On 17/09/15 02:39, Bill Claybaugh wrote:
Sent from my Commodore 64
On Sep 16, 2015, at 8:40 PM, Peter Fairbrother <zenadsl6186@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 17/09/15 00:44, Bill Claybaugh wrote:
Why assume evil when nature is a sufficient explanation?
There was no prior assumption of evil on my part - and if you are correct, no
there is no evil. The market price has been manipulated by no-profit pricing.
Airlines are both commodity businesses--they have no pricing
power--and service businesses--they have inherently high costs--so
they naturally, through competition, fall to no profit pricing.
Long-term, no-profit pricing is a chimera in a free market.
Agreed.
Any no-profit pricing enterprise must eventually fail in a free market (tiny
disturbances magnify). Over time, no-profit enterprises would not exist without
external support, given for some other reason than the strictly financial -
national pride, or whatever.
Agreed. Most airlines are owned by governments that cover the inevitable
losses--which losses are inevitably magnified by the inefficiency associated
with government ownership....
However--in the U.S.--the bankruptcy system allows some airlines to blow off
their debts every few decades even as others are liquidated.
And--in one known example only--if one does absolutely everything correctly and
makes no errors at all; then it is possible to eek out a very small but
consistent profit in the airline industry. It thus seems possible that the same
might eventually be true in space transportation, but then why would a profit
seeking investor but money into that business instead of biotech or AI?
Space transportation is no different.
Here I must disagree a little. As both commodity brokers and manufacturers,
people like SpaceX do have pricing power.
Ok, in rocketry we are still in, or perhaps coming towards the end of, the era
of national manufacturers/carriers; so the pricing power of eg SpaceX is
limited - but.
Actually, in aviation we are still in the era of national manufacturers too - there are
two contenders, Boeing and Airbus, both of which are "too big/important to
fail".
So what's your point?
