I'm mostly behind you with this, a great point that you make is the insurance.

> Businesses are able to insure their limited cost of cancellations, and price their tickets to absord these insurance costs (which are ultimately born by the ticket-payer).

Those insurance companies have requirements for paying out, in Europe for example a low fare airline Ryanair will offer you a refund if your flight is delayed 2/3 hours. You can choose to still take the flight though which, for some is acceptable. But that refund is by way of a request, it's not automatically processed. It works, for me personally, but I've been delayed for important things where it was only an hour, I would have loved to have been able to get s refund to book on another airline but I have to say, I wouldn't "expect" that.. which is why I can soften on their first point.