The difference here is that everyone needs air traffic control and there's zero choices so a market structure doesn't make sense.
With bread, maybe I only like certain types of bread. Maybe I don't want bread. It makes sense for there to be a market with diverse offerings. If bread inputs get expensive maybe everyone pivots to eating potatoes.
In contrast if you want to fly out of a major city there's one major airport, and you need air traffic control. It's a uniform service that is required. The same sort of market structure is not really viable.
> The difference here is that everyone needs air traffic control
This is very much not true. People who don’t own or operate aircraft don’t need air traffic control.
> and there's zero choices
Probably what you are saying here is that air traffic control is a natural monopoly. You can’t have two (or more) paralel systems issuing clearances at the same time in the same airspace. That would be madness.
But what I’m saying is not that we should have some crazy capitalist system where rival air traffic controllers compete with each other in the same airspace. What I’m talking about is a system where air traffic control services are provided by a private company. A private company which is funded by service charges to aircraft operators, and one whose operations are regulated by the government.
You can argue why that is not possible, but this is exactly how Canada’s air traffic control is organised. There the air traffic controllers are employed by a non-profit corporation which is funded by service charges. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nav_Canada
Similarly air traffic controllers in the UK are employed by the NATS which is a public-private partnership.
Germany has a similar structure with Deutsche Flugsicherung, or switzerland with Skyguide (formerly known as Swisscontrol).
When you are arguing why it cannot work, you are arguing against all these examples.
Yea that's the point I'm making that it's a natural monopoly. And yea the examples you provide are another way to handle a monopoly, though it's not really clear to me what the comprehensive benefits actually would be. Other than to create an appearance of arms length from government.
Would have the upside of not being shutdown due to the USA's crazy government shutdown nonsense, tho possibly you still have the shutdowns of a union strike.
Kind of reminds me about how people slip up and occasionally call BC Ferries a crown corporation, and are corrected that no, actually BC Ferries is an independent, company, simply one with the sole monopoly contract to provide ferry service that is 100% owned by BC Ferry Authority, which is... owned by the Province and whose board is 44% selected by the Province (another 44% by municipalities, who are creatures of the Province).
> Other than to create an appearance of arms length from government.
Big benefit is to separate the regulator from the regulated entity. That alone could probably stop the kind of group thinking which let them route a busy helicopter route through a busy landing corridor with inadequate procedural controls.
Other big benefit is to make the flight operators pay directly for the services the flight operators need. We are not paying their fuel from taxes, why do we pay for air navigation services from taxes?
> Would have the upside of not being shutdown due to the USA's crazy government shutdown nonsense
That is why it is brought up, yes. That is the most direct benefit at this moment.
Also, people living under the paths of airplanes need ATC because they don't want planes colliding and crashing into their homes. It's a clear public service that benefits the public broadly. I personally wouldn't want to turn it over to profit-seeking, race-to-the-bottom private contractors.
Are you flying a Boeing 747-400 from Seatle to London return overflying Canada? That will be $5,370.78 please. It consist of $66.10 for oceanic services and $5,304.68 for enroute services.
Are you flying an Embraer 175 from Halifax to St John return? Good on ya. That will be $1,608.04. Pleasure doing busines.
Why would someone do that? Especially for presidency which is the final stage of their career? They're not beholden to or reliant on anyone no more so shouldn't have to be swayed by any adverse interests.
They run from the left in order to get elected, that is the sham. They tell people things that people want to believe that they know they can't deliver in order to get elected.
Then they govern from the centre right status quo which aligns more with their actual beliefs.
A presidency lasts 8 years of your life, best case scenario. And the presidential salary will not make you rich. So, if your only goal is a good life, you have to use your presidency to get people to make you rich afterwards, which means favors for the wealthy.
Bernie was never a 3rd option, to be clear. He wasn’t running a Ross Perot-style third party campaign, he was running to be at the top of the Democratic ticket. And when the DNC cleared the way for Hillary, he was out of the game.
This is true. Anecdata, but I talked to some of the “Republicans for Bernie” back then, and it was real, not astroturf. We’d be in a different place if Bernie had been the Dem candidate in 2016. I think it’s likely Bernie’s actual presidency would have been a major shitshow that made Jimmy Carter’s look pretty solid, but it would have relegated Trump to what he originally wanted to be, a fringe political figure grifting millions from gullible conservatives.
But in that scenario, the Republicans would not have run Trump a second time (and maybe not even the first, because all the populist action would have gone to Bernie). So Bernie would lose in 2020 to a normal (that is, not populist) Republican.
