The funniest Twitter exchanges are misunderstandings?

by philg

I’m still trying to figure out what Twitter is for. Much more so than Facebook, Twitter seems to bring together people with different backgrounds and perspectives. The result is a lot more misunderstandings and opportunities for humor with fake misunderstandings.

Here’s my own example:

The Harvard Medical School professor says, presumably informed by Science, that COVID-19 spreads because of arrogant, dismissive, and selfish people. I look at the map and sincerely point out that “Looks like arrogant, dismissive, and selfish people like to live in San Francisco, Boston, and New York City. #Science”.

On further reflection, it would have been better without the #Science and maybe rephrased “Looking at the map, it seems that …” But until Elon Musk takes over, there is no edit button!

Here’s one where President Biden promises more good stuff free and/or cheap and a subject ungratefully demands to know how the Vanquisher of Corn Pop is vanquishing the “housing crisis”:

Here’s the misunderstanding-based response:

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Real estate market has peaked? (that $3.225 million house in our neighborhood)

by philg

From early March… Open house today in our neighborhood:

There’s a house for sale in our neighborhood (we rent a 2BR for $2800/month). It went on the market about a week ago. The first showings are today, 10a-4p, and “All contracts must be submitted by 5:00pm on March 3rd.” This million dollar home (built in 2012; re-sold in 2017 for $1.3 million) sits on a princely quarter-acre lot and offers a vast interior space of 4,574′. It was “coming soon” at $2.95 million two weeks ago, but the asking price now is $3.225 million (escaping NY, MA, and CA vaccine coercion and mask orders is not cheap!). The house comes with the opportunity for a lifetime close friendship with the appliance repair brothers, sisters, and binary resisters (i.e., there is a Sub-Zero fridge).

Zillow estimates the value at $2.225 million. Redfin admits “we don’t have enough information to generate an accurate estimate at this time.”

Zillow now says that the estimated value is $2.54 million and also that the house finally closed on May 9 at $3 million.

My theory is that the real estate market peaked in February 2022. The above failure to achieve asking price is a small data point in favor of this theory. The bigger data point is that… I made the decision to buy a house in February 2022. If I go long, that’s a signal to go short! (“I like to do everything in the dumbest way imaginable”) My feeble justifications: our rent was likely to go up to $5,000 per month in August; the mortgage on a house more than 2X the size (using the 3.25 percent rate that we locked in back in Feb) is about $10,000 per month (but not cheaper per square foot once you factor in property tax, maintenance costs, and unpaid maintenance and management labor); kids won’t have to share a bedroom; we now have a real guest bedroom; more kids in the immediate neighborhood. The house is still in the same Abacoa neighborhood that was developed by the MacArthur Foundation (search process explained).

(We just recently closed and moved in, so be prepared for numerous posts on systems and maintenance! My productive hours per week have been cut by 40. There are daily trips to Home Depot. One recent day I counted five different contractors/service people who showed up.)

Who wants to guess at the real estate price trend for the next 2 years? My guess is that house prices will fall, but not by falling. The price in 2 years will be the same as the price today (maybe with a dip in the middle), but inflation will have eroded the value in real terms by at least 10 percent.

Even if you overpaid by $1 million for a house, one great thing about this climate is that you can grow orchids by wiring them to a tree and walking away. The tree gives the orchid sufficient shade and the orchid gets everything else that it needs from the Florida sky. A neighbor’s house this morning:

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Migrant minors tested for age in Belgium

by philg

An article from Belgium, translated from French by The Google, “Eight objectives to streamline the approach to unaccompanied foreign minors”:

Today, 2670 young people are welcomed in the Fedasil network and by the communities, compared to 1029 in 2019. In 2021, Belgium saw a total of 3351 young people who declared themselves minors. The Guardianship Service of the FPS Justice carried out 2515 age tests to verify these declarations. In total, 2435 decisions were made: at the end of the test, 69% were declared major and 31% were declared minors.

If migrants are undocumented, how can an “age test” be performed?

(Based on the folks whom I’ve talked to, the U.S. doesn’t try to do this. A migrant who identifies him/her/zir/theirself as a minor is a minor.)

