As an aside, For all those who talk about corruption and getting money out of politics I suggest reading Federalist 10 by Madison. Its a deep analysis of a need for a republican democracy. Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another.
US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
101–110 of 367 posts
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#102I posted this because I was curious to learn that indeed, aviation companies were doing this. This type of self-evaluation is pretty common in software, though audits of compliance are also common. I wonder what sort of scenario might unfold if a company had a team of developers who's sole job it was to test other teams' software in a red-team fashion. I am all too familiar with QA organizations, and the problems in…
>I wonder what sort of scenario might unfold if a company had a team of developers who's sole job it was to test other teams' software in a red-team fashion. I am all too familiar with QA organizations, and the problems in that environment, and am all for developers conducting their own testing as a fundamental part of development, but what if we took it a step further?
You get a lot of infighting between the development and validation teams. Big US banks have this for (statistical) models already.
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#103As an aside, For all those who talk about corruption and getting money out of politics I suggest reading Federalist 10 by Madison. Its a deep analysis of a need for a republican democracy. Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another.
> Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another.
Absolutely! Any form of government that depends on an unbroken line of "good people" in power will fail, and fail much sooner than anybody thinks. Modern China has already reached the end of their system, a scant 50 years after Mao Zedong.
"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition". And government should only have as much power as you think the worst possible people in charge should have. Otherwise, people suffer.
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
The FAA is bad, but I would say the FDA is worse. Any industry in which you have companies actually writing the text of the regulations used to oversee them is a recipe for disaster. Sadly it usually takes a tragedy to highlight these egregious systems that exist in our country. We also need to get lobbyists out of Washington so that the real impactful work can begin to separate the government agencies from the compa…
> We also need to get lobbyists out of Washington You can't have (representative) democracy without lobbying. It is not that you need to get the lobbyists out, you need to convince more lobbyists in. It is likely that the average Joe has not talked to their representatives even just once, let alone on the ongoing basis necessary to fulfill the demands of democracy.
Correct - but you CAN get corporate lobbyists and industry lobbyists out of Washington.
Simply mandate that lobbying must be done on behalf of natural citizens and ONLY natural citizens, and limit the lobbying to be done on behalf of citizens with only a $ net worth or under.
If a billionaire complains about not being able to buy a couple senators, well, too fucking bad. I'd GLADLY give up my ability to corrupt government officials if you gave me a billion dollars.
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#105Can someone explain why the focus is on FAA, while there's also EASA and others? Do they also allow Boeing to self-inspect and self-evaluate themselves like FAA does?
Can FAA and Boeing be really the only ones to blame here? If Boeing was in bed with FAA that much and they were dropping the ball on safety, shouldn't EASA's own process take note of that and extra-scrutinize Boeing planes during certification for European sky compliance? Especially that it would play in Airbus' advantage, and I am sure some allegiance between the two is definitely in place to some extent at least.
How did, for example, EASA allow the MCAS on 737 Max? I mean we know Boeing abused the FAA trust in their process, but why did EASA not raise concern over the same?
Something is missing here and I don't appreciate that somehow everyone seems to forget that those planes are absolutely not certified by the FAA for use by the rest of the world. At the very least, EASA is as shitty at certifying those planes as FAA is. Or, actually, is even worse, considering that in theory the reason FAA allowed it is because Boeing took advantage of them, meanwhile EASA should have done the full re-certification?
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#106Should have never been given.
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#107Can someone explain why the focus is on FAA, while there's also EASA and others? Do they also allow Boeing to self-inspect and self-evaluate themselves like FAA does? Can FAA and Boeing be really the only ones to blame here? If Boeing was in bed with FAA that much and they were dropping the ball on safety, shouldn't EASA's own process take note of that and extra-scrutinize Boeing planes during certification for Europ…
I don't know if that's at play, but the specific door configuration that Alaska 1282 had is apparently not that common in Europe. I'm sure EASA will take note though.
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#108As an aside, For all those who talk about corruption and getting money out of politics I suggest reading Federalist 10 by Madison. Its a deep analysis of a need for a republican democracy. Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another.
Over many discussions with American friends I have been persuaded that a governmental system that is fundamentally untrusting of the various components is one of the main features of American democracy.
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We should regulate the regulators, bc I don't trust them either. We should have oversight, and we do, but it's hard to pick a worse example of bad regulation (or a better example of good regulation) than the FAA. Air travel safety is extraordinary.
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Even with the two crashes air travel was still the safest form of travel those years (as it is every year, it has quite the buffer actually).
This kind of fear mongering doesn't help anything. If airplanes were invented today people like you would have had them outlawed after the first accident.
Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes
#110Can someone explain why the focus is on FAA, while there's also EASA and others? Do they also allow Boeing to self-inspect and self-evaluate themselves like FAA does? Can FAA and Boeing be really the only ones to blame here? If Boeing was in bed with FAA that much and they were dropping the ball on safety, shouldn't EASA's own process take note of that and extra-scrutinize Boeing planes during certification for Europ…
There are indeed several other examples of this partial delegation of authority for decisions concerning safety, either to industry players or to third parties, though the FAA "ODA" mechanism is probably the most prominent. EASA's mechanism is similar in many respects, but more focused on properties of the oversight entity within the designer-manufacturer firms than on properties of the individuals doing the work. I wrote a discussion paper on precisely these issues a few weeks ago, which discusses some of the questions related to independence from commercial pressure, access to expertise, and so on:
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ALZ0IuyZGHImolY&id=D37...