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Only for them to immediately be gobbled up by 1 or 2 big players. How about a market for destinations? Oh wait that will be immediately controlled by one playe

Only for them to immediately be gobbled up by 1 or 2 big players. How about a market for destinations? Oh wait that will be immediately controlled by one player. Hm it seems consolidation is the natural path we prefer towards solving a problem. Why not let the bureaucracy manage it then? Give up the pretense. This is all market capture of finance by low effort grifters who will throw a fit when they don’t get privilege for nothing but being an obnoxious talking head.

danem 7y ago
> Oh wait that will be immediately controlled by one player. According to[1], the average number of competitors per US domestic city-pair is 3.5 and has been increasing over the last few decades. [1] http://darinlee.net/pdfs/airline_competition.pdf http://darinlee.net/pdfs/airline_competition.pdf
bumby 7y ago
Freakonomics did a good episode related to this [1] One of the takeaways was that as organizations grow they become more married to spending resources to maintain their existing system which comes at the cost of innovation. So they “innovate” by buying other firms/ideas and it eventually leads to consolidation of an industry. [1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/in-praise-of-maintenance/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/in-praise-of-maintenance/
kortilla 7y ago
They won’t be gobbled up if they aren’t offering a better service. Then that just clears the way for yet another competitor to come in and offer better service again until the large airline improves enough to make entering the market unprofitable. Big companies buying small companies is good. It’s a reward for improving the market. Big companies preventing smaller companies from even starting via government regulation (i.e. regulatory capture) is what’s bad. Giving it to the government is just skipping to the worst possible outcome. Nobody has any incentive to compete.

danem 7y ago

> Oh wait that will be immediately controlled by one player. According to[1], the average number of competitors per US domestic city-pair is 3.5 and has been increasing over the last few decades. [1] http://darinlee.net/pdfs/airline_competition.pdf http://darinlee.net/pdfs/airline_competition.pdf

bumby 7y ago

Freakonomics did a good episode related to this [1] One of the takeaways was that as organizations grow they become more married to spending resources to maintain their existing system which comes at the cost of innovation. So they “innovate” by buying other firms/ideas and it eventually leads to consolidation of an industry. [1] https://freakonomics.com/podcast/in-praise-of-maintenance/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/in-praise-of-maintenance/

kortilla 7y ago

They won’t be gobbled up if they aren’t offering a better service. Then that just clears the way for yet another competitor to come in and offer better service again until the large airline improves enough to make entering the market unprofitable. Big companies buying small companies is good. It’s a reward for improving the market. Big companies preventing smaller companies from even starting via government regulation (i.e. regulatory capture) is what’s bad. Giving it to the government is just skipping to the worst possible outcome. Nobody has any incentive to compete.