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How will we pay for our mail order fentanyl now that crypto is cratering?

by philg

“Cryptocurrencies Melt Down in a ‘Perfect Storm’ of Fear and Panic” (NYT, today):

A steep sell-off that gained momentum this week starkly illustrated the risks of the experimental and unregulated digital currencies.

The problem is not that a string of random bits has no inherent value, in other words, but that the U.S. government is not regulating Bitcoin.

(For those that argue that fiat currency has no inherent value… you need it to pay your taxes, without which you will be put in prison. So its inherent value is at least whatever your freedom is worth to you.)

The price of Bitcoin plunged to its lowest point since 2020. Coinbase, the large cryptocurrency exchange, tanked in value. A cryptocurrency that promoted itself as a stable means of exchange collapsed. And more than $300 billion was wiped out by a crash in cryptocurrency prices since Monday.

The crypto world went into a full meltdown this week in a sell-off that graphically illustrated the risks of the experimental and unregulated digital currencies. Even as celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and tech moguls like Elon Musk have talked up crypto, the accelerating declines of virtual currencies like Bitcoin and Ether show that, in some cases, two years of financial gains can disappear overnight.

The moment of panic amounted to the worst reset in cryptocurrencies since Bitcoin plummeted 80 percent in 2018.

It recovered from the 2018 crash so we just have to buy and hold? 16 percent of Americans agree:

During the coronavirus pandemic, people have flooded into virtual currencies, with 16 percent of Americans now owning some, up from 1 percent in 2015, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Big banks like Northern Trust and Bank of America also streamed in, along with hedge funds, some using debt to further juice their crypto bets.

But crypto’s decline is more severe than the broader plunge in the stock market. While the S&P 500 is down 18 percent so far this year, Bitcoin’s price has dropped 40 percent in the same period. In the last five days alone, Bitcoin has tumbled 20 percent, compared to a 5 percent decline in the S&P 500.

Let’s go back to January 2021 when I wrote Bitcoin being pumped up a fraudulent Tether? Bitcoin was then valued at $36,000. Today it is quoted at approximately 30,000 Bidies (mini dollars). How’s Tether doing? Actually not too bad!

This week, Luna lost almost its entire value. That immediately had a knock-on effect on TerraUSD, which fell to a low of 23 cents on Wednesday. As investors panicked, Tether, the most popular stablecoin and a linchpin of crypto trading, also wavered from its own $1 peg. Tether fell as low as $0.95 before recovering. (Tether is backed by cash and other traditional assets.)

Regulators say that more regulation is the answer:

“We really need a regulatory framework,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said at a congressional hearing on Thursday. “In the last couple of days, we’ve had a real-life demonstration of the risks.”

Why would it make sense for the folks in Washington, D.C., who have failed to maintain a stable value for the U.S. dollar, to try to monkey with Bitcoin? People who want a currency that is subject to the regulation and manipulation of technocrats in D.C. already have one: the U.S. dollar.

Would any HODL readers like to make the case for buying cryptocurrencies right now? If so, which one(s)?

Crypto Believer at the local strip mall this evening… (I was at PetSmart)

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Should the COVID-19 injections be renamed to something other than “vaccine”?

by philg

When coronapanic hit and various public health prophets went on television calling themselves “scientists,” friends who are medical school professors said that, when the predictions of these physicians and public health bureaucrats inevitably failed the public’s confidence in medicine would be reduced. They cringed every time Anthony Fauci was in the spotlight, for example.

I wonder if the same thing could be happening with the shots that are currently marketed as “vaccines”. People who’ve had 3 or 4 shots are regularly getting sick with COVID-19. Some are being hospitalized and, in the long run, nearly all of the COVID-19 deaths will be among this heavily-jabbed population. By contrast, the childhood vaccines that we desperately want people to apply to their kids, e.g., the measles vaccine, actually stop humans from getting sick with measles.

Now that we know that COVID-19 vaccines don’t work like “regular vaccines” is it time to rename them so that their ineffectiveness doesn’t tarnish the reputation of the “real vaccines”?

