into the hold yourself? Budget rate. Have someone else do that? At a decent hourly wage. Oh yes, that’s one hell of a gap, but you know what would be unfair? If travel abroad were completely out of the reach of low incomes, and if a working part of our population could not take a continuous week of vacation at all.
So you either have a market, with real stalls, or you turn collective bodies into real basic facilities, with working conditions that are appropriate for a prosperous country, so that you can offer a ditto basic quality.
Otherwise it will remain as now. With an underlayer that completely falls out of the boat, while the rest are lining up for a mushy spring roll.
But all with priority.
Christian Weijts writes a column every Friday in this place.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of May 6, 2022