Some people say that it’s okay to recline your seat on an airplane because the person behind you can then recline their seat to recover the space lost to them when you reclined yours. This is not true.

Consider the last row of seats on an airplane. The seats can’t recline. There’s a bulkhead right behind them. If a person one row up reclines their seat, the person right behind them in the last row has no way to offset the loss of precious space. Therefore, it’s wrong for the people in the penultimate row to recline their seats.

The unavoidable conclusion by induction is that it’s wrong for people in any row to recline their seats.

Happy holidays. ∎