Bernie still runs/ran/supports the DNC umbrella... The socialists are embedded in the DNC, not a separate party.
That said, most Libertarians are now under the RLC (Republican Libertarian Caucus) as disaffected neo-socialists have come into the separate party, and the Democrat party has become more Socialist itself.
Also, Bernie should have one, but the DNC leadership absolutely cheats... this was incredibly apparent in 2016 and 2024. Talk about an oligarchy/autocracy...
>Also, Bernie should have one, but the DNC leadership absolutely cheats... this was incredibly apparent in 2016 and 2024. Talk about an oligarchy/autocracy...
How, exactly? Clinton received 12% (55.2%-43.1%[0])/three million-plus more primary election votes than Sanders.
And he only received that many because Clinton wasn't a great candidate, and more importantly, the decades-long campaign to smear her and her husband.
What's that? 'Muh "superdelegates!"' Those actually didn't matter -- the actual votes by actual Democratic voters is what did it.
What's more, even if Sanders had not lost by 12% and had become the Democratic nominee, the ads just write themselves:
Pan in on Bernie Sanders saying "I am a proud Socialist!"
with shimmering backgrounds of the Soviet and CCP flags
and portraits of Stalin and Mao smiling down on him. "I'm
Joe Stalin, and I approve this message!"
Then video of Soviet/Chinese armies parading with tanks
and all sorts of other "socialist" imagery.
and on and on just like that, over and over. As such, Sanders would never have won the general election and it wouldn't have been nearly as close as the actual one.
Go ahead. Call me a liar. But actual vote counts from actual elections have nothing to do with "superdelegates" or any of that.
There's no comparison to the W Bush years. He was a buffoon that was mocked, but few if any seriously did things like boycott travel to the USA. Now boycotting travel to the USA is commonplace and travel to the USA has plunged.
People are nice and will continue to be nice to nice American tourists but make no mistake, there has been a severe shift both in the actions of regular people and business.
> Also also unveiled its Alpha Wave helmet.... It also features integrated lights and a four-speaker, wind-shielded internal audio system with two noise-canceling mics. The helmet integrates with the TM-B’s console, where music, calls, and podcasts can be controlled on the bike.
In an ideal world these would be great features to have, but in the real world, where so many places have a near complete absence of safe cycling infrastructure and bicycles are casually mixed in with giant trucks it's a bit of a scary notion to reduce your situational awareness with a great sound system and the distraction of doing your morning zoom standup while cycling to work (I've done this before lol, tho most of my commute is in separated bike lanes...).
This points to the headwinds to adoption and success of the Also, which is that so many cities are ambivalent and uninterested if not outright ideologically opposed to building safe all ages and abilities bike lanes. That sort of safe infrastructure is critical to the success of a product like this. It's really unfortunate.
I just added strips of fake fur to the straps my boring old helmet to diffuse the wind noise the same way a "dead cat" cover on a microphone does. They look a bit like muttonchops which is a bonus as far as I am concerned. I use wraparound bone conduction headphones that don't block my ears. I would be afraid of losing an expensive earbud.
These would be the same omniscient, benevolent regulators who intentionally set speed limits well beneath the 85th-percentile rule where highway safety is optimized? (Well, no, those would be different regulators entirely, but still...)
Speed limits aren't about being able to stop everybody, they're about being able to stop anybody. If nobody exceeded the speed limit, then rest assured, it would be lowered further.
The answer is right in the text of your question: the 85% rule of thumb is for highways. If it makes you feel better I've seen a proposal to offer a discount on speeding tickets in Texas if you pay with bitcoin. No, actually, I made that up. It's funny because it's so very plausible.
Startlingly bad journalism from a paper as good as the WSJ. Is the paper trying to appease the administration in so obviously deviating from the reality of events?
> Over the winter, different alarm bells sounded. At the start of the year, President Trump threatened Canada with a slew of tariffs. In response, Canadians pulled California wines off store shelves, along with other American-made alcohol. U.S. wine exports to Canada dropped 96% in the second quarter—from nearly $111 million last year to under $4 million this year—and the U.S. wine trade surplus with Canada has flipped to a deficit for the first time ever.
Trump did not merely threaten Canada with tariffs. Canadians would be annoyed but not remarkably so if that were the only issue.
Trump repeatedly threatened Canada with annexation.
With bread, maybe I only like certain types of bread. Maybe I don't want bread. It makes sense for there to be a market with diverse offerings. If bread inputs get expensive maybe everyone pivots to eating potatoes.
In contrast if you want to fly out of a major city there's one major airport, and you need air traffic control. It's a uniform service that is required. The same sort of market structure is not really viable.