I find it amazing as well; It's like watching the two americas fighting each other.

The one to whom society means to be free from the violence imposed upon citizens by any authority, against the one to whom society means the enforcement of a set of rules protecting it against chaos (I reckon my phrasing may be biased, can't help it I guess).

I was actually very surprised by the many different (seemingly legit) posters who interjected in favor of the right for a corporation to expel anyone for any reason, not withstanding that this right might actually not be legal, or added in small print in a contract designed to be misleading, or that the plane might actually not be their property, or that, more importantly, "rights" are ultimately just an evolving bag of conventions that probably benefit in the long term from being periodically challenged...

I went as far as counting those posters, and according to my current census there are eleven different persons, all legitimate users with lots of karma, for whom apparently it's acceptable to use violence against a paying customer. I would have expected this opinion to be quite marginal and unpopular (I would have expected the more libertarian stance that the company should have bought the seats back from those customers instead, at whatever price was the "market price" in that situation).

When I look into myself, I think I can find some traces of what makes the "rule over everything else" appealing.

Of course as a software engineer by trade this is partly a professional bias: I like predictable systems, therefore I like simple rules easy to interpret. I like leaving assertions in production, getting a nice core dump whenever the slightest precondition does not hold, even when an invisible work-around would have benefited the customer more.

But there is also something stronger and deeper than that, an almost unconscious fear that if we start to bend the rules, mayhem will follow.

I do not own much, so chaos is not that frightening to me, but if you happen to own a lot of things, to care for a family, in a place fraught with poverty induced unruly behaviors, then the faint desire of simple hard rules (esp around trespassing) can grow into the strong desire for unchallenged laws and the consecration of property, I presume.

Or maybe that's just some natural feeling that's in all social apes in varying proportions.

I see it as a mix of a lack protection of the state against unfair contract terms and private organisations enforcing their contracts rather than using public servants.

I’m assuming the captain believed the potential passenger would be disruptive (which he clearly was).

It looks like private security who were masquerading as police were physically removing a peaceful protester. That puts the blame on them for how it happened, but the airline was within its rights to refuse to fly the passenger who broke their contract.

A better option would have been for the captain to refuse to fly (claim a technical issue or out of hours) thus deplane the entire plane, and sue the passenger for the disruption as he breached the contract.

The entire flow was terrible - they should have deplaned the entire plane then reboarded, denying passengers boarding at that point - just like they would if it turned out the seats were dangerous for example. After the peaceful protest began they should have cancelled the flight. They went this way because of operational convenience (save 30 minutes), and thus risked a peaceful protest that they couldn’t handle without costing them even more (cancelling the flight). At that point they chose to ask private security to remove the protesters and that security failed to do so safely, and there’s the potential lawsuit (not that US police are much better at conflict resolution)

I don’t see any way that passenger was going to fly that day though, if the pilot decides he doesn’t want you on the plane, you’re not going anywhere, at best you can sue for breach of contract and then argue the contract terms that presumably restrict damages are unlawful, but that doesn’t happen on the plane.

While in the plane, the rules change (and CHANGE A LOT). Refusing to fly is actually possible... On condition of removal of the passenger involved (if you claim false reason, that's perjuring yourself for no good reason). And the captain has full right to deny flight to specific passenger.

> The one to whom society means to be free from the violence imposed upon citizens by any authority, against the one to whom society means the enforcement of a set of rules protecting it against chaos (I reckon my phrasing may be biased, can't help it I guess).

Maybe replacing "against chaos" with "against violence of individuals" might help to reduce that bias?

There are 2 parts to the story: making the decision to remove someone, and then the eviction process after the decision is made.

Nobody defended the airline, and many said that they should've approached it differently. However, once the decision has been made, regardless of whether it was correct/fair/just, the situation has now changed to eviction and that is standard anywhere: ask first, then order, then use force. Air travel is more security sensitive and therefore more forceful, but that's all there is to it.

A civil issue with improper removal should be dealt with at the gate or other civil courts, not by refusing to move which only escalates into a much bigger federal security problem.

> "favor of the right for a corporation to expel anyone for any reason"

This is an incorrect assumption. Corporations do have some rights to refuse service for certain reasons. They can't do whatever they want, just like a private individual doesn't have the right to do whatever they want. Neither extreme is acceptable.

> "society means to be free from the violence imposed upon citizens by any authority, against the one to whom society means the enforcement of a set of rules protecting it against chaos"

These are not opposing views. Freedom doesn't exist without order, and order doesn't exist without rules, and rules don't exist without enforcement, and enforcement doesn't exist without violence.

Society is the collective agreement that your rights are my responsibility; you're free from violence until you break the rules, at which point authorities that are explicitly granted a monopoly on violence will use it to enforce the rules. Of course there are various factors and complexities involved, but the fundamentals are pretty straightforward.

I think it's more that the folks with the most extreme sentiment are motivated to post. In this case extreme sentiment in favor of violence and banishment is being driven by wrong information, together with a terrible aptitude for math.

Everyone has been personally affected by the pandemic, had our health and freedoms threatened, been inconvenienced. Well, some people believe that unvaccinated, anti-mask people are responsible for that. We know that's not true. Unvaccinated antimask people create really one public health risk-- they are incapacitated by, and die from, coronavirus in higher proportions. They are the quintessential eggshell-skulls of our time. Rather than treating them with care and compassion like the vulnerable conscientious objectors they are, these people are treated with derision. I think that's because many people see membership on team 'flatten the curve' has some relationship to a wish to curtail the loss of freedom and threat to health. That's counterfactual, and the maths related to mask efficacy (or inefficacy) render it highly implausible. However, as with many things, those with the least understanding and reason tend to be the most certain and urgent in their views.