On the other hand, complete government control is often inefficient and always tramples human rights, as we have seen in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany of the past and China today. Eventually dictatorships must and do fail. While a free market needs a minimum of government controls, recent efforts at deregulation and continued regulation have both had mixed or even detrimental effects. It didn't help that deregulation came amid rapid changes in the way we receive and send all kinds of information. The cable TV industry's deregulated record falls into this same problem area.
Airlines awry The current prime example of deregulation gone astray is the airline industry.
We have all been hearing about, and probably experiencing, the delays, cancellations and other problems accompanying air travel today. It's possible deregulation resulted in the tremendous boom in passenger travel. But overcrowded airports unable to handle the boom mean long lines at the counter and long waits on runways. There has not been an accompanying growth in airport capacity, an area over which local governments and not Uncle Sam exercise primary authority. We still have not found a way to meet weather problems, when storms in one part of the country disrupt travel elsewhere.