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 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!"
Yea that's a good one. The problem is folks don't have patience. They see an airline fail and instead of waiting until a new competitor enters the market, as they inevitably will, they want to start regulating or look to other "solutions" but these things take time to work themselves out. It's a free market, not an instant free market.
Or maybe a new competitor doesn't enter the market, and we're stuck with a mere four major, three mid-sized, and some smaller airlines in the US. It's still a highly competitive market even with Spirit gone.
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 on it. Airline alliances are surely the ultimate example of this.
Have you ever flown spirit or any of the other ultra low cost carriers?
It very much is a different experience than flying a legacy domestic mainline carrier. I’m not alone amongst people i know who will happily fly the cheap seats on United/Delta/AA but won’t even look at a ticket from Spirit or Frontier even at a significant discount.
Compare it to a flag carrier like Singapore air and it is a shockingly different product.
All that’s an aside: we know what regulated airlines look like since we already tried it, much more expensive, with airlines competing not on price but on amenities.
I’ve flown Spirit and Frontier several times, and Southwest many times (I know they’re not quite in the same category, especially after their recent changes). I genuinely don’t know what you’re referring to regarding the experience being wildly different. Other than a few quirks about what they do and don’t charge for and how they board and assign seats, I feel like there’s almost no meaningful difference between these and legacy carriers like United and American. I honestly don’t even feel like the prices are consistently that different.
The two main differences are more armchair lawyering required to avoid fees (legacy carrier is often not going to put your bag in the dimension bin, but the Spirits and Frontiers of the world certainly will) and having to sit through three sales pitches instead of one on the legacy airlines. I think Delta is the only legacy carrier in the States that doesn't do obnoxious sales pitches - only the food cart upsell. Ryanair will come through with their hands out minimally three times since last time I rode them (though it's been several years, is it four now?)
One other difference I can think of is that carry-ons are more rarely included in the base fare in the budget airlines than the legacy airlines, though maybe that has also gone away since the changes where bags must be included in the listed price that Southwest pushed for.
> having to sit through three sales pitches instead of one
I’m not from the US and have never flown any of the airlines being discussed here.
I’ve never heard of this, is there some YouTube videos you can point me to.
Ryanair (EU) also does this, but the US is indeed pretty obnoxious here.
United even has commercials before the safety video; combined with the "if you're watching explicit content on this flight, please mind the children" announcement, those flights onestly honestly felt pretty surreal to me.
United has gotten worse and worse with this. The ads after (not before) the safety video, and also before each movie you watch (and it's usually the same ads before every movie). A few years ago the ads were skippable, but not anymore.
The flight attendant also makes an announcement about the United-branded credit cards near the beginning of the flight.
But this is really just an illustration of what the top-poster of this thread said: flying people places doesn't make enough money, so they have to pursue other revenue streams.
I can't find videos.
The cabin crew stand at the front of the plane, and either play a recording or make an announcement saying you can buy a lottery scratchcard for €2 or whatever, with some of the money going to charity. They then walk down the plane "scratchards? scratchcards?"
They repeat this with a collection for charity (no scratchcard), a promoted drink, and some sort of food.
I think this is mostly unique to Ryanair (in Europe), I don't remember Wizz Air, Norwegian or EasyJet doing this. Part of Ryanair's marketing is to make the experience worse than it needs to be, so you know you're saving money.
ive never experienced that on ryanair? I fly it pretty regularly, its just the food cart, and even that feels halfhearted, I see maybe 3% of customers actually getting something, so most of the time they dont even bother asking, just roll right on by unless you go out of your way to ask for something.
The only bad upsell they do is in the booking process. Are you sure you don't want a hire car?
They state they sell scratchcards on their own website: https://corporate.ryanair.com/about-us/giving-back/
If you search "Ryanair scratchcards" you'll see recent news articles about them.
I've used Ryanair once in the previous 5 years, so my experience might be out of date. There was a time my job was taking me to "holiday" destinations for meetings, back then I used Ryanair more often as they often had the only direct route. Maybe the scratchcard sales are more common on those flights.
Yes, Ryanair is the undisputed leader in finding new creative ways to take advantage of their captive audience and saving a few pennies here and there (e.g. I'm not aware of other low-cost carriers that have advertising on the overhead bins or put the safety instructions on seat-back stickers because it's marginally cheaper than using cards for that). Not to mention only flying from airports in the middle of nowhere to save airport fees.
