It feels like it's a classic case of where coming first can hurt you down the road.
For example, part of the reason the US is so far behind on credit card technology (just getting around to adopting EMV) is because the US was the first country to widely adopt credit cards in the first place and there's a lot of inertia.
In the airlines case, they were one of the first industries to computerize. Now they're stuck with the mainframes. Same thing happened in banking.
The credit card point doesn't make sense. The UK and Australia have very high credit card use, but both have had EMV for well over a decade -- I think the UK was first with the modern standard.
The argument makes more sense for infrastructure that needs upgrading, like Internet access, railways, sewers, water pipes.
For example, part of the reason the US is so far behind on credit card technology (just getting around to adopting EMV) is because the US was the first country to widely adopt credit cards in the first place and there's a lot of inertia.
In the airlines case, they were one of the first industries to computerize. Now they're stuck with the mainframes. Same thing happened in banking.