Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

on.ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 367 posts

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#121

Post by foldr »

wanderingmind wrote: post #101

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.

If the goal is just sustaining government then there are lots of countries without those features that have a longer history of sustained government than the US.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#122

Post by cromka »

emarsden wrote: post #110
cromka wrote: post #105

Can 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…

Woah, amazing!

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#123

Post by hangonhn »

blibble wrote: post #116
wanderingmind wrote: post #101

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.

> Its a deep analysis of a need for a republican democracy. > The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances this is a very US centric view constitutional monarchies seem to work as well, if not better by the various democracy/stability indicies > Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. the near term survival of the current US system certainly looks far from c…

Aren't most modern constitutional monarchies just a veneer over a republican democracy anyways? The monarch wields no real power -- even if on paper they may still retain a great deal.

The US system is notoriously bad to get working and really seems to only work for the US. Anywhere else we have tried it has ended with some kind of failure. However, it's reasonable to call the parliamentary systems like the UK republican democracies and those have been emulated else where with a higher degree of success.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#124

Post by DennisP »

blibble wrote: post #116
wanderingmind wrote: post #101

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.

> Its a deep analysis of a need for a republican democracy. > The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances this is a very US centric view constitutional monarchies seem to work as well, if not better by the various democracy/stability indicies > Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. the near term survival of the current US system certainly looks far from c…

It turned out the US system depended more on human virtuousness than many of us realized. Personally I've been kinda shocked to find out how much was just based on norms and traditions with no enforcement at all.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#125

Post by brightball »

tw04 wrote: post #111
gottorf wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> And government should only have as much power as you think the worst possible people in charge should have. This immediately falls apart, by that logic we should literally have no government or society to speak of. "Only as much power as you think the worst possible person should have" would mean literally no power - there isn't a single decision in my life I would pass off to the worst person I could think of. Wha…

> there isn't a single decision in my life I would pass off to the worst person I could think of

This is actually the point though.

You shouldn't have to give power to an individual. If you're going to, you should give that power to a group of individuals who have to agree for the thing to move forward.

And then have checks on that group as well.

I live in South Carolina and one of the things I like about how this state works is that the governor is virtually powerless, so you never really have to worry about who is elected. There's certainly some degree of power outside of the veto, but for the most part the real power is with the state senate.

There are pluses and minuses to it. On the plus side, it means that things are slower to change. On the minus side, it means that things are slower to change.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#126

Post by emarsden »

keenmaster wrote: post #32
dmurray wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stockbroking, cinema, accountancy, law, life insurance, financial planning, nuclear power, real estate, medicine, advertising, media...[0][1] Self-regulation (especially at the industry level rather than delegating to individual companies) doesn't seem completely broken. Actually it can work quite well. You keep some oversight, and reserve the right for the state regulator to step in if the SRO goes bad. The people w…

Self-regulatory bodies are usually centralized and separate from any individual corporation. They also tend to answer directly to a government agency and cannot be disciplined by a corporation. While there can still be issues such as a strong revolving door and potential indirect pressure to be nice to the regulated entities, it’s not as terrible as what Boeing and other airplane manufacturers get to do (inspect them…

Historically, the fact that lives of the public are clearly on the line was part of the argument for allowing partial delegation of safety oversight. The idea has been that any engineer/manager making these decisions will be regularly flying themselves/loved ones, so is going to be suitably cautious. This differed from the situation in coal mines for example, where the miners exposed to the risk were socially/culturally disjoint from engineers/managers.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#127

Post by hindsightbias »

gmerc wrote: post #4

What’s there to consider even - political connections?

Well, there are over 400K parts in a 737 and they're building more than one a day. How many of those need more inspection? How many inspectors do you want to apply to this problem? How much growth of the FAA? How many/long to do a ground up review of every Boeing inspection process? How much more do you want to pay for every flight? What will be the impact on Boeing pricing vs Airbus worldwide?

HN is pretty strange these days. One day gov't is the problem, the next it is the only solution. We need "streamlining" of regulation for more nukes, but more regulation of Boeing because a door blew off over 100's of millions of flights. We need to get rid of the FAA and ATC and automate everything with software controls to prevent runway incursions. But we need to ban autonomous cars.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#128

Post by Dalewyn »

123pie123 wrote: post #93
Dalewyn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all the criticism the American aerospace industry gets, Boeing is the only one clearly suffering the problems they have. If stricter regulations mean Boeing can't do business, tough luck. Boeing's entire business is to make good aircraft, and they are grossly failing to do so; their problems extend far beyond just the 737 MAX. A business that can't sell good products shouldn't be in business one way or another.

>Boeing's entire business is to make good aircraft, it looks like from the outside that Boeing c-suite of people think... "Boeing's entire business is to make good profit" without understanding the consequences of cutting corners in the process

Good profit stems from good products, in this case aircraft.

Boeing's entire business is to make good aircraft.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#129

Post by not2b »

tw04 wrote: post #111
gottorf wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> And government should only have as much power as you think the worst possible people in charge should have. This immediately falls apart, by that logic we should literally have no government or society to speak of. "Only as much power as you think the worst possible person should have" would mean literally no power - there isn't a single decision in my life I would pass off to the worst person I could think of. Wha…

"people in charge" doesn't just include elected officials, it also includes heads of corporations. Checks and balances has to apply to them as well, meaning that regulation is necessary.
Post reply on HN