...while other low-cost carriers try to distinguish themselves by not being quite as bad as Ryanair.
I kinda' like Ryanair as lowcost airline? They're fairly efficient (boarding, serving etc), they _actually fly_ the advertised flights (with relatively few exceptions), and the food is reasonably priced. During COVID they would just give your money back, no shenanigans like "they're in our company wallet". Sure they have their quirks but they don't seem to go out of their way to deceive you, they're pretty open about what you pay and what you get.
Now Wizzair is "mostly not an airline" for me, because they have all the negative traits I hinted above. E.g. they'll happily advertise flights they have no intention of flying, make refunds hard, are as misleading as they can be about pricing, make it impossible to checkin online a few hours before the flight so that you have to pay their high fees, etc.
I wouldn't want the Ryanair experience for long-haul flights; but for short 2-3h ones within Europe, they're fine, I'm always considering them. Not for the perceived cheapness, but for the "I expect them to actually fly AND be on time" part.
> During COVID they would just give your money back, no shenanigans like "they're in our company wallet"
Generally I agree with your view that Ryanair is decent at what it does, but COVID refunds happened only after the regulator stepped in to threaten them over their original "no refunds" and then "refund in the form of a voucher, with a short expiry date on it" policies actually being unlawful, and even allowing for the scale of its operations it received more complaints to the UK CAA than anyone else about refund handling during COVID.
In Romania I think they just gave back the money (or maybe it was on a voucher with "if you don't use the voucher by date X, we'll refund the money"). which is in stark contrast with how other low-cost airlines like WizzAir behaved. Perhaps it was regional policy; or perhaps it was due to their previous interactions with UK regulators? But for me, they gained a lot of respect for them back then (whereas WizzAir is on the "only if absolutely no other choice" list - and I think I only used it once, for a business trip where it had a good direct flight AND I didn't care if I actually made it to the destination, or if I got stranded there for a few days - since the company would've been paying)
I actually like wizz. They are dirt cheap which is the only thing i care about. The ground crew don't openly despise you, unlike easyjet, they tolerate you and their cabins are all right. Just they don't have any customer service if anything goes wrong.
"Wizz; Not the worst airline you've ever flown on"
They don't have to actually sell a single scratchcard for it to be worthwhile for them - the whole point is to cheapen the experience.
They have an entire theory of marketing based on people believing that "if it feels cheap, it is cheap", and so they deliberately build in a bunch of annoyances (scratchcards, arbitrary baggage restrictions, checkout hoop-jumping, endless PR about removing toilets or running standing-only flights) which serve to make their service seem as cheap and nasty as possible.
And it works: some people simply ignore the nasty aspects, others are willing to put up with them in order to get a bargain, and yet others actually take pride in wading through the crap - usually expressing it in "I beat the system" terms. And here we are talking about it on a barely-related thread - carrying their marketing message further!
Haha what! That’s wild.
I haven’t actively surveyed all the airlines, but I happened to notice recently that United charges for carry-ons.
I feel like you're living in a different universe then. I will literally never fly Spirit (well, neither will anyone else) nor Frontier ever, I loath the experiences I've had on them so much.
First, as someone with relatively long thighs, I literally don't fit in their sardine can seats. But more relevant to most people, while things may be OK if everything goes perfectly and nothing is delayed or cancelled, you are completely SOL with Spirit/Frontier if something goes wrong (and "something" may just be they themselves decide to cancel an undersold flight at the last minute). It's nearly impossible to get someone to talk to, I feel like the employees know how shitty their companies are so they all have an attitude like they DGAF, and it's a mad (expensive) scramble to find alternative arrangements at the last minute.
I've never had as abysmal experiences as I've had on Frontier compared to any other airline.
From a customers' immediate point of view, this sucks for you.
But it's great they are not regulated utilities. Because either everyone would have to pay for extra legroom, even if they don't need it, or some freakishly long people would not be able to pay for the extra legroom that they need.
Why do you think being regulated utilities would preclude having multiple classes of service? Airlines had first class before deregulation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_class_(aviation)#History
That's not how regulation works. Or at least not how it has to work.
I don't pay a flat fee for my water, electricity, or gas usage, regardless of how much I use. I pay for the gallons, kWh, and therms I actually use. (Yes, there are other fees on those bills, but my usage actually matters.)
Airline regulation doesn't have to specify standardized seat pitch, etc.
