The world is burning, and capitalism is killing us all. Welcome to another week! With flareups still raging and the death toll still climbing at the sites of deadly wildfires across the island of Maui, Americans are seeing lots of ways to help the Hawaiian disaster victims being advertised in the media, such as Go-Fund-Me collections appearing in their social media feeds, Red Cross donation links abounding, etc. This type of crowdfunding is typical during disaster recovery.
In recent years, however, and now more than ever before, there have been reports that people have been receiving bids from giant airlines urging them to “donate” their airline miles to disaster victims. In this case, airline frequent flier miles might help Maui residents to flee their burning island for instance, or help volunteers fly into areas in need of assistance. And to that, I say, excuse me? Of course, the end result of that plea is something everyone would agree with–people in danger getting to safety. But the how of it all? Totally toxic. Big businesses guilting their average earner customers into scraping together what a giant corporation could easily give without even feeling it. Then doing the virtue-signaling dance.
Let’s look at United Airlines, which emailed its customer list asking for its MileagePlus members to donate their miles to help those affected in Maui. This giant company sent its hardworking customers, who mostly don’t own their own airplanes, to a United site where they were asked to “help us support the people of Maui by donating money or miles to our humanitarian aid and disaster relief partners.” Hawaiian Airlines recently did the same thing.
It sounds like they’re trying to help, right? Urging folks to donate money makes sense. But flyer miles aren’t a tangible good people can exactly hand over. They’re a conceptual point system people rack up with the airlines in exchange for various purchasing behaviors. The airlines literally create them digitally and can whip up more whenever they want. They’re kind of a fake concept! The airlines don’t need to collect miles in order to fly people out of danger. United could simply create a fund of fresh miles in the computer, and poof! Hand those miles out to disaster victims, or just you know, fly them out of danger on those planes that it owns using the infrastructure and employees that it has. All the airline would lose is gas money and daily pay for their workers.
So why are they pressuring people to “donate” their own meager miles? If people hand in their miles, that puts them out of commission, and out of the market. That means the next time those consumers need to fly, they won’t be able to use those miles for a free flight; they will need to pump money back into the air travel economy.
Also, donations made by individuals to a 501c3 like the Red Cross are tax deductible. But gifting miles is considered a donation on behalf of the airline, meaning the airlines are the ones that get the tax write-off.
Ultimately, why are rich companies that literally own airplanes and all the infrastructure for them to function pretending like they need our help here? Airlines are asking working people who have painstakingly collected this fake points reward system to give them to people suffering because good people want to help those in need. But are we forgetting that we’re talking giant airlines who could JUST FLY VICTIMS FOR FREE IN THEIR PLANES without asking regular folks to give up their fake concept currency that they worked so hard to get.
It leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I’m not the only one. Reddit user Mountain-Ad868 posted about United’s so-called fundraising email, saying, “Ok – we all need to help those in Maui but I’d rather donate cash to help rebuild – buy clothes – school supplies – food – etc. United owns the airline—it is the airline, why ask for miles when they should just be taking care of the locals regardless! United can just give away the tickets to those in need – is United going to leave someone stranded just because I did not donate a few miles. It seems like a grab to clean up the balance sheet than a humanitarian effort.”
Twitter user @e_lenzzz explained the sentiment well when she wrote, “I truly don’t understand when airlines are like ‘donate miles!’ when miles are a totally made up reward system & they could just fly people out of a disaster for free.”
The whole bizarre perversion of late capitalism reminds me of that especially gross type of “feel good” story where co-workers all get together and “donate” all their paid time off hours to one co-worker who has an illness or another need to take a prolonged absence from work but doesn’t have any approved “vacation” time left, otherwise known as “leave sharing.” Gag me. These corporations have us so messed up we’re believing it’s a beautiful moment in humanity when people scrimp and save to help each other, while the bosses of big business get to sit back and write off our efforts on their tax returns.
(Image Source: alenkadr/Getty Images)
