There are nine ways a fiber-optic cable can fail under the pressure of the Atlantic. Arthur, an actuary for a maritime insurance firm, spends his Tuesday mornings assigning a numerical value to the probability of a trawler’s anchor dragging across the seabed and severing a connection between continents.
He is a man who trusts the math, yet when he buys a ticket to visit his niece in Calgary, he pays the airline directly, ignoring a sixty-three euro discount from an agency because he wants a “throat to choke” if things go wrong. He is paying for the illusion of proximity. He believes that by handing his money directly to the carrier, he has somehow entered into a blood pact that transcends the fine print.
The “Direct” Premium:
€63.00
Arthur’s “safety tax”-the amount he overpaid to avoid a third-party agency.
It is a common delusion. Earlier today, I watched a man in a silver sedan whip into a parking spot I had been signaling for , and he did it with a blank, unblinking stare that suggested he felt entitled to the space simply because he was there first.
It was a small theft of time and peace, but it reminded me of the quiet arrogance of the modern airline industry. They have spent decades training us to believe that anyone who stands between the passenger and the plane is a hurdle