It's interesting that 00seven goes on with lots of talk about 'prestige', 'dignity', 'image' and 'status' and has said nothing about pure exhilaration or enjoyment. He talks a lot about being a 'manager' and nothing about being a pilot. This from a man who only a few months ago was making enquiries about being a cargo pilot and asking about SIAL and KAL. I'd love to be on the same CRM renewal course as him one day - it would make things interesting!
However, to get back to the thread...... I do believe that the pilot shortage is affecting flight safety. It's quite noticeable that the quality of FOs and SFOs has declined in the last few years as companies are forced to employ pilots to make up the numbers, rather than employing the pilots they really want. There are undoubtedly as many young, inexperienced but excellent pilots out there as there always were. Sadly, with the increase in the number of pilots, there are also a lot more young, inexperienced but poor quality pilots out there who have entered the industry with the wrong motivation (things like prestige and money) rather than love of flying. In first world countries people are now richer than 30 years ago and more people can afford to train as pilots than used to be the case. Naturally, this means that along with more good pilots, there will be more bad pilots. Safety is going to be affected when two of the latter are flying together somewhere further down the road.