Comment by appreciatorBus

You forgot that private cars are also creatures of subsidy. We like to think that the main input to go vroom vroom in cars is cheap gasoline, but IMO it’s realy cheap land. (aka subsidized public land)

A car with no gas could still be used to store stuff, or even roll downhill. A car with no land can’t be used at all for anything. And the amount of land required increases with the square of the velocity you want to travel out. But we never add that in.

As far as air travel, I haven’t done the math, but I suspect if you were to add up just the foregone property tax revenue associated with the land underneath the airports you’d end up with some pretty serious numbers.

Anyways, my basic point all of this is the same – we should be careful about subsidies because they tend to distort incentives and decision-making, whether we apply them to airplanes or horse buggies. It doesn’t mean that there’s no place for government involvement in transport, simply that we ought to be wise to the side effects and externalities. I could buy that the government should be involved in air travel, but I part ways with the idea that this should be extended such that if people get used cheap fares on Spirit then the government should guarantee Spirit operation forever. Maybe Spirit was just an anomaly, and we’ll be fine when it’s gone? Some people might fly a little less, some people will just eat the difference and not care, some people will take the bus, some people will buy a car. It’s all just normal people making normal trade-offs about decisions in their life.