I don't think that's necessarily true. Governments routinely fine companies (and people) small amounts of money. They do not need it; the fine isn't about them getting money. It's about deterring people from negative behavior.
In some cases, bailouts make sense. In the ISP industry, they don't make much sense. ISPs were offered a monopoly and operate their networks at approximately 95% profit. Now there is a crisis and they've been spending that 95% not on network upgrades, but on dividends or stock buybacks, and it's all blowing up. I don't think the governments need to subsidize that. The Internet should be bad during this crisis so that people are motivated to fix the problems after the crisis. Asking one content provider to subsidize them doesn't help anything in the long run, and if there isn't pain now, this will all be forgotten after the Coronavirus issue.
Things like the airlines are different. They bought multi-million dollar jets with the assumption that they'd be in the air 22 hours a day. Now they're on the ground, and the financials simply don't work under those conditions. That is the the kind of thing society needs to insure against (if they want air travel, anyway, which does seem to be quite useful).
In the end, I'm very cynical about all of this. Sometimes I wonder if the whole "flatten the curve" thing is being promoted because it's an election year and when your whole family dies from COVID-19, you're a lot less likely to show up at a rally to eliminate Obamacare. We need to cover our eyes and stick our fingers in our ears to think the status quo is OK, so here we are. People will invest a lot into maintaining the status quo, be it healthcare or shitty ISPs.
> Governments routinely fine companies (and people) small amounts of money. They do not need it; the fine isn't about them getting money. It's about deterring people from negative behavior.
That’s not a personal revenge fantasy. Your post is unrelated to my point.
In some cases, bailouts make sense. In the ISP industry, they don't make much sense. ISPs were offered a monopoly and operate their networks at approximately 95% profit. Now there is a crisis and they've been spending that 95% not on network upgrades, but on dividends or stock buybacks, and it's all blowing up. I don't think the governments need to subsidize that. The Internet should be bad during this crisis so that people are motivated to fix the problems after the crisis. Asking one content provider to subsidize them doesn't help anything in the long run, and if there isn't pain now, this will all be forgotten after the Coronavirus issue.
Things like the airlines are different. They bought multi-million dollar jets with the assumption that they'd be in the air 22 hours a day. Now they're on the ground, and the financials simply don't work under those conditions. That is the the kind of thing society needs to insure against (if they want air travel, anyway, which does seem to be quite useful).
In the end, I'm very cynical about all of this. Sometimes I wonder if the whole "flatten the curve" thing is being promoted because it's an election year and when your whole family dies from COVID-19, you're a lot less likely to show up at a rally to eliminate Obamacare. We need to cover our eyes and stick our fingers in our ears to think the status quo is OK, so here we are. People will invest a lot into maintaining the status quo, be it healthcare or shitty ISPs.