Lack Of Lurkers

[Swingline]

Couldn't there be a system set up where there were only so many commercial licenses awarded each year depending on need.  I know I am one to talk, I already have mine, but if there was such a thing it would eliminate the employers' ability to work us for nothing by drying up the supply of new blood. I realize that this would take more pull than I have, but it is just an idea for discussion.

The 'closed shop' that you propose is the antithesis of our free market economy. I don't see it ever happening, nor do I want it to.

 

The surplus of pilots is far from unique: our society has too many people seeking too few jobs in many different occupations. But the alternative is the government trying to micro-manage the economy, which - in addition to all of the other problems and added costs that that would entail - would result in affirmative action quotas. Frankly, I don't see any place in the skies for that sort of thing.

 

P.S. I don't instruct for a living, nor do I employ pilots, nor am I a would-be commercial pilot ... so I have no axe to grind re this issue.

[R1830]

The thing with our freemarket economy and relatively large numbers of pilots for relatively few jobs is it tends to weed out some people that perhaps an instructor should have taken aside and mentioned the possibility of another occupation being more suitable, and also people who just don't want it bad enough. I'm not saying this works all the time, or even most of the time, but it does work some of the time, and hopefully once you go through a few jobs, you find yourself and your coworkers are proffesionals who really want to be doing what they are doing.

 

My 2 cents...