Ed Guthrie said:
Ya know, this kind of economic snobbery really has no place amongst pilots, much less supposedly civil pilots. Furthermore, no one should take gleeful pleasure in seeing an unsuspecting individual stripped of their life savings (and probably more than that).
. . .
In fact, if you want to be fair about the snobbery and name calling, the only non-charlatan time builders on the lower rungs of the industry ladder are the aircraft owners and renters--they are footing the entire bill on their own dime.
Cognitive Dissonance is my take on it. Independent minded pilots with their swashbuckling self image refuse to believe that their only hope of economic success is through collective bargaining. Fortunately, at the highest ends of the industry the pilots realized years ago that the unregulated market was out to, quite literally, kill them.
The market was regulated two ways. First the CAA, now FAA imposed MINIMUM safety regulations, including minimum times for licenses and PIC positions. Second, the pilots organized into unions and through the countervailing weight of an organized labor force were able to force the employers into terms and conditions of employment which were acceptable to workers.
When there are low barriers to entry into to business or industry, trade unionism has an extraordinarily hard time. If the company is large enough the barriers to entry don't matter (how big was Walmart's investment in the Ontario store they shut down solely because it was organized?). Deregulation removed most of the barriers to entry into the market and now we have the inevitable free-for-all of unregulated capitalism (this is not a value judgment, just an observation - I am forever reminding my immigrant clients when they complain about their economic difficulties that the US is capitalist and they are free to leave - harsh, but real - they rarely leave).
The PFT folks are doing exactly what we expect they will do in an unregulated economic scheme, they are making themselves more attractive to the employer through the investment of capital. This is precisely the goal of capitalism.
What our fellow pilots object to is not any fundamental safety issues (they should, but they don't - at least they don't by electing officials who will take those concerns seriously) what they object to is that they could not afford it. What they object to is that there is a group of people who are willing and able to make an initial investment that is far greater than the initial investment they are willing or able to make. As you point out, in the end they make the investment, they just do it slowly over time.
Here is where the cognitive dissonance comes into play. What the non PFT folks are really saying is "gee - it is terrible that someone should have an advantage over me because they are able to pay their dues in cash up front and I have to pay my dues an hour at a time over many years." There is no doubt in my mind that if I was willing to hire 500 hour pilots at $20.00 per flight hour to crew the right seat of my BE-1900 that each and everyone of these folks would step up to the plate and apply for the job.
So their real objection is not safety - if it were they would be electing regulators to office. So their real objection is not taking a job from a more qualified individual - if it were they would allow me to teach for $80.00 per hour and not make it impossible for me to earn an acceptable living as a flight instructor through their willingness to work for $20.00 per hour (which just as an aside is the reason there is such a high accident rate among private pilots, their instructors are the least qualified - not the most qualified - what nonsense!). So their real objection is not "qualifications" - if it were they would be objecting to 500 hour pilots, not objecting to PFT. No the real objection is the one they can't say out loud, it is this: "I can't afford it and the other guy can so the other guy is wrong."
The real reason is that they truly believe that it is fundamentally wrong for them to even recognize, never mind voice, their true discontent - unregulated capitalism causes irrational results based not on desire, competence, or a host of other objective factors, but rather on one overriding factor - economic power. To admit this would require a change in their world view. They would need to recognize the flaws and limitations of unregulated capitalism, they would need to assert that rich people should not, simply by virtue of their wealth, have a better shot at the things we all want, such as jobs, health care, comfortable retirements, and first class education for our children - things rich people all get more of than poor people (in general, I know there are exceptions). They can't admit any of this, so they blame a system they have no hope of changing unless they are willing to make the admission - capitalism is fundamentally unfair - I'm not suggesting an alternative, or even suggesting this is "wrong," I'm just stating a conclusion which to me seems obvious.
If you want to solve the PFT problem you must be willing to look beyond the rhetoric. You must be willing to regulate them out of existence. You must be willing to adopt a true competitive entry ab initio, train for free system (like the military) and then only hire the best, brightest and most talented.
But this will never happen because the airline owners and managers won't allow it to happen. After all, they are the beneficiaries of the capitalist free for all and they have the power to get what they want, not what is in the interest of the people they serve. So they will merrily go along running unsafe airlines until the pilots are organized and the union is afforded a measure of power, or until they bankrupt themselves, or until the accident rate (right now at all time lows and due to technology going to stay that way) forces the government to impose further regulation. Since none of these is likely to happen, PFT is here to stay.
Well, I take a few weeks off from posting and I jump right into the deep end.