On Tue, 13 May 2008 09:13:09 -0700 (PDT), "Robert M. Gary"
wrote in
:

The difficulty with market regulation lies in the bureaucratic ethos
of government regulators. *They don't have a financial stake in the
industry they regulate, so they may not be sufficiently motivated to
act at times, and then there's *always the question of ethics or the
lack thereof....

I agree, the best solution is to keep the gov't out with regard to
number of producers and pricing. They don't have a natural stake in
the game so they can't make pro/con decisions.


I agree, that the government may not be the best choice for regulating
the air carriers. If the air-carriers could manage self-regulation,
that would be a boon for them and consumers alike. While it's
difficult I'm sure to get competitors to agree on being bound by an
independent group of their choosing, it would certainly be in
everyone's best interest.

Consider how the dismal state of affairs that currently exists in the
airline industry might motivate good-faith players in the marketplace
to create their own industry oversight entity. It might be structured
something or government, with the number of representatives elected by
a given air carrier commensurate with its size in one Congress-like
body, an executive branch with cabinet ministers overseeing various
departments charged with specific areas of regulation such as hub slot
assignments, passenger rights, employee issues, training and
certification to enhanced standards, etc.

Of course implementation of something like this would require a
responsible group of sincere, honest, and competent airline executives
able to subordinate their competitive bias in the interest of
bettering their industry. Such maturity does not seem evident in the
Wall Street we've seen in the last few decades. The likelihood of all
the players being mature enough to self regulate isn't too great, but
one can hope they are mature enough to see that the present situation
will not lead to a solution they will embrace willingly either.