The learned helplessness of Pete Buttigieg [Cory Doctorow]
Obama and Trump were patsies for the airlines, Biden is worse. Holiday snafus involving Southwest and other airlines are just the latest example of a dysfunctional industry and regulators.
Buttigieg is the Secretary of a powerful administrative agency, and as such, he has broad powers. Neither he nor his predecessors have had the courage to wield that power, all of them evincing a kind of learned helplessness in the face of industry lobbying.
Contrast Buttigieg’s Transportation Department with the muscular FTC under Lina Khan, who knows the law and uses it for the American people.