Re:How I swapped my ivory tower for the world of science fic...
by jhbadger on Wednesday July 10, 2024 @03:28PM
(#40930541)
But Boeing is the only remaining US-based manufacturer of airliners (among other things). This didn't used to be the case, but through mergers and acquisitions it's true today. There is just no way the US government would ever let Boeing go under and let the Europeans or Chinese dominate airliners. Like the banks in 2008, Boeing is just "too big to fail".
Re:How I swapped my ivory tower for the world of science fic...
by FredPret on Wednesday July 10, 2024 @03:39PM
(#40930667)
That's true but it's hardly a failure of the market. Airliners are big, complex products that are apparently best managed by big, complex companies (not my opinion, just an observation).
If the government decides airliners are a strategic priority and decides to interfere with the market, the cost of that decision is that tax money is going to be used to prop up the incumbent, instead of funding for the poor.
I think a little bit of industrial policy can be a good thing.
Go and look at their financial statements. Look at their stock over the past half decade.
It's all deep in the red. They're still alive because their past achievements are significant enough to carry them through this and they will probably still be salvaged.
Otherwise they'd be long bankrupt, freeing up immense human, physical, and financial capital to go do something else.
In other words, the system is built to allocate resources to companies based on performance - of course that doesn't mean each company always works perfectly.
Pointing to a bad company as an example of capitalism failing is like pointing to a lazy civil servant and saying we should abolish all government.