Yet even children do better with choice and autonomy than having their decisions made for them.

If you hover over a child and make all her decisions for her, she’ll never develop her own sense of judgment, or confidence in her own abilities.

The technocratic approach contains, at its heart, a fallacy: People don’t know what’s good for them, so we have to make the decisions for them.

Even if it were true that people don’t know what’s good for them, wouldn’t the logical thing be to try and figure out how to teach them how to make decisions, not to make decisions for them?

As I understand it, the decision faced by the city of Denver was to either expand Stapleton or build a new long-haul airport. Opening a second competing airport was never an option. In the first place, why should we expect the city to compete with itself? But even if it did, who could possibly think that United Airlines and Frontier Airlines would have relocated to the new airport if the more convenient Stapleton remained open? If those airlines did not relocate, the city could not have financed the new airport. No other airline would choose a less convenient airport as a base for competing with those established players.

My argument is that what Virginia Postrel proposed – that Denver keep Stapleton open after the new Denver airport was built – was financially infeasible. It is relevant to me that no U.S. city Denver’s size has two large airports. It’s unrealistic to expect a major airline hub city to spend billions and undertake such the experiment she advocates.

We can speculate all we want to about what might happen if private enterprise built and operated major airports. I don’t think such airports exist today.

Of course if the airports were privately developed and owned, then the city wouldn’t have spent the billions to begin with AND we would’ve found out if your assumptions are correct and what passengers really prefer.

As far as Denver not supporting two airports – pshaw. I live in Forest,VA and commute weekly to Blacksburg, VA and fly about 10 times a year. The area where I live and work is considered a part of the Roanoke-Lynchburg metropolitan area. There is an airport in Roanoke (100,000) and a airport in Lynchburg (90,000 – it grew ALOT the last five years). The two airports are about 45 miles apart. (If I drive 60 miles I get the Charlottesville (50,000) airport).

While neither are anywhere as large as DIA, both seem to be doing ok and I have the advantage of choosing which airport I fly out of. If I’m in Blacksburg, Roanoke is more convenient, if I’m in Forest, Roanoke is more convenient. If there’s a significant price difference driving the distance to the Roanoke airport is no worse than the drive to DIA is described (I’m about 35 miles from ROA).

Sure it’s not great for airport concessions (an odd focus of DFW), but you know what? I don’t need em – there’s no runway congestion of significant security time (I’m looking at you LAX) to eat up time.

I agree with everything YOU wrote in this post. My only concern is with the passage from Ms. Postrel. I have great respect for Virginia and her dynamist philosophy. But I wonder whether she’s right about the Denver airport.

Denver airport does have competition. The Colorado Springs airport is a viable alternative for residents in the south Denver suburbs. On a larger scale, Denver is competing with Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City as a southwestern hub city.

I think it’s important to remember that the local Denver passengers are not the airport’s only customers. Its airline customers, in particular United and Frontier, would likely have insisted that Denver close Stapleton before they incurred the expense of relocating hub operations. Otherwise they would risk the entry of Stapleton competitors that could provide more convenient service.

Closing Love Field to commercial flights is exactly what American, Braniff, Eastern, Delta, and four other interstate airlines required before they agreed in 1967 to relocate from Love Field to DFW. Unfortunately for them, in 1973 the courts overruled the C.A.B. and the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth, allowing Southwest to continue flying from Love Field.

I do not think it is reasonable to expect a metropolitan area the size of Denver to support multiple long-haul airports. With one exception, the U.S. metro areas which support multiple longhaul airports are twice the size of Denver. That exception is Miami-Fort Lauderdale, which is uniquely located to enjoy both year-round destination tourist travel as well as gateway traffic to over half the Western hemisphere.

I’m not arguing Denver’s technocrats picked the right location for the Denver airport. But I think it unreasonable to believe that two interstate airports could survive in a metropolitan area the size of Denver. One would have won out very quickly, and the city would be back to a single airport once again – after spending billions to develop one and upgrade the other.