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For some reason things that happen in the air seem to privatise much better than things that happen on the ground.

I know that there are some nuances to this, but this makes sense right? If you think you can compete on say London-Amsterdam, your airline can in principle decide to compete there (yes, they need slots, etc.).

If you want to compete with rail between Amsterdam and Berlin, you are either going to pay an insane amount for extra infrastructure (too expensive) or you have to let companies bid on exploiting a line. But you can never have two companies competing at exactly the same times.





I think that's a factor to explain why air travel can be cheaper than rail.

Air travel lends itself better to competition and it needs much, much less infrastructure than rail.


Yeah there’s probably a way in which railways and water are natural monopolies, so are more difficult to privatise.

Yes, it's the tracks. Planes don't need tracks.

> Planes don't need tracks.

But let's all take a moment to acknowledge that it would be awesome if they had them. Can you imagine the shenanigans you could get up to designing a nationwide 40,000-foot-high rollercoaster system?




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