[card_zero]

> increasingly welded together

That's an insinuation with some vague truth to it, but not much. Budget airlines are not government departments, and competition between them isn't phony.

"The sky is blue" "I feel that it is increasingly yellow"

[bonoboTP]

There's little competition pressure because consumers don't care. I guess the standard theory says that the buck ends there. If people are fine with it, it's fine.

[XorNot]

You are arguing there's little competition pressure between budget airlines, a business with notoriously razor thin margins which people shop almost exclusively on price to the exclusion of all other parameters?

This isn't a serious argument.

[bonoboTP]

Only price pressure. No measurable number of consumers will choose a different airline due to their boarding pass app policy.

[card_zero]

Now you're talking! People suck, it's their fault.

[bonoboTP]

We'd do well with taking an honest stock of what allowed the formation of democracies and civil liberties, because likely it wasn't that average people longed for it so much that it happened. It's out of my weight class to pitch a grand narrative for this, but we've seen many forms of societies and governances and the current one (or from 20 years ago) won't be the last.

[johnnyanmac]

There have been very few policies truly passed because "everyone wanted it". It always starts with some "radical" minority bringing the idea to light and then campaigning for it. Even if the thing is obvious.

The former happening would make so many things easier.