• JohnDClay
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    3 months ago

    Airlines might be a bad example. Before 1978 there was a lot more control, such as mandating price minimums. Without those you get affordable air travel.

    But for airplane companies themselves, I absolutely agree. The FAA had to save money because of their tiny budget, so they had airplane manufacturers inspect their own things instead, with bad results.

    • a Kendrick fan@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      That the FAA had to save money by not doing one of their most important job meant American lives got cheaper, didn’t it?

      • JohnDClay
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        3 months ago

        Sure? But Congress doesn’t fund them to be able to do their job.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          Why the fuck not? It’s vitally important to the economy, there’s no reason for it to be privatized in the first place.

          • JohnDClay
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            3 months ago

            You talking about airlines or aircraft manufacturers?

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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              3 months ago

              Both? They need so much regulation and control that it makes sense to just cut out the middle men.

              The manufacturers are so heavily subsidized by the government they might as well be publicly owned anyway.

              • JohnDClay
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                3 months ago

                Too much government control of the airlines was definitely detrimental after WWII. They couldn’t compete on prices, couldn’t adapt to changing routes, and couldn’t really cost optimize anything. Deregulating the non-safety aspects improved air travel a lot.

                • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                  3 months ago

                  There wasn’t government control of the airlines, just regulations. Protectionist regulations.

                  The airlines were still privately owned and the government gave them sweetheart deals and intentionally limited the entry of new competition into the industry, allowing the formation of monopolies of the legacy airlines. There was no incentive for increasing the number of carriers because that would hurt profits, and the regulations helped by making entry into the market even harder.

                  That problem goes away if you just seize the airlines and run them as public utilities.

                  • JohnDClay
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                    3 months ago

                    Why would government owned airlines incentive lowering operating costs?