Economics Ground World's Fastest Metaphor

Economics Ground World's Fastest Metaphor - One of the greatest stories from The Onion is their classic lampooning of the Titanic disaster, headlined "World's Largest Metaphor Hits Ice-Berg".

We'll come back to that.

Today, the Star/Tribune editorial board mourns the demise of the Concord:

There was a time, not so long ago, when progress seemed linear.

Today - in many areas that truly matter - it's become geometric...

But I digress

A marvelous new supersonic passenger jet would surely revolutionize air travel by zooming people around the globe at ever increasing speeds. Fleets would expand, costs would drop and masses of travelers would eventually benefit.

But superior technology doesn't always win the battle of the marketplace, as attests last week's announcement of the Concorde's demise after 27 years of scheduled service. The sleek marvel of engineering will stop flying this year, British Airways and Air France said last week. World events and the precipitous drop in transatlantic demand hastened a retirement that would have come anyway.

Because, as far as the market was concerned, the Concorde and supersonic transports were not superior technology. It was an interesting, 30-year technology demonstration, indeed - but the technology was a solution in search of a niche.

People needed to get across the Atlantic fast less than they needed to get across the ocean fast enough, and affordably.

Developed in the 1960s, only 20 of the planes were ever built. It's a paradox that the constrictive economics of air travel never allowed Concorde to truly soar.

Frequent fliers know the harsh reality. Newer planes are more cramped, less comfortable. Most passengers, lucky to get pretzels, can't imagine the caviar and fine wines lavished on Concorde customers. Remember dressing up to fly? Flying nowadays is about as glamorous as taking the Greyhound. Even no-frill airlines struggle to stay aloft.

And yet, despite the "constrictive economics", subsonic air travel is a staggering success. Remember - air travel has been around for exactly 100 years this year. Passenger service is 80 years old - 65 years as a practical proposition. It's only been a truly mass market phenomenon - more than a genuine treat, or business indulgence - for less than thirty years.

The Concorde was "a technical miracle but an economic disaster," said Ronald E.G. Davies, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., which expects to land one of the needle-nosed jets as an artifact.

The plane was never able to attract customers beyond the celebrity and executive elite. Yes, it flew twice as fast as an ordinary jetliner, allowing pampered fliers to arrive in New York or Washington an hour or two before they left London or Paris. But the Concorde was nine times more expensive to operate than a Boeing 777 and could accommodate only 100 passengers. Even the wealthy paused before spending $6,000 on a three-hour flight.

With that, we start to approach the crux of the matter.

The Concorde was never intended, in and of itself, to be a moneymaker. But it was also more than a technology demonstration. The next graf is the big payoff - although I wonder if the Strib editorial writers know it?:

Americans, showing their practical side, never built a supersonic jetliner. But it's good that the Europeans did,

And there's the real story.

Concorde was, from the beginning, a symbol of European - and by that, we mean Old European - technological prowess.

It was the product of a huge "public/private partnership", the apogee of socialist achievement; a cooperative effort between nationalized British Aerospace (BAe) and French Aerospatiale.

And its career as a symbol was rich in metaphor; the plane took 13 years from initial conception to first flight, and seven more until its first commercial flight. Even the most bumfuzzled military aircraft program moves faster than that.

And in the end - it provided a very specialized service at hideous cost; a solution, truly, in search of a need.

So to return to The Onion's parody; the Concorde was a metaphor for the technological power of the nationalized economy; it was conceived, built and operated by nationalized companies, and served as the points of pride of two nations that were, at the time, poster-children for the belief that command economies and freedom could coexist and thrive.

Since the Concorde first flew, air travel has become a case study in the supremacy and peril of the free market - and, as a side-issue, of the obsolescence of the state-controlled enterprise. Britain turned its back on the worst excesses of socialism 20 years ago. The Concorde became an artifact of the era of the all-powerful government - especially in its increasing obsolescence.

In the end, as the Strib says, the Concorde gave us:

...a fleeting glimpse, at least, of luxury and technological possibility.

And a not-so-fleeting lesson.

Posted by Mitch at April 20, 2003 08:08 AM