I'm not to sure if I'm buying the whole shortage thing either. I'll believe it when I see it. Being only 4 years into my career, I'm still a newbie compared to a lot of you that have been around for a long time. So when lots of guys that have been around a lot longer than me are telling me that, through their experience, there is no and never will be a pilot shortage, that has some weight with me. Its my personal opinion that something will be done to mitigate the need for pilots and it will just be an "increase" in demand for pilots. Just like a lot of you are saying.
As for scope, that's not my fight right now, even though it affects me. However, it seems that you, the major pilots, are not going to give up much more on scope. The United contract will probably take years to hash out because they want to outsource everything and the pilots aren't going to let it happen. I do believe that they will eventually agree on 70-76 seats at some point, just my opinion.
As for the claims about airlines running to the government to allow cabotage in order to keep commerce going, I think is a little extreme. If they want to keep commerce running, they wouldn't even think about this. I'm pretty sure that, that would cause a huge riot in the US, and huge amounts of pilots will walk of the job, or make the transportation of goods and people, very very slow. So they would just be shooting themselves in the foot because they ****ed of every single pilot who has direct control over their airplanes. I don't think the government nor the people would be very happy if this were to happen either. Would be a disaster. I think we have the leverage there.
So in my short time as a pilot, and from what I have read and heard from others about the history of this industry, this is just part of the cycle. It has been and all ways will be the same story over and over and over again.