The Friendly Skies
Mayer, Milton
The Friendly Skies MILTON MAYER "Nobody Has a Lower Fare To California than United." It's worth a million—orahundred million— dollars to United to say this in full-page ads across the...
...The champagne breakfast, the wider seat, the cleaner teeth on the stewardesses do not go to the essence of competition...
...what you have to have is gas...
...They All Have the Same Fare...
...If we were literate we would know that Socrates went to the oracle at Delphi to find out who was the wisest man in Athens, and was told, "No man is wiser than Socrates...
...They all thought they knew something, and in that paradoxical sense he was wiser than they...
...Nobody Has a Lower Fare than United...
...A literate slob, Socrates...
...A combination in restraint of trade, solemnly sanctified by the Civil Aeronautics Board, whose business it is to administer the laws (including the Sherman Antitrust Act...
...It's worth a million—orahundred million— dollars to United to say this in full-page ads across the land...
...He was not misled by the oracle as you and I are by United...
...Milton Mayer is Roving Editor of The Progressive...
...We are illiterate slobs...
...Only the price does...
...Not that Socrates is the wisest, or even wise...
...Or a Higher...
...He knew he knew nothing, and he soon found out that the statesmen, the poets, and the artisans knew nothing either...
...only that no man is wiser...
...You may not say that we cannot help being conned by United Air Lines, than which Nobody Has a Higher Fare...
...Is the price competitive for the same essential service or product...
...It knows we are...
...You don't have to have a Clean Rest Room at the gas station...
...United thinks we are slobs...
...You may say that we cannot help being slobs...
...But you may not say that we cannot help being illiterate...
...The way to determine that an ostensibly competitive operation, such as air transport or the petroleum industry, is monopoly is to look at the competitors' comparative prices...
...Nobody Has a Lower Fare than United...
...It has pretested the advertisement and discovered that it's worth a million dollars or a hundred million...
...Nobody Has a Higher Fare, Either...
...If the prices move generally up and down together, winding up generally identical, you've got a monopoly...
Vol. 40 • October 1976 • No. 10
