In the old days, airlines and power grids were incentivized by regulations to spend money to build extra capacity into their systems to increase reliability in

In the old days, airlines and power grids were incentivized by regulations to spend money to build extra capacity into their systems to increase reliability in times of crisis. Now they're all deregulated and they are highly incentivized by their shareholders not to overbuild capacity because it costs money and provides zero return on investment. The upshot is that these industries operate with zero excess capacity. They work fine when everything goes as planned, but the minute something breaks or a storm happens, everything cascades into a steaming pile of shit. In the case of the airlines, competitive market forces previously provided some incentive to invest in reliability but so many airline mergers have been allowed to happen that there's effectively no airline competition in the US any more.