Ignoring any serious harm that the COVID-19 vaccines might cause, the closest analogy that I can think of to the situation is what we call “the flu shot”. Americans don’t usually say “I am vaccinated against influenza.” We say “I had all of my childhood vaccinations and this year I got a flu shot.” The flu shot is put in a “can’t hurt; might help” category. When a person who had the flu shot gets the flu anyway, that doesn’t result in him/her/zir/them or his/her/zir/their social network to lose confidence in “vaccine vaccines.”

Readers: What do you think of the idea? Half of the hardest core Mask and Vaccine Karens whom I know seem to have gotten COVID-19 within the past few months. Wouldn’t the overall image of vaccines be improved if we said “They had a COVID-19 shot, which was good prep for their COVID-19 infection” rather than “They were vaccinated against COVID-19 three times and then got COVID-19 anyway”?

Related:

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Bad news for Rivian: the electric Ford F-150 is at least pretty good

by philg

From November: What edge does Rivian have in the truck or EV market? (market cap: $127 billion)

From January: How is Rivian still worth $78 billion?

The market cap today is $18 billion, an 85 percent loss for those who bought the stock at the time of my November post (or a massive profit for those who went short!).

Today’s Car and Driver review of the F-150 Lightning:

Though this truck has many parlor tricks—a big frunk that can swallow 400 pounds, an optional tongue-weight scale, and BlueCruise hands-free driving—none are as impressive as how quick it builds speed from a standstill, thanks to 775 pound-feet of instant torque. Mat the accelerator and the front tires spin. Actually, the fronts will spin if you floor the accelerator at any speed below 50 mph or so. The effect is amplified as you load the truck closer to its 2235-pound max payload capacity.

It even drives and feels a lot like an F-150. A 50/50 weight balance contributes to very good road manners. … A low center of gravity keeps the truck relatively flat through corners, too.

The base vinyl-lined Pro model starts at $41,769 and comes with the 98.0-kWh battery that’s good for an EPA range of 230 miles, while the upgraded extended-range battery brings 131.0 kilowatts-hours of storage and 320 miles of range. … On the not-so-good front, the Lightning can tow up to 10,000 pounds when spec’d with the Max Trailer Tow package, but it can’t do so for very long between charges. We pulled an 8300-pound boat and trailer at about 65 mph, and the on-board trip computer indicated we were getting less than one mile per kilowatt-hour. This puts the highway range with a trailer of decent size and mass somewhere around 100 miles.

[A friend has a reservation for the F-150 Lightning and they won’t let him order the base model, so the $41.7k price is maybe just a theoretical one. The real price is at least $60k.]

So the Ford product is at least pretty good, is backed by a company from which people have been buying trucks for more than 100 years, and is much cheaper than what Rivian charges for a similar capability.

Ford even shows a great place to run out of battery power:

If this vehicle had dog mode, it would certainly be a better value than anything from Tesla!

Circling back to Rivian… after they run out of Silicon Valley enthusiasts, who is going to pay $100,000 for a non-Ford, non-GM, non-Toyota pickup truck? And what is the stock/company worth?

Rivian stock versus the S&P 500 starting on the date of my first post:

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Where the Biden administration diverges from George Orwell’s 1984 playbook

by philg

Comparisons between the Party in George Orwell’s 1984 and the Democrats currently ruling the U.S. are becoming more frequent, e.g., referring to the Silicon Valley censors as the Thought Police (from 2016), the new Disinformation Governance Board as the Ministry of Truth (WSJ), etc. Democrats are now apparently about to receive comprehensive data on which Americans support their opponents (see “Judge rules January 6 committee can obtain RNC and Trump campaign email data” (CNN)).

There is at least one area where today’s Progressives diverge from Orwell’s Party. From the appendix to 1984:

[a Party member’s] sexual life, for example, was entirely regulated by the two Newspeak words SEXCRIME (sexual immorality) and GOODSEX (chastity). SEXCRIME covered all sexual misdeeds whatever. It covered fornication, adultery, homosexuality, and other perversions, and, in addition, normal intercourse practised for its own sake. There was no need to enumerate them separately, since they were all equally culpable, and, in principle, all punishable by death. In the C vocabulary, which consisted of scientific and technical words, it might be necessary to give specialized names to certain sexual aberrations, but the ordinary citizen had no need of them. He knew what was meant by GOODSEX—that is to say, normal intercourse between man and wife, for the sole purpose of begetting children, and without physical pleasure on the part of the woman: all else was SEXCRIME.

