Delta Air Lines asks other carriers to share 'no fly' lists

[localroger]

7. While this is appealing, it is also a deeply terrible idea

If these companies were sharing black lists of people fired for union organizing we would be screaming bloody murder. The justification for letting companies refuse service to anyone for any reason (with narrow specifically enumerated exceptions) is that you can always do business with someone else. When one company becomes an effective monopoly and they ban you without recourse, it can ruin your life even if the reason you were banned was a misunderstanding or a bad day. (Facebook and Google, I'm looking at you.) Making the blacklists global among all the companies in a competitive industry has the same effect, and was used very effectively to suppress workers' rights activism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yes there are a lot of assholes out there and something needs to be done about them, but these bans can also be arbitrary and there is effectively no due process or reasonable expiration of your penalty. This is bad. It was bad when it was done to those who were fighting for us, and it's bad when it's done to people we don't like because it is unfair and draconian.