> As a free-market worshipper

Free market in a location owned by the government where the government gets to control who the vendors are and what the customers are allowed to bring in? Thats not a free market to begin with.

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ajmurmann 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Just because the venue is owned by one entity doesn't mean you cannot have competition between tenants. In fact venue owner could take competition in consideration when choosing a new tenant. This would be what the Chinese government does with their catfish effect philosophy (https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S02184958960...).

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LeafItAlone a day ago | parent | next [-]

The catfish effect refers to private enterprise competing against state enterprise. In the case of airports, the options are an extremely limited number of private enterprises chosen by the state. Not the same thing.

	▲	ajmurmann a day ago \| parent [-]
		It's not necessarily public enterprises. AFAIK Tesla was given access on order to be the catfish for Chinese EV companies.

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quickthrowman a day ago | parent | prev [-]

Airports do solicit competitive bids for concessions, they just end up awarding it to a single concessionaire. My local international airport is owned by a regional governmental entity, one of two in the United States (Metropolitan Airport Commission in MN and MSP Airport, part of the Metropolitan Council which encompasses a 7-county region. Portland, OR has a similar regional government org but I am unsure if theirs owns PDX) and all RFPs for contracts over I believe $100,000.00 are visible online. [0]

Keep in mind that the venue owner has overhead for each and every vendor, awarding a concessions contract to a single entity simplifies things for the organization that owns the airport. There’s also a limited amount of space in an airport and having one concessions company storing food for all of their ‘restaurants’ in one location instead of having a dozen or more tiny food storage areas simplifies things for the airport yet again.

[0] https://www.mspairport.com/business-at-msp/business-opportun...

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richardwhiuk 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Airports usually are privately owned I think?

	▲	LeafItAlone 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Which major airports in the United States are not owned at least partially by a government body?