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Comment by zigzaggy | Hacker News Reader

Trust me, I am the LAST person to advocate corporate socialism. But I think this deserves an honest conversation. I really wonder what would happen if we didn't save the airlines. What would happen if we let an entire industry collapse under the weight of a natural disaster? (That's not a rhetorical question, I'm honestly asking). Wouldn't that cause a domino effect crashing through the whole system?

Don't get me wrong - I agree that it's terrible to have to continue bailing out greedy corporations. But is this the time to rebuild the system? I'm not so sure we can handle that on top of everything else going on.

We should attach all kinds of strings to this bailout, and then hold our representatives responsible for fixing this mess. But I'm not sure letting the whole thing collapse is the reasonable thing to do.

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> But is this the time to rebuild the system?

Thing is, though, whenever this conversation is relevant (ie when the airlines need a bailout because of recession, whatever), you can always dodge the issue by saying "but we have too much going on right now for this".

> We should attach all kinds of strings to this bailout

Definitely. But normally what happens is that corporate lawyers are much smarter and more devious than government lawyers with the benefit of huge leverage and these strings get waived, ignored, litigated for years, etc.

“corporate lawyers are much smarter ”

They aren’t. They just have more money to throw around. Anybody who really (!) wants to see knows what’s going on.

>you can always dodge the issue by saying "but we have too much going on right now for this".

I agree with this, which is why I'm looking for an honest conversation. Maybe THIS IS THE TIME to push back. I fully support direct political action in response to the bail outs, if "we the people" decide enough is enough. I just think we should do so thoughtfully, not emotionally.

>these strings get waived, ignored, litigated for years, etc.

Unfortunately we also allow that by being swept up by the next big emotional moment, and once we've been redirected to something else, the strings magically disappear.

>I really wonder what would happen if we didn't save the airlines.

I don't think the argument is about whether we should bail the airlines out; it's about how we should bail them out.

Handing them $60B and saying, "Go about your business!" is not going to fly (pun). If the taxpayers are going to provide the capital, they should get equity. It's that easy.

Would the government be able to run an airline? I don't know. Could they be any worse than current management?

> Could they be any worse than current management?

Pre TSA nationalized security checkpoints it was actually faster to fly from Phoenix to Las Vegas...

First of all, we're clearly going to bail them out, but my argument IS about whether we should. I'm an "all possible options" kind of guy. That is, no matter how extreme, I want to discuss and rule out as many options as I can on my way to making a decision. It's how I frame things in my brain when I'm deciding.

Secondly, I strongly agree with the main point you're making - that "we the people" should get equity in exchange for the bail out. When these companies bounce back in a few years we should all get a special refund the year we sell the equity back to industry. However, unless we're buying some HUGE stake, I don't think we should exercise the option of taking over the management of these businesses.

>collapse under the weight of a natural disaster

This is flawed reasoning. They're not collapsing because of the natural disaster, they're collapsing because of a financial disaster of their own making.

Our points are NOT mutually exclusive. The system is flawed, and always buckles under the pressure of a disaster. Yes, the flaws made it weaker and it is therefore buckling hard. But it's pretty clear that people are scared, and the market reflects that. If you're in doubt, take a quick look at the VIX and other volatility indicators.

EDIT: "Our points are NOT mutually exclusive" changed to add "NOT"

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