Except airlines were heavily deregulated in 1978. In my mind it's also "clear why we have reached this point", except that I've come to the opposite conclusion that you have.
With regard to the routes they could fly and the prices they could charge, yes. But they were never de-regulated with regard to the safety requirements they had to meet or the qualifications their pilots and crew and maintenance workers have to have. Those regulations have, if anything, gotten more stringent over time. And those regulations pose a huge barrier to entry for new competitors, and favor large airlines over small ones because a large airline can more easily absorb the costs of compliance.
I'm honestly not sure how "we can't legally commandeer the plane to transport military personnel in wartime" qualifies as a national security issue. Seems more like a logistical issue in that unlikely event.
Safety and security issues are handled separately. Some foreign airlines are banned from landing at any US airport because they're not trusted.
Have you seen the EU airline market? It's _insanely_ competitive with dozens of airlines flying everywhere, all with rigorous safety standards.
This is the problematic false dichotomy. If you give someone a choice between "this specific set of onerous, expensive, competition-destroying regulations" or "you will be killed", they make the obvious choice.
But those aren't the only options. Existing regulations are poorly optimized. It would be possible to save the same number of lives -- more lives -- by doing more work to improve the benefit:burden ratio of regulations.
The problem is that people aren't interested in this. It's detail-oriented work that doesn't make for good sound bites, so the beneficiaries (the general public) aren't organized enough to know how to ask for it, and the organized incumbents don't want it because it would result in a larger number of viable competitors.
And it's too easy for incumbents to make the sound bites go the other way, by pretending that not spending a billion dollars to save one life is irresponsible, even though the same billion dollars could save more than a thousand lives if saved here and used beneficially somewhere else.
Sure. The air traffic control system is 20th century technology that has air traffic controllers doing things manually that could be done by computers. A better automated system would have the same or better safety while requiring significantly less labor.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/05/september-11-r...
> However, Professor Gerd Gigerenzer, a German academic specialising in risk, has estimated that an extra 1,595 Americans died in car accidents in the year after the attacks – indirect victims of the tragedy.
Should the airline industry become more like the software eng industry, which has had such great success in producing solid and safe products?
Safety is not a binary variable: it's a trade-off vs economical factors and the cost of each ticket. Since some people have to fly anyway, this means decreased spending in other areas of the economy.
You can't just drop an argument destroying bomb like this with no citation
Not sure you can make such a claim. There are other industries where standards and safety practices improve over time without the need of strong regulatory leadership. Case in point: occupational injuries have been decreasing over time across the board:
I'd favor mechanization over 'rational human' for sure.
https://www.slideserve.com/wauna/we-need-to-continuously-imp...
Ekianjo is right, in the sense that entities with lots of capital will become rent-seeking entities in over-regulated/mis-regulated markets because of very high barriers to entry. Examples include ISP's and insurance markets.
You are also right, in the sense that entities will rush to control a heavily de-regulated market. To that end, companies with lots of capital can afford to outspend or acquire their undersized competition. Examples include Air-transit post-1978 and the Internet 2.0.
There isn't one single legislation that led us here and there is no one-size-fits-all solution that can solve each monopoly. We have to evaluate each industry and each market on its own to determine how the state would break the oligopoly.
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
We should make informed choices, but who has the time and energy to dig and evaluate the market share and long-term consequences of the fridge they're going to buy?
If I may disagree. Capitalism is great at allocating capital unless prevented from doing so. We collectively have come to agree that human labour can be purchased, but not humans themselves. Some things may be held publicly, some privately. Zero regulation is good because in the absence of hindrances people can do what they want but some of those choices hurt other people so regulations are introduced.
Why is it virtually impermissible to point out that everything else notwithstanding certain patterns keep recurring to individual markets in particular and the economy as a whole. The first is this. In the absence of regulation in mature markets companies will form cartels/trusts/oligopolies. It is so universal it is akin to a natural law. Failure to act on that hurts the economy in general. We used to be good at recognising this, we aren't so good any more. The second is this. People want greater returns over lesser returns. This leads to ever greater financialisation and capital chasing its own tail unless prevented from doing so. It will inevitably lead to super dodgy things like stock buy-backs (which in any healthy market ought to be virtually banned).
FTA: “The results were so good that in 2016 United’s board approved a stock buyback of $2 billion, which is the financial equivalent of spraying yourself with champagne.”
That's terrible. There is a direct correlation between ballooning exec salaries, corporate stock buy-backs and stagnating workers' compensation.
> There are other markets where the cost of entry is so high anyway (investment-wise) that naturally very few companies can make it - this is something that is not an issue per se.
An incorrect analysis of what ails the economy will over time have dire consequences. It may be hard to see it if you're doing okay but lots of people are not doing okay. There's political anger. Populists will blame outsiders like immigrants (don't get me wrong, I'm for strict immigration policies – but that's the incorrect cause and effect diagnosis – but blaming immigrants (illegal or otherwise) is scapegoating).
I have practically stopped reading HackerNews because too many on here appear to be too financially secure owing to the industry they are in, their backgrounds, luck, and hard work. Someone just died in Paris over protests over fuel price hikes. If those entrusted to keep the system healthy fail to do so in a controlled orderly manner then the people will introduce disorder by forceful means. I am not advocating this. I am against this. But the chances of this not happening are rapidly shrinking. I hope I'm wrong but all the macro indicators and with history as my guide tells me that I am not.
edit: typos and such
It is clear why we have reached this point. Most monopolies are allowed to exist because of state influence (which happens thru many forms, regulation, patents, or plain direct support), all increasing the barrier to entry for would-be competitors. You see this in most heavily regulated markets.
There are other markets where the cost of entry is so high anyway (investment-wise) that naturally very few companies can make it - this is something that is not an issue per se.