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Comment by amadeuspagel | Hacker News Reader

> [Airbus] was incorporated as the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) in the year 2000 through the merger of the French Aérospatiale and the German DASA, and later acquired full ownership of Airbus, a collaboration of European aerospace companies originally incorporated in 1970 to develop and produce a wide-body aircraft to compete with American-built airliners, which would later merge together.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus

Europe created Airbus by merging different companies, but the US should break up its only competitor?

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>Europe created Airbus by merging different companies, but the US should break up its only competitor?

If that said competitor is not behaving, and abusing its status as a de-facto monopoly, than yes, the US should break up that competitor.

It's not like Boeing is a book store or a video game developer which has little risk to society if things go belly up - it produces critical transportation infrastructure that can kill people if something goes wrong. That's a responsibility to not be taken lightly, and a track record of Boeing management ignoring safety checks and guidelines because it would cause shareholders to lose a bit in the short-term is just is irresponsible.

> It's not like Boeing is a book store or a video game developer which has little risk to society if things go belly up - it produces critical transportation infrastructure that can kill people if something goes wrong.

I completely agree, I just don't think that more competition is necessarily the solution here, and that's the point of my example. Airbus is a trusted company, and it was created through merging different companies, through removing competition.

Aren’t we capitalists here? Capitalism would suggest that more competition is indeed good and actually should outcompete a larger behemoth provided you ensure the larger one can’t do things like flooding the market or otherwise pushing out the smaller players. But given government contracts keep these players fed and happy (very lucrative military contracts), I’m not sure what the answer.

I see your point - and i don't disagree, and my overall point is that mergers and all that aren't bad, but when you agree to effectively allow companies to M&A their way to a monopoly, it is imperative for industry safety that that monopoly needs to be policed and regulated heavily ESPECIALLY if it's a piece of critical social infrastructure whcih also happens to be a public company acting in the best interests of its stock performance above all else.

Industry can't M&A its way to a monopoly and then use the power of the monopoly to say "we get to do whatever we want". Great power, great responsibility and all that.

Airliners need to be regulated regardless of whether they're monopolies or not, and if anything regulation would be even more important if it was a competitive industry, where everyone had to cut corners to survive.

I think the point OP was trying to make was when a monopoly (justified or not) routinely fails to meet their end of the bargain, especially when it comes to safety... its time for someone else to have a turn.

Of course the US should. We have multiple manufacturers for every other industry and it's our biggest strength.

Isn’t that how Spirit became a standalone company?

It's also how we got United Airlines and United Technologies earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Aircraft_and_Transport_...

I agree, and I'm not sure how to fix this. You could peel away the defense part of Boeing, but that doesn't solve the issues the commercial side is having. Nationalizing has a sketchy track record in general, and the US isn't experienced in it, so I don't see that going well. It's really that the company has the wrong leadership and the wrong culture, and you can't just fix that.

Wasn't the automakers and some banks de facto nationalized for a brief period in the 2008 financial crisis? Not a good analogy, but the US has competent and inventive administrators. Or at least had 15 years ago.

Yes maybe? There’s a story about three bears that I think you should read.

Boeing would probably work better with a keiretsu style structure anyway.

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