Live data from Hacker News

Let's Buy Spirit Air

letsbuyspiritair.com

381–390 of 628 posts

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#381
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Streets, tracks and maybe tarmacs are public utilities, not the vehicles themselves.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#382
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the industry is extremely efficient. Why would we want to turn this into regulated utilities?

sounds like it's not efficient at all? it's barely functional as a business and is only surviving on grifty addons?

It’s highly functional. It’s barely profitable. That’s good for the customers.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#385
post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd force an entire generation of children to simply not be educated?

No, why? I didn't say that we want to outlaw education. Though I admit heavily taxing education on account of negative externalities is tempting.

You mean better education for uber achievers that can pay more for it? That is already the case in the US [1] for a long time now and with expectable outcomes of poverty and wasted economic and human potential, observable today. With the melting middle class, these problems will continue to grow. Are you for euthanasia already? The next step is cutting public education even more and divert these budgets into private school via school vouchers [2]. Can you guess the outcome?

[1]: https://www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-school...

[2]: https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/no-accountab...

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#386
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I agree, but I started noticing the em-dash usage spike.

i was one of the weirdos that used em dashes pre-llms but yeah it can def be an indicator

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#387
Isn’t Elizabeth Warren the one who famously killed the merger a couple years ago that would have saved the company?

Warren and Sanders are just reflexively against big businesses.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#388
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 offers a service that is considered essential to function in society, and the overwhelming majority of people _must_ pay for as if it were a tax: "this seems like something generally useful to the public! They need to be a regulated utility!"

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#390
post #361
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but be careful not to commit the 'nirvana fallacy' of comparing real world circumstances against idealised optimal regulation.

Sure, that's fair. But often enough I see people (not accusing you of this) doing the opposite: seeing bad regulation, and drawing the conclusion that the only solution is to remove all regulation and "let the market decide".

Have you ever tried to get rid of bad regulation? I have, and it is essentially impossible. De-regulation is usually the only path once the initial regulation is in place. It also only ever seems to grow in complexity and onerousness, rarely ever goes the other directin. It's like dealing with a massive legacy codebase that also has the power to throw you in jail.

I'm not against regulation, I think there are areas where it's needed (privacy is a good example), but it is fire, and fire should only be played with when you really need it because it can easily grow out of control and burn things you don't intend to get burned.

Post reply on HN