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Sorry Matt but bullpucky. In the many years before Covid airlines world wide made stratospheric profits. They, as in financial institutions in 2008, paid out those profits. But when down times occurs they EXPECT to be bailed out. This issue is bigger than regulation of operations. It is big capitalism running a fixed game and we the people are the punters who are paying for it while politicians and political leaders act like they are helpless. They are just hopeless.

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Aug 25, 2022Liked by Matt Stoller

I can't read the STAT story on Autism because of the paywall, but my son is autistic and I am in a lot of Facebook groups with families of autistic children. That may be an interesting story to dive into. My son is Level 1 (high functioning) and he does not qualify for ABA therapy anyway, but ABA is pretty controversial in the first place. Many adults with autism say it was harmful for them. However, a lot of insurance companies force families into that treatment. That is what I keep reading in these groups from parents who want to have other options.

I can see why equity would want to get into it, and how it is even better now because of COVID. We actually moved from a smaller city to a metro area because there are a lack of providers and the wait lists were exacerbated by 2020. There are more kids with developmental delays that need more help as well from school and daycare shutdowns (and IMO, masking neurodivergent toddlers). It would be profitable to clear out all those wait lists.

A lot of these services *should* be covered by the school system, but they are so backed up. Parents with means go private both for evaluations & therapies. That is what we do. My son does not get ABA, but he is supposed to get Occupational Therapy via his IEP and it has been months with no resolution.

These articles hit some points.

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/private-equity-autism-aba/

https://fortune.com/2022/05/13/autistic-community-reckoning-aba-therapy-rights-autism-insurance-private-equity-ariana-cernius/

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From the graph it looks like the Obama administration went from about 60 enforcement orders in 2011 to a low of about 15 in 2015. Sure they hit a **then** low of 6 under Chao, but Bit Boy has the NEW record low of 4.

The trend was well in place before.

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It seems like airlines could benefit significantly from partial re-regulation but perhaps not full re-regulation. Guaranteed rate of return and rate cases lead to lots of bloat and nonsense, and captive regulators at times (e.g. Alabama's public utilities).

The best case seems like the FAA (or some similar entity) acting as a middle-man / clearing house for all flights, with standardized rules for things like baggage, seat selection, etc. The companies could offer what flights they want at various prices (blind) and customers could select their flights based on the offerings. We very easily have the technology to run a market like that, and it would allow both the flexibility of modern cheap routes but also certain requirements (e.g. offer a certain amount of smaller city routes every day/week/month).

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Aug 27, 2022·edited Aug 27, 2022

‘’consumers and states are barred from suing the airlines over consumer or safety issues… effectively a subsidy to the industry’’

So there’s been a regulation in force since 1978 to protect the airlines from responsibility for bad behavior. Somehow during all the efforts to deregulate since 1978 that little regulation was missed and left in place. How about that…That regulation is a regulation on the CONSUMER and that’s why it was left in place. Regulations on YOU the consumer are OK! Regulations that hurt corporate profits are BAD :(. Regulations that take taxpayer money and give it to airlines are GOOD! Regulations that complicate the lives of airline executives are BAD :( . Airline executives are very stupid people and so we must make life simple for them. Give them bags of money - that’s simple!

I can only imagine the complexity of legislation written by airline lawyers and instituted by corrupt politicians that’s been put in place to guarantee airline profits, all in the name of ‘’deregulation’’. and simplicity. I don’t think anything is simpler for airline passengers when they get their flights cancelled and rescheduled without compensation for wasted time or expense.

Fuck deregulation it was a corporate SCAM. They deregulated themselves and then regulated the consumers and taxpayers. Airline profits are guaranteed by YOU the taxpayer. When they fuck up they don’t pay, YOU pay.

Pete needs to re-regulate like it’s 1978. Simple enough for a Rhodes scholar because it rhymes.

The so-called conservatives (who were not actually conservative at all) were responsible for much of the deregulation. Remember back when America was great? Back when it had more regulations on corporations and less regulations on people.

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Think its true that consolidation is what was needed to create financial stability in the industry.. but am not sure that it completely comes from price regulation as an oligopoly. There's a chance that by becoming larger airlines, the economies of scale gained would reduce a lot of the fixed costs (which Matt points out was a big issue previously) to a point where the industry could financially run more smoothly. From every big merger that happened starting 15yrs ago, airline prices in real terms have actually kept going down.. price competition is still there. That being said, flying does suck a lot more than it did 15yrs ago, and while they still might be competing on price, maybe as an oligopoly, they gave up competing on service.

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