The fact that people in this country are tripping over themselves to pay $1 for airfares on any budget carrier (yet get ripped off on everything else on all of the auxiliary revenue) shows that they don't care what goes into making a plane fly, and fly safely, they selfishly care about their money.
Pilots on reasonable amounts of money are only an impediment to them getting their $1 fares, 200 hour cadets on $15/hour with a huge bonded slavery debt to the company they're working for are the catalyst for them to pay $1 for a cross country trip.
Bottom line is, people think emotionally when it comes to money, not logically. If it was logic and $1 x 177 seats didn't compute when they worked out just the fuel bill, they might think something if afoot. But they don't and won't, so the battle will be lost on them, they will be totally unsympathetic.
The drive to maintain a standard in the industry has to be through other means.. It might be a smoking hole in the ground, hopefully it's through management who don't think what their next KPI target bonus will pay for.