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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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 Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 9:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
| I'm semi-surprised you free market types aren't jumping for joy since this may be the end of skinny people sharing the burden of flying fat people around. Down with socialism for the fat! |
I think it is an excellent idea. Minor variations in weight shouldn't be considered but a huge fatty should pay more. This might just be my bitterness from recent flights around North America where I've had to sit next to a blob that takes up 10% or so of my seat.
As for nationalizing the airlines.. No. The airlines industry in North America needs to be opened up to international competition. It will take Cathay and Singapore Airlines offering their amazing service at a competitive (though higher) price to bring the American carriers into line. Having the government run them is just not good policy. Also, if/when major carriers fail, then need to fail. No government bailouts. These bailouts subsidize and encourage silly behavior in the airlines. Just like the investment banks, who have no meaningful conception of risk any longer. Let them fail.
Prices are going higher and with this traffic will decrease. Less traffic will bring less delays and pressure on existing infrastructure. Air travel will not be available to the masses of 20-50k families like it is now. With failing airlines will come less routes and frequency and the economies of scale will then push prices even higher. When the government holds up the airlines the result is more flights, lower prices and poor service. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 9:43 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| As for nationalizing the airlines.. No. The airlines industry in North America needs to be opened up to international competition... |
Are you certain that would not give unfair advantages for foreign airlines, most of which, I understand, are nationalized and very much subsidized, etc.? I think this issue has come up once or twice with Chilean wine and/or salmon producers in the American market. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 9:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Not certain at all. Many foreign airlines are fully or part state owned. And the really good ones, like SG and Cathay exist in very competitive markets yet do very well. Nothing is black/white I suppose. But I don't have much faith in the government to run a massive industry like that. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 10:11 pm Post subject: |
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| If we kept our airline industry private and admitted international competitors, fully and openly backed by their own national govts (LANChile, for example), I imagine they would walk all over our airlines. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 10:19 pm Post subject: |
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Only if those airlines were willing to sustain a loss to operate in America, which would amount to a subsidy from the Chilean government to American consumers. If they are not willing to sustain a loss, then there is likely not a competitive advantage as they would have to operate within the American context (wages, regulation, labor issues).
Related to this.. What would go a long way to making American industry more competitive would be a national health insurance scheme. Airlines are on the hook for tens of billions in medical bills from retired employees. Automakers are especially hit hard due to this. |
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doc_ido
Joined: 03 Sep 2007
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 10:24 pm Post subject: |
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| sojourner1 wrote: |
| If the cost of fuel ever becomes prohibitively expensive to fly on, then the old fashioned option might become commonly available. |
There are talks of reviving airship travel as a way of going long distances with fewer carbon emissions. Not as fast as an aeroplane, but only slightly less old-school than a sailing ship.  |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 10:48 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
| Only if those airlines were willing to sustain a loss to operate in America, which would amount to... |
The Chilean colonial experience produced a legacy of capitalism that depended on state-sponsored monopolies and the elimination of all competitors to minimize all risk, price-fixing, coerced labor, and other related things. The Chilean system bred a tradition of capitalists not getting into business unless the state would first guarantee their profits. Kind of the reverse of our own way of thinking about it: they do not built monopolies; they insist on starting with them.
Chile has changed since then, but this legacy remains.
Check out Brian Loveman's Chile: the Legacy of Hispanic Capitalism; and Peter Wynn, Weavers of Revolution. Two cases dealing with Chilean capitalism into the very late-twentieth century. Other nation-states, not merely Hispanic ones, operate similarly. Not the same kind of capitalism we inherited from the Scots at all. We do not always take that into account, either.
In any case, yes, they would sustain "losses," so to speak. Or more accurately, their underclasses would. And our own still-private airlines would not survive the competition.
This approaches the limits of my economics knowledge, and in this case I am constructing an argument based only on a handful of works. But it seems like a clear-cut case to me, esp. when I recall the issues that have come up re: Chilean wine and salmon in trade. |
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mises
Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Location: retired
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 11:01 pm Post subject: |
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Ok. Let's assume that you are correct and that they would sustain a loss to operate. Makes sense if the government and business classes were colluding. You're very right that there is not one capitalism, but many varieties of capitalism and most have much more government involvement than in North America.
But. Isn't the point of it all to have a safe, agreeable and affordable means of travel? If a foreign carrier provided better service, then don't we benefit? Would the situation be different if, say, Dubai decided to spend some of their foreign reserves on buying AA? They would have to pay taxes to the American government, employ Americans and fly around Americans. I only really worry about who owns something when the 'who' is me. Otherwise, I want quality service, affordability and safety.