Regarding sexuality, in other words, 21st century governments that decide how to allocate an ever-larger share of GDP and thus occupy an ever-larger role in an individual’s life went in exactly the opposite direction predicted by Orwell. Orwell was correct in predicting that church-established moral rules would be dead, but he thought that even more strict sexual morality would be imposed by the state.

(Note that, in 1984, the Proles enjoyed more freedom of all kinds, including sexual, than Party members, but their sexual freedom was pretty similar to what was available in 1940s England not what we have in the U.S. right now. Contraception is never explained in 1984, unlike in Brave New World. The only women who have babies are married women, despite the existence of some sex outside of marriage, and family sizes seem to be small.)

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A hero flies the Cessna Caravan to Palm Beach

by philg

Tom Cruise is a pretty good pilot in real life and an even better one in Top Gun: Maverick, but my vote for pilot of the year goes to Darren Harrison, the passenger whose journey from the Bahamas is covered in “Air traffic controller guides passenger to safe landing at PBIA after pilot has medical emergency” (WPBF). The audio is available at liveatc.net (search for KFPR, then KFPR Tower, then click the “archive access” link and finally May 10 at 16Z. The action starts at 11:21 into the clip (the passenger’s full phone number is on the tape so you can text him congratulations!).

The aircraft is N333LD and here’s the path from flightradar24:

The passenger’s task was made more difficult by modern avionics. This ad for the plane shows that it is equipped with the Garmin G1000 flight deck. So the controller asked the passenger-turned-pilot to press the IDENT button, but there is no button labeled IDENT as there would have been with a discrete transponder. (With the advantage of 20-20 hindsight, what the controller should have said was “press and hold the button that has two arrows on it to tune the emergency frequency of 121.5” and then the talk-down wouldn’t have had to occur via mobile phone (good thing the passenger’s phone battery did not run out!).)

The turboprop-powered Caravan is pretty slow,, but it is not a beginner’s plane. Fortunately, the float gear had been removed! Here was what the plane used to look like:

What did he have to deal with at KPBI? The good news is that the big runway is 10,000′ long and there were just a few scattered clouds 4,200 and 4,600 feet above the airport. The bad news is that it is 10/28 (east-west) and the wind was reported from the north at 11 knots gusting 17.

KPBI 101553Z 02011G17KT 10SM SCT042 SCT046 26/15

A student pilot with 20 hours of training probably wouldn’t have been signed off by his/her/zir/their instructor to operate in that kind of crosswind.

liveatc.net also has the KPBI Tower archived (May 10 at 1630Z). Almost everything that we desperately want to hear was being said on a mobile phone call directly between ATC and the newly minted Caravan pilot. (Contrary to popular belief, the typical controller does not know how to fly a plane. My sources suggest that the phone call was between the passenger and Robert Morgan, who is a controller but also an FAA certificated flight instructor (“CFI”).) Perhaps worth a listen to PBI Tower starting around 5:00. At 8:45, a few minutes after the landing, we learn that the winds were 050 at 10 gust 16 (not quite as bad a crosswind as indicated by the METAR of 40 minutes earlier, but still more than a soloing student would likely be signed off for).

Update: interview with Robert Morgan… “a Jupiter resident”! (Trigger warning for Californians: the page shows Morgan and “the passenger” (still anonymous) without masks and less than 6′ apart.)

Loosely related, “you should be sitting back with your slippers and pipe”…

Garmin tooketh away to some extent with the G1000, but Garmin giveth back with Autoland, which would have been perfect for this situation.

Related:

  • Talk-down aircraft landing (Wikipedia), in which we learn that many of the people described by the media as “passengers” turn out to be either student pilots or rusty but fully certificated private pilots.
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Why are residents of Democrat-run states so upset by the leaked Supreme Court draft regarding Roe v. Wade?

by philg

Friends in Maskachusetts, New York, and California have been raging against the potential for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, thus enabling states to make their own laws regarding abortion. They say that they would personally suffer from any change in the status quo and that, in particular, they would lose their “freedom.”

