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If you live in Canada, you probably will know by now of the Jetsgo fiasco. Seems those mindless, souless, conniving bastards declared themselves bankrupt in the middle of the night on Friday last week, even though they had been taking money for flights just the day before. They knew the end was near and had been operating at a loss for a while, this was just for the sake of screwing customers out of their money. I don't know anyone personally who was ripped off by Jetsgo, but I can certianly sympathize with them. A few grand isn't just made overnight and it really sucks a** for this to happen just when families were hoping to go somewhere nice for their March Break.

But sadly, it doesn't surprise me that a company did pull this s**t. You know why? Because people keep demanding cheap prices, not reasonable ones. Cheap and reasonable are 2 very different things. Nobody wants a reasonable price, they want a cheap price and I think that's part of the problem.

My own example of this is the travel agency at my campus. My sister and I would really like to go to Japan someday and our best bet is to go as English teachers (all the rest of you with this plan, raise your hands...). However, round trip tickets are currently about 900$ Canadian. That's just bare bones, no insurance, no peak season, nothing. I think it's cheap, but I know that price isn't reasonable.

What's the difference between reasonable versus cheap? I think reasonable is whatever amount the companies need to cover their costs for providing the goods or service of their business, plus a small profit, period. That's reasonable. Cheap is when companies make employees pay for part of their own training (pilots at Jetsco had to pay the company for part of their training and were promised it would be paid back to them with interest), cheap is when companies operate with shitty management at a loss, then have the nerve to demand tax benefits and tax cuts from whoever's a** they happen to be kissing that's up in government. Cheap is when companies decide to 'dump', where they try and sell their goods below the competitor's until they go out of business, then take over, Wal-mart being a prime example of doing this.

I think we really need to wake up to reality. If you want something nice, you have to pay for it. We're only hurting ourselves and paying more in the long run when we demand that prices be cheap and not reasonable, be it in reduced quality of services, hard working honest people getting shafted, or increased taxes for corporate bailouts. In the case of airliners, you sure as hell don't want reduced quality of servies. If paying an extra 100$ means they can hire that extra safety inspector and check that equipment every 3 months instead of every year, you better be damn sure I'm gonna pay it!

The government who gives tax cuts to the rich and the rich who lobby for it are part of the problem, but they sure as hell won't change on their own. The final part of this problem and where fixing this needs to start begins with consumers. Even if you don't wanna join the Oxfam crowd, or think that paying a few extra dollars for fairly traded coffee blows, at least think about how it's going to come back at you in the end. Karma isn't just a concept, it's a real force, be it the Grade Z meat in your Harvey's/Burger King/A&W/McDonald's hamburger, or the sweatshop worker in Asia, or the latest social safety net cut for another corporate tax break. Jetsgo's just the latest example of it coming back to bite consumers on the a**, even though most don't really deserve it. Stop demanding the cheapest price and ask for the most reasonable one.