I'm of the opinion that the poor state of American air travel is much exaggerated anyways. Despite my overweight single serving friends I've never actually had a delayed flight (give or take an hour or so) and the only airline that has lost my bags in British Air, every time I've flown them. All in, it isn't that bad... It is going to get much more expensive, and quick. |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 11:32 pm Post subject: |
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| mises wrote: |
I'm of the opinion that the poor state of American air travel is much exaggerated anyways. Despite my overweight single serving friends I've never actually had a delayed flight (give or take an hour or so) and the only airline that has lost my bags in British Air, every time I've flown them. |
Delays are very airport-dependant. My guess is you've never flown out of Newark, O'Hare, or Philadelphia. Atlanta is a hub and tends to be reliable, and another airline has a hub somewhere in Ohio, and that tends to work. More flights out of Newark than not are delayed. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 2:14 am Post subject: |
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I like the discussion on windpower, above. Too bad we cannot make it faster, much, much faster than it is.
| mises wrote: |
| If a foreign carrier provided better service, then don't we benefit...? I'm of the opinion that the poor state of American air travel is much exaggerated anyways. |
We might be looking at this problem, this proposal to permit international competition while declining to nationalize American airline corporations from entirely different perspectives. I look at it as an historian. When you, Pluto, Kuros, or Bucheon Bum talk, I hear, more or less, political scientists and/or economists. In any case, when I especially read the above two sentences, I think "United Fruit Company" and its so-called Great White Fleet and control of all railway lines across Central America as one possible analogous worst-case scenario. I, for one, do not believe we ought to allow ourselves to become dependent on foreign carriers.
I think mainstream American culture fully and uncritically internalized Smith's and others' worldview on private-property-centered capitalism, almost religiously in some respects, long ago. And many of us never looked back. This, like everything else, entailed pros and cons. I would propose our troubled airlines and other issues such as American healthcare appear as legacies to this thinking. But there are other ways of moving forward as a capitalist society and political economy. I think FDR, Truman, LBJ, and even Nixon moved in this direction before late-Carter/Reagan and their successors turned us in another direction.
In any case, we need not fear nationalizing the airlines and the rest of public transportation. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 3:04 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| mises wrote: |
| If a foreign carrier provided better service, then don't we benefit...? I'm of the opinion that the poor state of American air travel is much exaggerated anyways. |
We might be looking at this problem, this proposal to permit international competition while declining to nationalize American airline corporations from entirely different perspectives. |
You never quite addressed the point. If other nations want to expend treasure subsidizing American travel, allowing Americans to save money and spend it on other stuff, so what?
When America had highly regulated airlines, weren't fares huge? Granted they are not as cheap these days because of fuel, but before deregulation, air travel was largely used by the rich. I remember a time when you dressed up in your sunday best when you flew. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 3:22 am Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
| You never quite addressed the point. If other nations want to expend treasure subsidizing American travel, allowing Americans to save money and spend it on other stuff, so what? |
I thought I did. I introduced the consequences that allowing what would amount to foreign national carriers to more or less move into and then dominate the American air-travel market might entail: one form or another of eventual dependency.
| mindmetoo wrote: |
| When America had highly regulated airlines, weren't fares huge? |
Yes, I believe this is correct. I think today's demands for increasingly cheaper airfare are unreasonable and unsustainable. Some things just cost money if we want to do them solvently and make them work.
And if we keep cheap fares but start nickel-and-diming passengers we still end up right back where we were when we started -- only now people will just feel disappointed that they are being nickel-and-dimed. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 1:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| mindmetoo wrote: |
| You never quite addressed the point. If other nations want to expend treasure subsidizing American travel, allowing Americans to save money and spend it on other stuff, so what? |
I thought I did. I introduced the consequences that allowing what would amount to foreign national carriers to more or less move into and then dominate the American air-travel market might entail: one form or another of eventual dependency. |
But America is not a third world nation. We are dependent upon Taiwan for computer chips but if that became a true problem, America has the ability to create the industry domestically. Surely if someone in American can create FedEx from the ground up they could create an airline if foreign owned airlines are doing a poor service.
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| And if we keep cheap fares but start nickel-and-diming passengers we still end up right back where we were when we started -- only now people will just feel disappointed that they are being nickel-and-dimed. |
But cars are like this. You can get a basic car or pay more for extras. This model is not a problem for the car industry. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 1:57 pm Post subject: |
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Checked-baggage charges are not analogous to "extras" on a car. I am not sure what position you are arguing for here.
I will take another approach: it seems inconsistent to me to object to nationalizing American air carriers on the grounds that that would represent statism, while, at the same time inviting foreign-govt backed and/or nationalized air carriers such as LAN Chile to outperform said American air carriers inside the United States in a so-called free-market.
The phrase "tying one's hands behind his back" comes to mind. |
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Bigfeet
Joined: 29 May 2008
Location: Grrrrr.....
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 2:25 pm Post subject: |
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The airline industry don't need to be nationalized, the market is just weeding out the inefficient ones.
Opening up the market to foreign competition will be a disaster for the American airline companies. Countries with lower personnel costs will win out. |
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