>G'day Brad,
>
>>And we have gone from having one serious commercial aviation accident
>>per 140 million miles flown in 1970 to having one serious commercial
>>aviation accident per 1.4 billion miles flown today. You can indict
>>capitalism for many reasons, but an increased likelihood of dying in
>>an airliner crash is not one of them...
>
>I don't question your figures, but would point out that capitalism is not a
>static thing. We haven't had a fatal Qantas crash yet (as the Dustin the
>Rainman told Tom the Wally), but we seem to be recording an amazing
>increase in 'technical problems' and 'near-misses' (who was it said a near
>miss must mean a hit? But I digress) in Australia of late. And
>capitalism's dynamics have lately contributed to corporatisation,
>privatisation and merger in an industry marked by some real world-wide
>profit problems over the last decade and a bit. Planes are getting better,
>sure - capitalism should be about market-selected innovations. But the
>quality of the newly built plane ain't the only determinant in the
>equation. You use a 1970 v. 1999 comparison, but for much of the world,
>airlines were publicly owned / tightly regulated for most of that time
>(during which a fair bit of that improvement must have manifested), and the
>consequences of the great transformation might be some time in imposing
>themselves statistically. It might be that we have some hairy moments to
>look forward to (I notice the almost coincidental Cote d'Ivoire crash, with
>twice the LA crash body-count, hasn't rated much of a mention) as the
>deregulatory/privateering moment gradually works away at all those wires,
>welds, pilots and ground crews. It eventually happened with Yorkshire
>water, Auckland electricity, Melbourne gas, Sydney trains and outback
>telephones - or so it seems to me.
>
>Waddyareckon?
>
>Cheers,
>Rob.
Seems to me that air safety is one place where the market gives
airline executives and airplane manufacturing and maintenance
executives exactly the right incentives: people aren't going to fly
airplanes or airlines that crash regularly...
Brad DeLong
