Then being an instructor for them makes you a total hypocrite. You don't like their standards, don't like their marketing, don't like their product... So why be a PADI Pro? TDI or NAUI are viable alternatives...No skin off my teeth.
Unless you get some benefit from affiliating with PADI.... Thought they were useless? Which is it?
But I'd say NAUI and PADI are responsible for half the innovations in scuba and 75% of the standards that were the baseline for every other agency. So how can you say they have done NOTHING for the scuba industry? That's just total whitewashing of history and facts.
PADI is also the largest singular contributor to DAN and I kinda like their safety and dive medicine research and statistics... And their courses.
And having continued marketing the scuba industry as a whole PADI had most certainly been a benefit to the sport - as well.
I understand the frustration of a dive operator looking to make a living being thwarted by market saturation and price competition- but wouldn't the solution be to build the better mousetrap not grouse about the competition?
I will anticipate the response- they are too big- you can't compete... Wonder how they got 70% of market share? They must be doing SOMETHING right.
Again- I can find plenty of flaws in PADI from their sale driven philosophy to the need to tighten and adapt standards.
But anyone saying they are wholly unsafe or have done nothing for scuba diving isn't being intellectually honest.
Such discussions are futile, May as well be punching a rhinoceros... All you do is hurt your hand and piss off the rhino.
....75% of the standards that were the baseline for every other agency
If you consider this a good thing, more power to you. I consider that what they've done is lower the standards and drag the baseline down into the mud, but it really doesn't matter.
You are a PADI fanboy, you are happy using a product that is the easiest on the planet to use, that's great. I don't use it, but I was certified as a PADI instructor many years ago and never bothered to quit, I did stop, however. PADI has no offerings for me except for the ability to buy instructor level insurance. I don't need PADI, I stay for the popcorn.
And, yes, I am a TDI instructor also, along with a host of others. I still don't teach introductory classes, not because I can't, but I don't have the inclination for it. And it isn't that PADI is too big to compete with, it's that PADI is too easy to compete with, as in, PADI offers a class that can be completed in 4 days. Who wants to take a class that takes a semester or a month or one in which you actually have to work and learn when you can push-button your way through an online course where no one actually evaluated your knowledge, then demonstrate a few basic skills in a pool and quarry, and then climb on a boat anywhere in the world and loudly proclaim "I'm certified".
They got 70% of the market share by lowering the standards to the point (and they are proud of this) where everyone can learn to dive, and diving is safe. From the dive operator standpoint, not everyone can learn to dive, and diving isn't safe.
But I never said anywhere that PADI was wholly unsafe or they did nothing for scuba diving. What I said was that PADI claims that diving is safe (it isn't) and that PADI does nothing beneficial for scuba diving unless it benefits PADI. If you're gonna be a PADI fanboy, at least do it with open eyes.
