Of course another permissible alternative would be anti-trust regulations with teeth so that no company can ever be allowed to become too big to fail.
Unfortunately that has the side effect of many small competitors who are so cut-throat, nothing ever gets done and no one ever moves up the tech tree.
Look at AT&T. They had government sanctioned immunity, but because of that, they had money to burn on "big science", and invented trivial things like the transistor and the laser. Bell Labs, at one point, was the pre-eminent facility of its kind in the entire world.
You don't get there with a 2-3% margin.
The trade off is they, or their proxies, were required to provide phone service to practically the entire continent to whoever asked, at a reasonable, but not rock bottom price, including places that barely had electricity.
Airline regulation is sort of the same thing. The folks who started the whole thing knew that the current state of the industry in the 20's-30's, marginal operators barely scratching out to break even would never advance the cause. Regulation prevented wanton competition, keep fares and margins high, advance the cause of the industry. In return, they had to serve every crossroads that had an open field.
I suspect this will repeat itself when we get into no-kidding space transport.