Why I find this confusing is that the same people say that they will never visit a Republican-influenced state. So I don’t see how the abortion laws that prevail in the 28 states that are officially boycotted by San Francisco could cause them any personal suffering.

Here’s a Facebook exchange example:

  • me: How would someone in California experience any of the feared changes as a result of forthcoming Supreme Court decisions? How many California Democrats will ever visit, for example, Arkansas? Or talk to anyone in Arkansas?
  • Bay Area Righteous: Ha! It’s not just because of abortion. I’d be hard pressed to visit you in Florida, Philip, but not because of you. 🙂 Between humidity, anti-abortion, guns and…DeSantis (!), why would I? Okay, I’m being a bit snarky, but in general I do have more interest in visiting the more liberal parts of the country and the world. Well, that’s not entirely true. In the past 11 years I’ve visited Egypt, Turkey and Jordan (among other places).
  • me: Were you upset that abortion was strictly illegal in Egypt? Or how about Costa Rica, a much more popular vacation destination for Californians than most of the states where the Supreme Court’s return of this issue to the states would result in the law being changed? Do Californians protest the illegality of abortion in Costa Rica?
  • Bay Area Righteous: I was “upset” about all sorts of things in Egypt. We were in Cairo on January 25, 2011, the day the revolution began there. Learned a lot about their oppressive regime at the time. And since. But the difference (same for Costa Rica) is that it’s not our country. We have no standing there. The same is true about Arkansas, but unlike Costa Rica, we do have political interactions with Arkansans. We both vote for people in the House, Senate, White House, etc. Arkansans have influence over federal aspects of Californians. That’s not so for Costa Ricans.
  • Bay Area Righteous: I don’t avoid Arkansas only because of their stance on abortions.
  • me: So you would celebrate every additional abortion in Arkansas because it would mean one fewer person who could potentially vote for policies that you don’t like at the national level?
  • Portland (Oregon) Righteous friend of the Bay Area Righteous guy: master of the straw man! I’m against the upcoming ruling. It limits freedom and will likely pave the way to erosion of more freedoms. And until the crowd that applauds the decision also works for the rights and needs of the born, then I’ll gladly continue being sanctimonious.
  • me: How would [our mutual friend in San Francisco’s] freedom be limited by the Supreme Court saying that abortion was not a federal matter? Wouldn’t it be increased? The California legislature and Gavin Newsom would be free to establish any laws (or no laws) related to abortion that they desired. Or are you saying that Californians will somehow vote themselves into slavery (“un-freedom”) at the state level? ([our friend] has already explained that, even prior to this leaked draft, he was boycotting any state that he does not consider to be “liberal” so he is not going to travel to any place where a Republican might have any influence on abortion laws.)
  • Portland Righteous: I don’t really care about how this law affects [our friend]. It’s likely that any actual effects will be limited to his relations living in affected states. Though he might change his actions by giving more to pro-choice causes and maybe even host an abortion refugee from one of the affected states. It might affect other California residents who might consider relocation — depending on their level of tolerance for increased state scrutiny of reproductive rights. Being an Oregon resident, my state is actively supporting Idaho residents in need of abortion services though money and hosting. Anyway, bummer about how the state is getting all up in people’s business.
  • me: why do [our friend’s] relations choose to live in states that [our friend] had found (well prior to 2022) sufficiently deplorable to boycott and never visit?
  • me: the effects that you cite on OR and CA residents all sound positive to me. You now have a charitable cause that you believe in. When you take in a refugee or give money you will feel better about yourself and your life. See “Being Generous Really Does Make You Happier” (TIME) for some references.

