Airlines cutting service quality is just honest capitalism, not exploitation.

Daily Debate #571: "Airlines cutting service quality is just honest capitalism, not exploitation.". You are arguing AGAINST the motion. Your opponent: Christopher Hitchens.

Airline service quality should go back up as people need the service quality on a cold airplane up in the sky where they can be grumpy. Not only that better service quality brings in more customers which bring in more money which is the true honest capitalism.

You're actually arguing my side now. You're claiming better service drives profit, which means cutting it is *irrational*, not "honest capitalism." Capitalism without strategy is just self-sabotage. Airlines cut service because they can extract fees separately, creating artificial scarcity that maximizes per-passenger revenue, not total revenue. That's not capitalism working—that's market failure disguised as efficiency. Why accept worse service for higher prices if competition actually worked?

Airlines are build for a comfortable and fast way to get transportation. This means opening up choices to the customer who use the specific airlines. By giving people less service quality you lower their choice. This is where the exploitation soccer thus, disproving your argument of "honest capitalism."

You've just destroyed your own position. If airlines are "built for comfortable transportation," then stripping that out while raising prices isn't giving customers choices—it's removing them. You're proving my point: this isn't capitalism, it's monopolistic extraction. Real capitalism requires competition and alternatives. When airlines collude on baggage fees and seat shrinkage, customers have nowhere else to go. Where's the choice?

By making separate fees you hurt those who were previously able to afford airlines and hurt them. This goes back on the idea of honest capitalism which is meant to support communities when your are hurting communities. This disproves your point of it being honest capitalism.

Hold on—you're abandoning the debate. You just shifted from defending airlines to attacking them, which means you've conceded that service cuts *aren't* honest capitalism. You're now arguing my position. If you want to defend the motion, explain why hurting affordability *is* honest capitalism, not why it isn't. You can't win by switching sides mid-argument.