There’s a safety angle to this that doesn’t get discussed much. In my small plane I typically file and fly IFR for nearly every flight. Tell me I have to pay ATC every time I talk to them and I’ll be looking closely at weather and trying not to talk with them anytime weather allows.
‘Jonathon Payne’, you continue to err, your statement about ‘users’ is logically false. If you are thinking of claimed benefit that is not what you said. Need an ATC controller commanding ‘state intention’? :-o)
Also beware that ‘libertarian’ is a loose category encompassing a wide range of beliefs but most often lacking epistemology, ranging from objectivists who explain importance of defending against initiation of force to outright whackos.
Javier Milei is a self-proclaimed libertarian who is improving people’s lives in Argentina, inflation is way down, trade up already.
Pierre Poilievre sometimes called himself a libertarian but like Milei believes in protecting individuals against initiation of force, he will probably be the next PM of Canada.
(Donald Trump is ‘who knows’, IMO he doesn’t.)
Aviatrexx’:
Indirect use is vague and mis-used by politicians and do-gooders.
USPS is a bad example, undependable and the victim of its own failure to perform - one Fred Smith believed people would pay extra for assured timing of delivery, despite his MBA perfessor sneering at the idea Smith went on to found a company and an industry: Federal Express.
USPS raises prices to try to survive as a monopoly but that just turns more people away from using its services. It fails to achieve the promise used to justify being a monopoly - help people who are poor or live in remote areas.
Privatize ATC? It will likely turn out to be as good as privatizing the US Postal Service in 1970. It works but…
Aviatrexx’:
It isn’t appropriate to compare true user funding with whatever the stumbling duo of TheMouthT and TheMouthX will do.
Javier Miei may be a better comparison, his slashing of bureaucracy is already reducing inflation in Argentina. I don’t know what if anything he intends to do with whatever Argentina has for a mail system.
True Libertarianism is anarchism.
Peter Schwartz has detailed the nature of Libertarian intellectuals.
‘glider CFI’:
USPS is NOT private, it is a government operation - just separate bureaucracy owned by government.
Best to study before launching: United States Postal Service - Wikipedia
Free charts from the FAA could be a thing of the past.
‘kurt…’:
That is not how NavCanada works.
But at whose expense, ‘svanarts’?
(Your first sentence fails logic - not all pilots fly across borders. Haven’t ICC rules been relaxed?)
I’m all for keeping it government managed, but it likely needs to morph into a USPS type of organization that funds itself. Up to the industry to figure out how the funds are collected and distributed. Nothing inherently evil about taking aviation management off the US government budget books. Do we really want Congress, when they finally have to bite the bullet, slashing funding across the board to get reduce the deficit?
A factor that hasn’t been mentioned is how to raise efficiency. In order for all end-users to be able to afford to pay for ATC costs, those costs would need to be reduced by orders of magnitude. Air Traffic Controllers do an amazing job and deserve to be paid well, but they need better tools to greatly increase productivity if this is to be affordable to all.
As horrifying to me as it is to think of trusting my life to a computer, I don’t think there is any alternative than to offload a large part of the ATC workload to software. I don’t know how it would work, but then I would have never guessed that a computer program could teach math before the Khan Academy came along, much less any of the other technological marvels that we are experiencing these days.
Negotiating and preallocating airspace for flight routes will have to be automated. The biggest challenge would be dynamic adjustments required because of changes in weather, equipment failures, etc. And then there are those pesky VFR pilots flying around at random with no airspace allocation. Soon there will be pilotless commercial drones. Overall, it’s not an easy problem, but it’s one that needs to be solved to advance aviation.
The recreational pilot doesn’t use ATC services and is not the burden on the system so their costs likely won’t go up. GA isn’t suffering from the costs being too high, it’s the atrophy of infrastructure ( mechanics, hangars, GA airports themselves) that makes private aviation a dying business. If user fees went to fund the promotion of A&P training and investment in infrastructure, that might be the boost GA needs to pull out of its graveyard spiral. But it won’t. Those fees will be spent on buying votes.
‘m154t’:
Your first sentence does not make sense.
And Canada’s experience shows what costs to GA end users could be.
Huh? ‘Ryan Waldron’.
Show statistics of airline ticket prices.
Keep in mind that airlines are not fully deregulated, there are economic ‘fitness’ rules.
Read history of the major US airlines that failed because their management and unions were stultified.
Read history of Southwest Airlines.
Note that in Canada’s new ATC system the government agency Transport Canada has safety oversight authority, thus independent of operation of the system. That should be good, no conflict of interest.
Libertarians love to talk about how taxes should only be used for roads and schools,
Jonathon, I’ve been a registered Liberatarian for around fifty years. During that time, we’ve gone from an unknown party to a party known too often for a number of whacko LINOs who promote false Liberatarian claims.
One of our basic tenets is: The government should only do what only the government can do.
For the record, we believe in entities paying their own way. Roads should be funded by user fees (tolls), not by taxes. How to calculate those fees is a different matter, but annual mileage could be a starting point.
For a quick look at actual Liberatarian beliefs, check out The World’s Smallest Political Quiz. Takes a minute or so. Twenty statements or questions to agree or disagree with - ten each on both financial and personal freedoms.
The interesting part lies in how the results are interpreted and charted.
‘rpstrong’:
‘registered Libertarian’ with who/what?
There are Libertarian intellectuals, Peter Schwartz has identified their failings including variability and lack of defense against initiation of force.
There is the libertarian political party that sometimes runs a candidate in election for POTUS.
There are Objectivists, who explain from fundamentals of life the necessity of protecting individuals against initiation of force. There isn’t a ‘registration’, support of Ayn Rand Institute or Objective Standard Institute is an indication. Support of The Atlas Society a half indication.
Your quiz is too short to define oneself.
Beware ‘libertarian’ can even resemble Marxism - the person who wrote Barry Goldwater’s famous line was in that direction later, perhaps fit the anarcho-capitalist label.
‘registered Libertarian’ with who/what?
Just curious, but are you from the US, or the Rest Of The World? I ask, because a Merkin would know that I meant that I am registered to vote as a member of the national Liberatarian party.
There is the libertarian political party that sometimes runs a candidate in election for POTUS.
Yes, that’s the one I mean. And if by ‘sometimes’ you ‘mean every four years since 1972’, you’d be correct. And we’ve fielded numerous down ballot contests. They just don’t happen to get noticed.
I think you just illustrated my earlier remark: "During that time, we’ve gone from an unknown party […]’
Both JB Strobel and Elon Musk were pilots. (I believe JB is still active.) They’ve both used ATC as pilots. I think this one will go nowhere.