Given that, from these Democrats’ point of view, the U.S. is already functionally split up into at least two countries (one good and one bad), why is the availability of on-demand abortion in the bad sub-country of more interest to someone who lives in the good sub-country than the availability of on-demand abortion in, say, Costa Rica? (the latter being a matter of no interest at all to the people who are outraged regarding the potential unavailability of abortion in Idaho)

Another example, this time from a woman in her early 50s who lives in Maskachusetts (she divorced her husband some years ago and therefore is not subject to male supervision):

  • Boston Righteous: A heartfelt “fuck you” to everyone who told me I was overreacting in November 2016″
  • “Joseph”: Wait you’re in Mass they will always allow abortions your reaction has no context
  • Boston Righteous: the fact that I happen to live in a state currently governed by sane people doesn’t negate the fact that as a fundamental rule, it’s not a problem to restrict my rights as a human being. The fact that some people don’t see that as a huge issue is repugnant.
  • Righteous Maryland female: The fact that you actually think [Boston Righteous]’s reaction “has no context” just illustrates the incredible privilege from which you are able to view this issue. You have absolutely no idea of the effects of this decision. Your rights have never been threatened. your gender has shielded you from many horrible things that women deal with every single day. to say that because [Boston Righteous] lives in Massachusetts and has no context for reacting to this issue is unbelievably insensitive and ignorant. If you don’t remember, [Boston Righteous] has a daughter. Perhaps her daughter may choose to live in another state at some point. … please, try to see that not everyone has the incredible entitlement that you apparently have. [But why would the daughter of a sane person who votes for sane politicians choose to live in a Red State?]
  • me: Where are the geographical limits of your concern? You’ve said that your concern extends beyond Massachusetts. Does it extend to Costa Rica where abortion is strictly illegal? If you accept that Costa Ricans can make different choices for their laws in this area than voters in Massachusetts have made, why can’t you accept that voters in Arkansas or North Dakota make different choices from yours?
  • Boston Righteous: I am quite aware of the atrocious laws against women’s rights in other countries. I had always believed that my country was better in this regard. Silly me, apparently. [Other than prejudice, what is our basis for thinking that that our country is better?]
  • me: Now that we’re deep into globalization I can’t figure out why an issue “in my country” is more critical than the same issue across a border that has become arbitrary. (It might be the case that people who live in Massachusetts are more likely to visit Costa Rica than to visit North Dakota or Arkansas. That wasn’t true before the Jet Age.) About 30% of residents of Massachusetts are immigrants or children of immigrants. They’re probably more connected to various foreign countries than they are to Arkansas or North Dakota.
  • Boston Righteous: I didn’t say that I didn’t care. But it’s substantially more personal now that it impacts me. Which of course you realize but for some reason are being obtuse.
  • me: I actually don’t understand how the laws of states other than Massachusetts impact you, any more than do the laws of other countries. Separately, Happy Mother’s Day!
  • Boston Righteous: because I’d rather not be trapped in MA? Because I’d rather my children not be trapped in MA? Because I’d prefer that the country of which I am a citizen doesn’t allow individual states to treat its residents as second class citizens? Weirdest conversation ever….. and finally, I’m not a jackass who only thinks of herself. I fully realize that as a wealthy, white woman, none of this REALLY matters to me personally. I can buy my way out of whatever I’d need. But I realize that makes me very, very privileged, and I don’t want others to suffer because they are not in the same boat. And frankly, just because. This is obscene and any rational person knows it.
  • me: people who love the Massachusetts laws are already unable to move to a lot of other states. Consider that Massachusetts shut down schools for more than a year and kept marijuana stores (“essential”) open, then ordered kids to wear masks in schools. Shutting down a school is illegal in Florida. A school system ordering children to wear masks is illegal in Florida (not against a governor’s order, but against a statute passed by the legislature). Running a recreational marijuana store is illegal. Is there a Red State that you would have previously considered moving to and now must be crossed off the list? … that circles back to my earlier point. If it is about concern for others, why not be upset about the unavailability of abortion after 12 weeks in Germany? (I never have heard you mention this.) That’s a population of more than 80 million under a law that you consider intolerable. And you would be willing even to support Germany by traveling there and spending money?

I remember her talking enthusiastically a few years ago about a vacation trip to Germany, which is why I picked that land of oppression for people who might become pregnant (to avoid inflaming the above folks, I did not point out their cisgender-normative prejudice in assuming that abortion is somehow an issue particular to “women” and did use the pregnant man emoji, though I was dying to do so.

