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.
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.
That the FAA had to save money by not doing one of their most important job meant American lives got cheaper, didn’t it?
Sure? But Congress doesn’t fund them to be able to do their job.
Why the fuck not? It’s vitally important to the economy, there’s no reason for it to be privatized in the first place.
You talking about airlines or aircraft manufacturers?
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.
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.
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.
Why would government owned airlines incentive lowering operating costs?
Electoral pressure would incentivize keeping prices and costs lower; voters actually get a say in how public utilities are run.
What’s the incentive for raising operating costs? No one is profiting from it.