Ah yes, because I am also forced to buy the same amount of electricity and water from my regulated utility regardless of need.
I’m relatively tall and have a generally rough (but tolerable) time with all domestic bottom-tier seats.
I have no difficulty believing you when it comes to customer service. I’ve never had any issues requiring anything beyond the most basic customer service, so I just haven’t been exposed to differences between airlines in that regard. I also understand that a bad experience can leave an exceptionally bad impression. I suppose the only thing that might surprise me is if the higher-cost airlines don’t also have terrible service.
Yup, came here to say this. Once you're on the plane and its in the air, Spirit and Frontier are like pretty much every other domestic airline. There's slight variation in terms of whether you get a whole can of coke for free or not. If you're taller than me, the 28" of seat pitch vs say 31" on delta may make a difference, but I'm only 5'9".
I still avoided them like the plague because the legacy carriers are selling you operational performance and the ability to usually get you where you're going within a reasonable timeframe if you're delayed or canceled. Spirit, Frontier, Allegiant, whoever else, do not do nearly as good a job when something goes wrong. Although they should get a lot of credit - none of them have ever had a fatal crash.
> Once you're on the plane and its in the air, Spirit and Frontier are like pretty much every other domestic airline.
Yes, if you ignore the part where things are different, it's basically the same. Trouble is, those differences do meaningfully make a difference. There's no objective measure for misery and happiness, but flying Jsx is nicer than Spirit. You can put a dollar value on misery, that's why one's so much more expensive than the other.
Sounds like you guys need some very basic regulations we have here in Europe - companies have to take care of folks, provide food, accommodation and replacement flights (and up to 600 euro in case of overbooking depending on distance). Not great, but worries like above are simply not on our calendar when traveling, low cost or not.
Also, here in Europe, traditional aircraft carriers have been migrating their quality towards bottom end (ie Swiss not giving any beers for free even on intercontinental flights, microscopic legroom also on intercontinental) while for example Easyjet is for me at this point a high quality reliable carrier with no bullshit. Ryanair is a dumpste3r but luckily they don't serve my nearest airport well.
I think Spirit has the most comfortable seats out of all the ones you listed. Especially if you're lucky enough to have a row to yourself and get to lie across all three of them.
You state an opinion, but not why for that opinion. I’m mostly stuck with Alaska or a small handful being a couple hours north of Seattle and driving to/dealing with SeaTac is not fun. In the caliber you said you wouldn’t travel includes aliegent.
I’ve not flown them and stick to Alaska and the local puddle jumpers to get off the island.
Singapore Air is majority government owned and is closer to having “utility” airlines than not.
Conversely, Air India was majority government owned, did a pretty bad job of it, and is now privately owned.
Yes, Singapore Airline is government owned, but I don't see how it's a utility?
If anything it’s a tool for making people outside of Singapore like/want to do business in Singapore, so if that makes it some twisted kind of utility then I guess anything can be a utility. Not like they have domestic flights.
My company travel tool won't even let me book Spirit without it being flagged to HR.
>> every carrier is basically the same thing but with different decals
Worse yet, you buy a ticket for carrier A, then discover that due to xyz partnership agreement you are actually flying on carrier B.
Streets, tracks and maybe tarmacs are public utilities, not the vehicles themselves.
I think the ultimate example is the fact that most routes are run by other companies than the branded carrier; capacity providers like Endeavour and SkyWest just borrow the name and livery of the major carrier they're operating for that day.
Meanwhile, first class today is not very much more than coach cost in the regulated era.
Try flying Delta. It isn’t the cheapest option, but you really do get better service.
If you want to feel special, do Aeromexico first class. The checked bags are waiting for you before you can even walk there on a domestic flight.
Spirit was cheap. And if you’re poor, you need cheap. If you aren’t, buy better service and don’t complain that it’s just Greyhound on a plane.
Am I the only one who really doesn't care what kind of service I get on a plane? I don't drink alcohol, so I don't care about that. I bring my own water bottle, so I'm good on that. The little bags of pretzels are nice, but if they stood at the front and launched them out of a t-shirt cannon, I'd be good with that.
As long as the required crew of flight attendants doesn't assault me, I've never really got off a plane thinking anything at all about the service. Just "where do I need to go next" or "I'm glad to be home".
When your flights are delayed/resechduled there is a world of difference. "Get in line" vs "you are already rebooked". (my Air Canada experince.)
