I don't understand your arguments, Checkboard, and you only addressed one of the scenarios I used. You said:
Because that dollar changes the attitude and expectations of the passenger. A passenger who pays nothing understands that they are taking on personal risk. A passenger who pays a dollar, has now bought their ride, and expects full commercial protection.
Either a flight involves the payment of money by a passenger or it doesn't. If that payment results in the passenger expecting "full commercial protection", that is the result whether the payment is in the context of a cost-sharing flight or any other 'non-passenger transport' operation in which a passenger may pay money for the flight.
In any event, it's just another example showing that the distinctions have no causal connection with objective safety risk.
As yet another example,
Sunfish is labouring under the misconception that RAAus operations do not occur in airspace in which RPT operations, including RPT jet operations, occur:
Yet all these people are lumped together and stereotyped as ignorant, unsafe, unhealthy, untrustworthy uncaught criminals who are not permitted to breath, let alone fly, nor land in the same airspace as RPT????
PiperCameron appears equally ignorant:
[T]here are a few spots around the traps where the two might meet (like on an ILS approach to an out-of-the way regional center) but I'm guessing the CASA risk calculation might go something like (a) if the airport is remote, the traffic density will be low and (b) if the airport is remote enough, the RPT will mostly likely be a small slow turbo-prop (not a large fast jet) due lack of funding for a well-maintained long runway and (c) RPT aircraft are usually equipped with the latest TCAS tech anyway = there's a good chance nothing will happen.
You guys aren't paying enough attention.
Every day in Australia, RPT aircraft - including "large fast jets" - operate in and out of busy aerodromes with "well-maintained long runways" in G airspace, mixing it with aircraft that are neither transponder equipped nor certified by any NAA and flown by pilots who are neither licensed nor medically certified by any NAA. That is considered "acceptably safe" by CASA (and, evidently, ATSB and the airlines). (This shows that the medical certification system for private 'VH' pilots in Australia continues to be an expensive and harmful overreaction to exaggerated risks by Avmed, and is why the US Congress legislated around FAA Avmed to implement a system of private pilot medical certification based on objective evidence and objective risk. Unfortunately, CASA continues to be left to determine its own role in the regulatory system, including medical certification, so we can safely assume the product of the echo chamber review process dressed up as consultation on Part 67 will produce yet more complexity.)