> Isn't each individual airline is itself a command economy, internally?
The difference is that airlines, no matter how large they are, have to deal with the reality via market forces. So there's a feedback mechanism that will eventually point out if your commands are correct.
Command economies (or sectors of economies) don't have such a mechanism, so they can stay inefficient forever.
I would argue that the energy sector of most developed nations as a counterexample. I think we can go back and forth all day about the extent to which they are true command economies, but the ultimate point that natural monopolies can and often are successfully managed by nations in a centrally-planned manner I think is clear.
Oh! Let's talk about the energy sector! I worked professionally in that area.
Europe and the US are most definitely not counter-examples. Power generation is almost everywhere done commercially. Transmission is more often publicly owned, but even that is not universal.
The closest example to the command economy is rail in Europe. And it's predictably struggling.
The European grid is not centrally planned. It's certainly affected by the government policy, but its development is driven by private profit-seeking companies.
Right, so let's say Duke Energy is a private profit-seeking company in the eastern US. In many areas it is the only energy company in town. Are you trying to say that, just because it's a private company, it's not centrally planned? That each section of its business is in some sort of free market?
Private corporate ownership and central planning are not mutually exclusive. Texas is maybe the only place in the US where energy production isn't centrally planned, for any reasonably local definition of "central."
> Are you trying to say that, just because it's a private company, it's not centrally planned?
Correct. For example, the government is not saying that Duke must put ten gas power plants in a particular location for $10 by 2025.
> That each section of its business is in some sort of free market?
Funnily enough, this is pretty close to how Duke operates. The central holding company only deals with the strategic planning, and its subsidiaries make their own plans to implement these plans.
But anyway, even in the areas where Duke has a legal monopoly, it has to contend with other utilities, otherwise its monopoly will end.
> Private corporate ownership and central planning are not mutually exclusive.
They are. Central planning from the government means that there's no meaning in private ownership. Centrally planned industries are not affected by the market forces, so they can become inefficient without the market feedback.
It looks like we're working off fundamentally different definitions of central planning, so of course we disagree. Central planning, in my vernacular, does not at all imply government control. It simply means that most decisions are made by some sort of central authority and executed by decentralized agents, rather than plans being made by the agents themselves. This is how most non-franchise businesses operate.
If you require central planning to retain an element of planning by the government in your definition, then I agree, energy is not a good example of this.
The difference is that airlines, no matter how large they are, have to deal with the reality via market forces. So there's a feedback mechanism that will eventually point out if your commands are correct.
Command economies (or sectors of economies) don't have such a mechanism, so they can stay inefficient forever.