> "Get in line" vs "you are already rebooked". (my Air Canada experince.)
Which of the two was the Air Canada experience?
"you are already rebooked" -- they were fab.
Same here for KLM.
Fair enough, I've been in those situations where the service on the ground side of the gate matters.
> I bring my own water bottle
Not arguing against your point, but it astounds me how many airports do not have water-bottle refill stations. My home airport (SFO) does, but many in the US still do not. I feel like that sort of thing should be legally mandated, given we're not permitted to bring water through security. The paltry amount of water they give you on the flight (and at times of their choosing, not yours) is not enough to rehydrate basically anyone.
You can ask them for more, and at a time of your choosing.
It's good that you don't care, and that you can self selected into getting the cheapest fare possible. The market works.
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I like the EU model. The regulators set a "bare minimum" set of requirements. They have much better minimums that North America, and the fares are (still) cheaper per kilometer travelled. Also, I love the penalty system when flights are late.
"They have much better minimums that North America"
Can you enumerate these? As far as I'm aware Ryan Air is basically more "Spirit" than Spirit Airlines.
For one, the penalty system for late arrivals. It is such a big business now, that there are whole businesses setup to advise you and do the work for the cut of the penalty paid. And that penalty system applies for trains too.
Also, look at Ryan Air (and Wizz Air) fares. They are consistently the lowest cost per kilometer travelled anywhere in Europe. Sure, it is like a flying bus, but it gets the job done, much cheaper than anything the US.
Company, always: "We need government subsidy". Then hell yes to regulating what they do.
Spirit wasn't asking for a government subsidy to get saved from bakruptcy. They were asking to be allowed to get merged with JetBlue (which could've saved them from bankruptcy) and got denied by the government. Those two things aren't the same.
My understanding is that the Spirit/JetBlue merger was blocked by the Biden DOJ. Were they asking for that again, or was it a different thing that failed in negotiations with the feds recently?
The negotiations that were occuring directly prior to Spirit's shutdown were not merger related; but a direct government bailout.
Biden/Warren backed/forced the DOJ to sue Jetblue/Spirit to block the merger for antitrust.
This doesn't seem to be a antitrust issue at all, it looks like it was one company bailing out another.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...
“Our win in court is a victory for U.S. travelers who deserve lower prices and better choices,” said Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “We fought this case to protect consumers who, as the court recognized, ‘otherwise would have no voice.’ I am incredibly proud of the Antitrust Division’s team and our state law enforcement partners’ tireless advocacy.”
Two wrongs don't make a right.
I know it’s frowned upon many circles, but regulation can work and do good.
There is plenty of crap legislation and regulation about, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
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.
Have you ever tried to regulate an unregulated industry preying upon a population?
Look what it took to wrangle the cigarette industry. Look how unfettered gambling is ripping through the USA.
Or look at industries pre-regulation. Meat, building construction, medicine...
At minimum we have as much evidence that "the market" is capable of being as bad as "bad regulation."
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Even with your uncharitable framing I agree with both quotes.
Can you educate the rest of us by explaining your reasoning?
Breaking down complex topics into binary black and white doesnt have to be wrong. The more important part is, how much wealth they extracted and how exactly. Was it market dominance with a superior product or amoral cost externalization.
The angle of treating transportation as regulated utility shifts the business focus away from profit onto providing services, which sometimes can cost more than your income. Similarly, would you close schools, because they didnt make enough money? Airlines are highly subsidized anyway, treating them as regulated utilities falls short of taking public ownership as public institutions, where services just cost money/subsidies.
> Similarly, would you close schools, because they didnt make enough money?
Yes, of course. We should separate school and state.
> Airlines are highly subsidized anyway, treating them as regulated utilities falls short of taking public ownership as public institutions, where services just cost money/subsidies.
How are they highly subsidized? And where? Perhaps we should fix that, instead of adding to the problem? Two wrongs don't make a right.
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...
Welcome to feudalism, yay.
Utilities and transportation should be public services, and they are in many places. Sometimes it works well, other times it works less well… usually because the capitalists lobby it into neglect and then say “see it’s not working / losing money let the private sector take over”.
Not op but I also agree with the framing assuming you add “and they provide a vital service” to both. If a vital service is being used to extract profits it should be regulated so that equal access to the vital service can be provided. If a vital service is being provided but cannot make money it should be regulated so that it can be sustained since it is vital.
