What about after the electricity market in California was "deregulated" a few years ago? Didn't my employer lose millions of dollars by having to shut down its

What about after the electricity market in California was "deregulated" a few years ago? Didn't my employer lose millions of dollars by having to shut down its factories during the ensuing rolling blackouts, which in turn were caused by successful efforts to create artificial scarcity and extort billions of dollars from the public? But you shouldn't read too much into that example either. The lesson here is that buzzwords aren't always useful for understanding the world. The word deregulation means different things in different situations. Airlines are still a heavily regulated industry: Health and safety regulations, security regulations, labor regulations, international treaties, state and local regulations. (You think you're going to be allowed to launch a jet helicopter from your suburban backyard? Your neighbors think otherwise.) But there was a moment when a few of those regulations were removed or changed in a useful way that permitted the market to work better, and that event was named "airline deregulation". Which does not imply that every action called "deregulation" is going to be equally successful, or even that such actions are especially similar to each other. The devil is in the details. What matters is what the regulations are, and what the situation is.