But more seriously, I think the sibling posts are right here: A plane crash is more than a monetary risk: In the worst case, managers of the airline could be criminally liable for lost lives.
This casual cynicism regarding markets is dangerous and infectious because instead of focusing on fixing problems that have solutions via the levers of government, people give up completely and then nothing is ever made better. We need more participation in government, not less. When you toss up anything bad as “that’s the free market folks!”, people have no recourse. They can’t vote away airlines. So you end up directing action toward something that can’t be actioned upon. It’s misdirection.
Also claiming that “this is the free market” ignores the vast civilian infrastructure that is built and maintained by the State and regulatory agencies and practices that have been created. Not to mention bailouts in the past of bankrupted airlines and such. Airlines in particular are not a good example of “that’s the free market”, and even so markets don’t operate in a vacuum, they serve at the behest of the people and the government.
Which may be reasonable as a matter of policy. Increase ticket prices, hopefully reduce delays, and provide compensation when delays happen anyway. That may be a reasonable tradeoff but not sure everyone would agree.
ADDED: The strongest argument is probably that, while it will increase prices somewhat, it encourages airlines to build more slack into the system at the cost of some efficiency. But that may be a net positive given that delays externalize costs, including non-monetary ones, onto all passengers--including those that are less price-sensitive.
Well, that and all the government spending on aviation in WWII.
I don't think this follows, and I think it's because you're missing a piece of what's going on here.
You seem to be coming to this from a perspective of "obviously, a healthy system has a market with sensible regulations on it."
That's a world away from where most people (or at least, the loudest people) who criticize regulations are coming from, which is basically, "Unregulated free markets solve all problems, and government only creates problems."
If you feel like you're seeing a lot of cynicism directed at "free markets", this is likely why: it's a reaction against these extremely vocal "drown-government-in-a-bathtub" types.
Thing is, there are generally two different things that people can mean when they say "free market":
1. A "market economy", as contrasted with a "command economy"—ie, more or less the way the US does things, as opposed to the way the Soviet Union did things.
2. An "ideal free market", as described by Adam Smith, which can, in theory, ensure that many systems find a stable, efficient equilibrium that balances consumer desires with producer desires.
The problem is that, however much many (particularly of the Libertarian bent) wish to believe in it, the latter is not real. It is a thought experiment, and it requires a bunch of conditions that don't always apply (eg, perfect information, commoditization, etc). The other problem, of course, is that as I said, the two are often called "free markets" interchangeably without clarification, which leads to much confusion.
Yea but that’s bad because it’s unsophisticated and it also creates people who start to believe that the market mechanic is a bad thing or the source of their problems, when it’s not. This creates bad ideas, cynicism because you can’t take action against this invisible market, or people lose interest in participating in government.
> The other problem, of course, is that as I said, the two are often called "free markets" interchangeably without clarification, which leads to much confusion.
That’s the fault of the author.
Not only this, but large parts of the current economy only function because the conditions don't apply.
E.g., we know that humans don't make perfectly rational decisions but are influenced by all kinds of biases, etc. And we have the entire advertising and marketing sector that does nothing else than exploit those biases.
Yet at the same time, whenever there is the risk of new regulation being introduced, the fantasy of the perfectly informed, fully rational consumer is pulled out of the box...
American style libertarian absolutists are usually not very subtle, sometimes even clownish like she was.
Thing is, he recognized them as theoretical. Too many of the people parroting them think they were meant to be applied directly to the real world, as if we had an actual spherical market cow in a vacuum.
Not so sure about that. Remember, the airline industry used to be very regulated and it was an absolutely wonderful experience.
The very young might not have experienced it, but flying was really great. No extra fees for anything, everything was included. Service and food for the whole plane was better than one gets in business class today. Flights were not jam packed full all the time, there was plenty of space to stretch and always space for your luggage. Plenty of knee room even in the cheapest seats. Flying was great.
Then it got deregulated and it has been a race to the bottom ever since. Less and less amenities, less space, even less space, every little thing is an extra fee, every flight is jam packed full, seats are within inches of each other, no room for your carryon because every square inch of space has been oversold, passengers getting bumped regularly due to oversold flights. Flying is miserable and I'd rather never do it again.
Do you have any clue how dangerous Soviet passenger aircraft and their flights were, compared to their Western counterparts?
The West has largely regulated away airline crashes - the last in the US was in 2009, and it's down 95% in fatalities-per-passenger in the last two decades or so. Stuff like the 1500 hour rule certainly weren't industry initiatives.
That’s hard to assess on an individual level, especially with how rare crashes are today; confidently stating it did nothing is hard to support. On a collective level, the impact of the entire set of regulations on safety is very clear.
> was applied as supposed remedy
No. The post-Buffalo changes included some direct changes like the rules on pilot fatigue. They also included some proactive changes like the 1500 rule.
We don’t have to wait for a crash to make things safer.
There are countless examples of this, but the most transparent I've come across is Chernobyl.