Now what is vital? Is Spirit vital? That’s the hard to define part.
1. "We want to have this, but we don't want to pay for it!"
2. "We won't pay for this, but we still want to have it!"
These are of course both fair points. Why should we "pay for" things, what's that all about? We should just naturally have the natural things that we naturally want, supplied by pixies.
I think they're both actually "We want to have this, but we don't want to pay too much for it just so a CEO can make 10,000x their workers and potentially ALSO still lose money."
How much of the money goes to CEO vs shareholders is something they can work out between themselves.
If the airline goes bankrupt, that just means that the creditors get less than they otherwise expected. That's something to haggle out between creditors and management and shareholders.
(Or do you want to imply that if the shareholders saved money on CEO compensation, they would give the money to ordinary workers?)
It JUST means that the creditors lose money? It doesn't stop the planes flying? It doesn't stop the humans and freight from being transported? The plane maintenance? The airport's budget isn't affected, the airline employees aren't affected?
It's funny how any time something comes along suggesting consumer choice should play a role in a market economy, these types of comments come along to suggest its not their place.
There's no fundamental rule of a capitalist society that consumers have to make their choices out a narrow selection of options provided by corporate oligarchies between the criteria they would prefer to compete on. As a customer, I can choose which airline I want based on whatever criteria I want. Maybe I pick it based on pay ratio between executives and average workers, maybe I pick it based on whichever has the font I like best on their homepage.
Right, but what makes that viable? Something so topheavy ought to go the way of the Irish elk.
Edit: maybe a piñata is a better metaphor. :(
Culture. Today's CEOs aren't more valuable than those of 30 or 60 years ago but the going rate is way higher, so they're paid what's expected.
> We should just naturally have the natural things that we naturally want, supplied by pixies.
Is this how you see roads? Are we entitled for wanting those to be paid for by the state? What about the police? Should we have to pay whenever a police officer stops a mugging -- or is the wage of that officer, too, supplied by pixies?
These have remained unresolved questions, for me, for decades. When an internet pal was trying to found a libertarian (what noun should I use) locale, in Awdal in Somaliland (that detail of whether it was really in Somaliland or not was more debatable at the time), he first founded the Awdal Roads Company.
https://web.archive.org/web/20040603010444/http://awdal.com/...
So obviously there are theories about how these things can be privately funded. But I can never remember the theories. Looking at that link, it was going to be toll roads. People dislike this, understandably. One problem with private roads is that you can't exactly use a competing road, which might entail moving house, or changing your plans for the day, or your job.
I have a vague notion that roads could be funded by a group of businesses that benefit from them, sort of like the W3C or a mall. Non-profit, sponsored roads, or something. (Now I'm thinking of runestones, several of which are near bridges and say "He made this bridge for his soul" or a similar statement.)
Don't ask me about police, I don't even understand crime and punishment, really.
I should maybe add that I meant "We should just naturally have the natural things that we naturally want" somewhat unironically. I feel that way, the same as anyone else. The difficulty, as observed up the thread, is in working out what's natural, or vital, or wanted and feasible. There are no pixies to magically know the answers, to my regret, only governments, and they only pretend to know. By buying and selling we can almost figure out the answers, contingently and approximately, but a lot goes wrong with that, including the friction of having to do it all the time, and "rent-seeking", whatever defines that really.
You’re missing the vital framing. You’re welcome to strawman the strawman but the respond with yet a third: “I’m not able to pay for it and will die as a result”. I’d prefer to live in a society where we avoid as many situations like that as possible. It’s the primary purpose of a government and a nation. Solving the problems of aggregating the required parts? Again it’s why we work together and it’s the point of government to solve that problem.
Good regulation doesn’t completely avoid market mechanisms it tries to tame the more brutal ones in order to maximize return to society. The roads argument is important because without roads we do not have any trade. So by collectively and somewhat proportionally, to use and income, managing the cost of road it makes everything else the market does possible.
So you're saying it's all about the concept "vital" and I should pay that more heed? But I don't think the term "vital" solves the problem of information. Natural, vital, optimal, feasible, wanted, it's all the same question, which is, uh, "how should we specifically cooperate," I guess. Government just knows less about this than the people involved do. Hayek yek yek.
Maybe you mean that in desperate situations - such as working out what to do about roads - we might as well resort to government. We do, so I guess you're right.
Lots of roads in the USA are built by private developers, then they're deeded over to the municipality for "free" so its on taxpayers to do maintenance.
