261–270 of 628 posts
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Company makes too much money: "they're extracting monopolist rents! They need to be a regulated utility!" Company makes too little money: "there's no money in this industry! They need to be a regulated utility!"
Company, always: "We need government subsidy". Then hell yes to regulating what they do.
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If airlines didn’t exist, people and goods would continue to move around the globe as they have done for thousands of years. There’s nothing magical about air travel (or any other transport mode) that makes it worthy of subsidy .
When something is that drastically different, it becomes different in kind. For example, if you have high network latency, you cannot jam (play live music) with friends remotely. If you have low latency, you can. Just because the difference is in a single value (I.e. net speed) doesn’t mean it doesn’t change the fundamental nature of what’s possible. Air travel makes the kind of business, shipping, and attendance pos…
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If airlines didn’t exist, people and goods would continue to move around the globe as they have done for thousands of years. There’s nothing magical about air travel (or any other transport mode) that makes it worthy of subsidy .
You can't think of a single situation where an airline route is infinitely better and probably the only viable option ? Btw you don't need to completely disregard other modes of transport to appreciate bus :)
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Why does any of this imply they should become a regulated utility? This seems like a textbook case of the free market pushing prices down to cost. Having alternative revenue streams pushed that minimal price down; but even without that, there is no reason to think the market would have done anything other than push prices to the lowest level possible in that environment as well.
Airlines basically were a regulated utility until they were unregulated to the point where normal people can barely fit in a seat and there’s basically no amenities anymore. It used to be kind of nice to fly. That’s laughable now.
Fundamental problem: Flights don't make money. Airlines actually make all of their money through loyalty programs and credit card payments. They basically should have turned into regulated utilities long ago, but loyalty program revenue saved them. Unless this initiative will turn into a credit card company (which nobody likes or wants to do) it won't go anywhere Private equity will likely sell the company for parts.…
They make a lot of money from loyalty programs and credit cards, but the legacy airlines do make money on flying alone. The margin they make on that is razor thin, but they do make money from the core product. Spirit was designed to be ultra low cost, which attracts flyers that are much more price sensitive. Higher Jet A costs means higher ticket prices, which means lost customers, which means lost revenue. Pulling a…
But that's not necessarily a bad thing. If the company is worth more to the market and society when sold as pieces, so be it.
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Ryanair moves the most passengers of any airline in the world and doesn't have any cobranded credit cards or loyalty program.
Ryanair is 3rd by passengers and 7th by passenger miles, according to this wiki page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_airlines_in_the_world Obviously their model is different to the big American carriers. Perhaps there’s something about the homogeneity of the US domestic market compared to the EU market that favors loyalty based airlines versus budget airlines.
It suggests we'd be better of eliminating the absurdly high hidden taxes paid to the credit card companies, that in turn act to gamify the business. In the end they raise the cost of doing business, for virtually no benefit at all. It's a monopoly extracting as much wealth they can get away with.
The question at the heart of this: How can "the shining light on a hill" be so stupid? It's digging its own demise.
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Company makes too much money: "they're extracting monopolist rents! They need to be a regulated utility!" Company makes too little money: "there's no money in this industry! They need to be a regulated utility!"
A more fair assessment would be: company runs a utility => they need to be a regulated utility! The core part of air travel doesn’t really feel any different to a bus or metro or train. Off the tarmac then yes it absolutely feels like a Verizon store, as does some of the in-flight service, but there’s always been this weird feeling as a traveler that every carrier is basically the same thing but with different decals…
Random side note. Why do many of these (presumably) LLM stamped out sites have the same aesthetic where they all need a pulsating indicator at the top as if to indicate some sort of urgency aesthetic?
assuming it's an llm site, the implication here is some action needs to be taken before private equity buys it for scraps (inferred from the homepage copy) whether it's an llm, a template or bespoke made from bytecode doesn't really matter does it?