I do find it genuinely confusing that folks in Maskachusetts, California, New York, and other states with sane government want a uniform national law. First, wouldn’t the Supreme Court just strike down any such law if the draft opinion turns into a final opinion? If this is a matter for states to decide, what difference does it make what Congress and Joe Biden do? Second, if this were a matter of federal policy, why do they think that the federal policy would allow as many abortions as MA, CA, and NY law allow? If the federal policy is set to some sort of consensus opinion, wouldn’t it more likely end up being kind of an average of current state policies rather than all the way at one extreme (abortion allowed at 37 weeks in Maskachusetts, for example)?

Finally, look at all of the times that the concept of “privilege” comes up in the Maskachusetts-centered conversation. This is why people need to attend liberal arts colleges. How else would they decode and participate?

Related:

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Return of reasonably pleasant commercial air travel will devalue small airplanes?

by philg

The value of little airplanes has soared in the past two years, more like South Florida real estate than inflation in general. Planes that are reasonably good for transportation, e.g., the Cirrus SR22, are up 50-100 percent in value as used aircraft. There have been substantial price increases on the new ones, but it is unclear what they’re worth because they’re impossible to buy without at least a one-year wait.

If a Cirrus, which has no pressurization, no ability to climb over thunderstorms, no kitchen, and no bathroom is “reasonably good for transportation” what is “excellent for transportation”? JetBlue! At a price that is essentially free compared to operating the Cirrus, JetBlue has pressurization, the ability to fly over weather, a kitchen where coffee is brewed, and three bathrooms on every Airbus. In the unlikely event that JetBlue’s plane is broken, there are spares that are rolled out within a few hours.

Commercial airline travel in 2020 was perceived as unsafe. You were informed that SARS-CoV-2 would probably kill you. Commercial airline travel in 2021 was correctly perceived as unpleasant, with constant announcements regarding masks and a constant reasonable fear that a mask dispute would break out on the plane, potentially leading to a diversion and not getting to your destination on time. Maybe it wasn’t so bad to pay $1.2 million for a piston-powered airplane, endure the noise, vibration, and uncertainty about whether one would reach one’s destination (weather, mechanical, fatigue?). And the $10,000 per year hangar bill? A small price to pay to avoid a killer virus. Another $20,000 per year for data subscriptions, maintenance, and insurance? Where do I sign up?

Could a little downward nudge from the stock market decline combine with rediscovery of the pleasantness and practicality of commercial air travel to make people rethink whether they want to elbow their way past 15 other people and be the high bidder for a Cirrus, Bonanza, or turboprop? A friend who owns a jet charter business says, regarding airplane valuations, “they follow the stock market triple leveraged”. The market has already declined quite a bit in 2022 and it is unclear that his formula is in operation yet, but there might be a precedent for a General Aviation Winter caused by the airlines.

The glorious years of mass production for generation aviation were 1960s and 1970s. Upper middle class people thought it was a reasonable idea to buy a Cessna or Piper for family transportation. Gerald Ford began the deregulation process for the airlines and it was completed by Jimmy Carter in 1978 (history). By 1986, fares for leisure travelers had fallen dramatically and Cessna stopped making little planes. Part of the justification for the shutdown was liability, but there was a glut of small planes that lasted until roughly 1996 when Cessna started up again. Piper was similarly afflicted, but never shut down completely. See “Airplane production to resume June 1” (UPI, May 1986):

Floundering Piper Aircraft Corp. will resume production of its entire line of small airplanes June 1, having sold off more than half of its oversupply of new planes, the company said Friday.

Piper, which like other small aircraft makers has suffered from a severe downturn in sales since the 1970s, suspended production of eight of its nine models of small piston-driven planes in February and laid off 630 workers.

The company has laid off several thousand employees as it trimmed operations. It now has 1,800 employees, down from 8,000 a few years ago.

I’m not expecting a mid-1980s-type crash due to the restart of mask-free airline flights, but that’s only because the piston aircraft industry is already so tiny that it can’t shrink much. The question for this post is whether the return of reasonably pleasant $200 airline flights will cause small planes to revert to their historical values, adjusted for Bidenflation.

Related:

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