FAA system outages underscore the risk of concentrating critical infrastructure in a single federal agency. Decentralized alternatives offer resilience that centralized systems struggle to match.

The United States recently emerged from the longest government shutdown in its history, one that halted operations, froze budgets, and led to 1.4 million federal employees being either furloughed or working without pay for forty-three days. The most noticeable economic damage this time around, though, was not in closed museums or perhaps even the saga surrounding SNAP benefits. This time, it was in the sky.

By the end of October, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported that over twenty major air-traffic control facilities were operating below minimum staffing levels. This staffing shortage increased as unpaid controllers reached their limits. In an attempt to ameliorate the crisis, the FAA ordered up to ten percent of scheduled flights to be cut at more than forty major airports. Expectedly, this led to cascading delays, supply-chain disruptions, cargo backlogs, and stranded travelers.

This shutdown, then, was not just some political stalemate, as purported enemies in DC fought over the direction of the federal government. It was a live demonstration of how fragile the institutional infrastructure of our modern interventionist economy is — and why economics remains indispensable for understanding these moments of systemic stress.

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