Are you arguing that they don't do that with federal oversight?
Without government oversight providing plausible deniability and the appearance of safety, companies wouldn't get this large. When consumers don't believe the government is ensuring that only safe products and services are available they will step up to make their own decisions.
Case in point, if Boeing flights started to show a pattern of safety issues and customers didn't believe that planes must be safe because they are regulated, consumers may decide to fly less or not at all. Companies would have to respond when money dries up and plane sit empty. Companies would also focus on safety if they know their business could disappear either through customers losing faith in them or due to the heavy cost of litigation when their safety lapses create a pattern of harm.
Regulation on this scale serves a few purposes. Most importantly, I'd argue, to give financial and legal cover to the largest corporations, and to create the appearance of control and safety beyond what any realistic guarantee could ever possibly be.
No I was not doing that. I was mostly being sarcastic.
I will however argue that with no oversight at all, things would be much worse.
I do think your arguments give people too much credit though. If the choice was a cheaper flight but on a plane with a dubious safety record vs a more expensive flight on a plane with a good safety record I'd wager most would take option 1
I didn't catch your sarcasm there, sorry about that.
> I'd wager most would take option 1
If those people where aware of the safety concerns and made the choice knowingly, what's the problem? We don't need to regulate people from informed consent, do we?
> I didn't catch your sarcasm there, sorry about that.
No worries. It is text after all.
>If those people where aware of the safety concerns and made the choice knowingly, what's the problem? We don't need to regulate people from informed consent, do we?
I would say no, but in the same vane argue that such things shouldn't be a choice you have to make, that all planes should be some base level of safe. And since no company (at least in the US) is going to do that willingly because that hurts profits someone with teeth needs to exist to make them.
the fundamental problem is information asymmetry. when a consumer makes a purchase, they do not and can not evaluate the safety of a product design. As such, the nash equilibrium is for manufacturers to cut all the corners they can.
When Boeing flights have repeated safety issues on passenger flights, what more information is needed?
As it stands, consumers don't have much reason to act for themselves as the FAA and government at large would prefer that we trust they have it under control.
That may even be true, but surely that falls under the information imbalance you mention. We don't know exactly how the regulators are responding, though we do know that FAA regulations rely heavily on self-report mechanisms in which the companies effecrively regulate themselves.
Without government oversight providing plausible deniability and the appearance of safety, companies wouldn't get this large. When consumers don't believe the government is ensuring that only safe products and services are available they will step up to make their own decisions.
Case in point, if Boeing flights started to show a pattern of safety issues and customers didn't believe that planes must be safe because they are regulated, consumers may decide to fly less or not at all. Companies would have to respond when money dries up and plane sit empty. Companies would also focus on safety if they know their business could disappear either through customers losing faith in them or due to the heavy cost of litigation when their safety lapses create a pattern of harm.
Regulation on this scale serves a few purposes. Most importantly, I'd argue, to give financial and legal cover to the largest corporations, and to create the appearance of control and safety beyond what any realistic guarantee could ever possibly be.