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Southwest Airlines, and Capitalism’s Continued Failures.
Profit over all.
On an ever increasing frequent basis, we continue to get subtle — or not so subtle reminders — of how capitalism is ultimately doomed to swallow itself whole due to the inherent greed that fuels its function. Tens of thousands of Americans were sent that message this weekend thanks to Southwest Airlines, who cancelled nearly 5000 flights following the Christmas weekend. Well after other airlines were resuming operations following the blizzard of 22, Southwest failed to do so thanks to their extremely outdated scheduling system malfunctioned, resulted in their employees not even knowing when or if they were supposed to show up for work.
David Sirota and Andrew Perez with The Lever write:
“…While forsaking those technology investments, Southwest paid a handful of executives more than $112 million over the last five years, according to executive compensation data compiled by Salary.com.
One week before the Southwest scheduling disaster, 34 attorneys general led by Colorado Democrat Phil Weiser sent another letter begging Buttigieg to “impose significant fines for cancellations and extended delays that are not weather-related or otherwise unavoidable.”…”