I love Taleb; he's a certified creative genius, better-than-chance-would-allow prophet and a regular guy with Good Judgment, all three at once- a rarity. I thin

I love Taleb; he's a certified creative genius, better-than-chance-would-allow prophet and a regular guy with Good Judgment, all three at once- a rarity. I think he is wrong on this one however. Wrongest observation in the article: "For the very fact that we are saving airlines indicates their role as utility" An industry can be essential to society and still not be a utility, and that's a feature, not a bug. Nationalizing an industry implies the State has the knowledge to run it. But an entire industry of experts is already dedicated to doing just that. Nationalizing it implies the State would pay those same people or their equivalent to do what it is they already do. Why would it do that ? This is true of critical and non-critical industries. The government does not possess the knowledge to run specialized industries. That's exactly why Socialism always fails, and yes, it does always fail. In America at least, even "utilities" are not State owned, at most they are regulated, and the constant object of regulatory capture because of it. His other main point, that this is not a Black Swan, it's a White Swan (a disaster they should have seen coming and planned for) is stronger. However the exact scope and duration of this event is itself something of a Black Swan, no? The entire world is in lockdown for an unknown duration. Did you want that priced into every airline ticket you buy? It's not a rhetorical question, you have to decide if this is something you yourself would have wanted, back in the beforetime. For that matter, how does a nationalized airline industry raising your taxes to pay for Black Swans sound to you? Think that's where the money would ultimately really go? How's your Social Security lockbox doing? The reason we stem the bleeding in our industries like airlines isn't because their lobbyists incite Congressfolk to sin or even because they're utilities in all but name. Life could go on if the major airlines all failed all at once. After some time, there would be new airlines and until then charter planes for critical things and telecommute, like now. The reason we bail them out is because the net downstream cost of not doing so is many times the net cost of doing so. People have to have jobs to go back to after this is over. There has to be an economy. There has to be industries with jobs to go to. The demand for air travel will certainly be there, air travel is not a new invention waiting to catch on, is it? So the question to be answered is: is it wiser to birth a new airline industry or treat the wounds of the one you have? Here I define wiser to mean: less costly to the government and less ruinous of people's lives. In the US at least, everyone is getting hard cash presently to see them through, #masshole not withstanding. Many industries and even banks(!) are stepping up in all sorts of creative and genuinely helpful ways. This will pass; we will survive thanks to people's willingness to endure #lockdown for the sake of others. Everything else beyond that is gravy from historical and biological perspectives.