And the tax income from sparse, sprawling suburbs, is not enough to cover the cost of providing sewage/electric/gas/garbage collection/firefighting/road maintenance. So either 'wealthy' suburbanites end up being subsidised by taxes from dense 'poor' inner city taxpayers, or the city has to approve a new suburb to get a chunk of income from new house sales and taxpayers to pay for the maintenance of the previous suburb's roads, in an unsustainable pyramid scheme where the city has to build more roads forever just to stand still.
> and "rent-seeking", whatever defines that really.
"The act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating public policy or economic conditions without creating new wealth." This is in opposition to profit-seeking, where "entities seek to extract value by engaging in mutually beneficial transactions." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
Friend, with respect, the mental blocks you're coming up against regarding roads, police, and resource distribution, within an American libertarian framework, are outlining exactly why American libertarianism (unregulated capitalism) is an untenable ideology.
Private roads don't make sense in capitalist framing because there's no possibility of competition - no market for a free hand to move in. Furthermore, there's ethical issues around the fact that roads won't be built to people who aren't as instrumentally valuable to capitalism, which is in opposition to the idea that all humans are equally intrinsically valuable. In plain words: poor people won't get roads built to them, won't be able to work, will get poorer. This is bad, and if you want to just be selfish about it, will lead to crime and social discohesion.
This argument extends to all the resources governments typically involve themselves in: electricity, sewage, water. We have direct evidence that when they try to privatize these things, it goes horribly wrong: see, the American healthcare industry, or, what's happening to the UK as it privatizes sewage. See the Texas privatized power grid.
All capitalist entities (corporations) are simple algorithms: Make profit go up. We like to tell ourselves that making profit go up is possibly only through mutually beneficial trades, aka the aformentioned profit-seeking, however that's not true in practice. The most profitable activity is slavery driven labor, and the most profitable state for a corporation to be in is monopoly. All optimized capitalist behavior selects for and trends towards that activity and that state, and literally the only way to stop this is through establishing some kind of hierarchy that allows for the limiting of corporate behavior - governments, and regulations.
Any example you give of a corporation in capitalism not trending towards slavery or monopoly has one of several explanations. 1. It's regulated, 2. It's led by someone who ethically doesn't want to trend towards slavery or monopoly, or isn't intelligent enough to do so. In the case of 2, that company will eventually be surpassed and consumed by someone with less morals, more intelligence, and more capital (more power).
> "We should just naturally have the natural things that we naturally want" somewhat unironically. I feel that way, the same as anyone else. The difficulty, as observed up the thread, is in working out what's natural, or vital, or wanted and feasible.
I completely agree, and there are other ways to do this other than capitalism, regulated or otherwise. I strongly recommend the most cited economist in history: Karl Marx. Peter Kropotkin is also very good, "The Conquest of Bread" is a great speculation of alternative systems.
The extremes of capitalism have a negative impact on people’s lives.
The first scenario it harms us by under-serving and scammy practices, the second scenario it’s over-extractive and funneling money from the many to the few.
Companies like John-Deere should be able to survive without abusing their downstream customers. Many farmers are importing tractors from China because they're cheap and not hostile to repair like JD is. Some people might call it a "smart business model" to sell interdependent services, but in the long-term it's suicide.
Whether or not you solve this through regulation, that's up to you.
It would be nice if companies could commit suicide faster, instead of dragging it out over several decades.
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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!"
Changing it to a utility? Like Bart in sf? We should have Bart authority run the airline!
Company is valuable to us as a society in a fundamental way but is fucking us up in all sorts of unique ways: They might need to be a regulated utility.
Hopefully we can regulate them like California electricity and let one airline be active per airport and let them charge more than triple national rates.
I am not trying to be flip - I am just saying the two sides are not bad regulation ripping us off and bad private companies ripping us off, we can instead do good things and attempt to do them well, we can hold people accountable and have integrity; these are choices we make every day.
Okay, but the process of underwriting an airline now somehow involves operating a successful credit card company. Which, you know, are not typically successful based upon operating excellence but upon rapaciousness of interest rates and merchant fees.
I'm not sure it's great to have important infrastructure operated this way. Other than regulation do you see a way out?
No airline operates a credit card company. They just put their name on a card and sell miles at a discount in bulk to credit card companies like Chase or Citi.
Bottom line: there never really is any free market. Because it doesn't work.