[IP] a conservative view of Aerospace

[Dave Farber <dave@farber.net>]

From http://home.gci.net/~agimarc/

"Your Conservative Weekly OnLine Since 1997"

------ Forwarded Message
From: Alex Gimarc <agimarc@ak.net>
Reply-To: splickplus@lists.spunge.org
Date: Wed, 01 Jan 2003 09:37:24 -0900
To: Alex Gimarc <agimarc@ak.net>
Subject: [slickplus] Interesting Items 12/30

2.  Aerospace.  The portion of the American economy that has performed the
very worst since 9-11 is Aerospace.  We have seen a rash of airline
bankruptcies, falling passenger count, and generally poor performance by all
aerospace sectors.  Why is this?  From an economic standpoint, it is simple:
Aerospace is the portion of the economy with the very most government
control, government meddling and government money.  The airlines, in their
response to 9-11, all instantly demanded a federal takeover of airport
security - and they got it.  Result ?  The feds have completely destroyed
the under 300-mile portion of the market by making it simply too painful to
get on an airplane for a short trip.  The airlines also demanded a monetary
bailout from the feds for losses suffered.  The feds delivered.  In
response, the airlines cut back amenities for passengers - cutting food and
beverage service, imposing new restrictions on carry-on baggage, and a range
of other responses all typical of businesses protected from competition.
Result ?  Passengers are only flying when they need to do so, telling the
newly surly airlines to go straight to hell.  The airlines did it to
themselves - demanded federal intervention into the marketplace.  They got
that intervention.  They also got the destruction of a marginally
competitive marketplace by the US government.  The defense -related portion
of aerospace has been doing quite nicely, with great gobs of money being
spent to replace and revitalize our forces for the next phase of the World
War.  The final portion doing poorly is spaceflight.  Manned spaceflight is
a government monopoly - and has been one for over 40 years.  The marketplace
has never been allowed to exist, and as a result, the dream of private
tickets for a ride to orbit has all but died here in the US.  Two tickets
have been purchased, much to the chagrin of the Federalies.  Both purchased
rides in Russian spacecraft.  It is a darn shame that the only capitalists
for manned space travel are former Soviets.

3.  Solution.  Given all the above, what do we do to fix it?  Easy: get the
feds out of the marketplace.  Do it instantly.  Do it completely.  Shut down
the TSA.  Make airlines responsible for their own security.  Arm pilots.
Arm passengers.  Arm gate agents and baggage handlers.  Let the airlines
figure out how they want to handle security and let them do so.  Start
identifying hijackers rather than identifying weapons (the Israeli
solution).  The only federal response ought to be a limit on lawsuit awards.
The marketplace will quickly identify and reward the companies that do
security well.  It will also identify and quickly destroy those that don't
(remember Pan Am?).  For space, shut down all NASA manned spaceflight
operations.  Force the agency to purchase launch and flight services from
commercial vendors.  Get the marketplace working.  Do it before it is too
late.

------ End of Forwarded Message

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