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Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout
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Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout
#52I feel like capitalism is a net good, but it is consistently undercut by wall street.
Investment has become increasingly decoupled from its reputed purpose; it’s not a means to an end, getting short term gains at all costs has become the end goal.
Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout
#53It has been like that for 20 years.
* all the years capitalism has existed. This is bog-standard capitalist formula. Profit over people. Worker and customer and public alike.
As opposed to the other big economic system, the one that always seem to involve a lot of camps and mass graves.
Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
* all the years capitalism has existed. This is bog-standard capitalist formula. Profit over people. Worker and customer and public alike.
As opposed to the other big economic system, the one that always seem to involve a lot of camps and mass graves.
Pretending that capitalism doesn’t kill people doesn’t really help move the conversation.
There’s also more options than Soviet Union’s state capitalism and US’ “market” capitalism.
Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
* all the years capitalism has existed. This is bog-standard capitalist formula. Profit over people. Worker and customer and public alike.
As opposed to the other big economic system, the one that always seem to involve a lot of camps and mass graves.
Capitalism has its own ways to kill people as well, just with some extra layers to blame the victims.
Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout
#56Curious how we assign moral blame. Sure, Boeing put Wall Street first ahead of safety. But why isn't the headline "Wall Street put profits ahead of safety". Or "The electorate chooses capitalism over safety." During the oil crisis, highway speed limits were reduced to 55 mph, to ease the gas shortage. But an unexpected side effect was that about 4,000 less people died in car crashes each year. Would you be willing to…
> Its so easy to put the blame on some amorphous, anonymous abstraction like "Wall Street" because we can feel self-righteous. But things are the way they are because--by and large--we like them that way.
This argument entirely ignores that lobbying and political donations skew government policy to benefit a small minority on Wall Street.
Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout
#57Curious how we assign moral blame. Sure, Boeing put Wall Street first ahead of safety. But why isn't the headline "Wall Street put profits ahead of safety". Or "The electorate chooses capitalism over safety." During the oil crisis, highway speed limits were reduced to 55 mph, to ease the gas shortage. But an unexpected side effect was that about 4,000 less people died in car crashes each year. Would you be willing to…
> Its so easy to put the blame on some amorphous, anonymous abstraction like "Wall Street" because we can feel self-righteous. But things are the way they are because--by and large--we like them that way.
Could it be that the electorate’s power to effect change has become usurped by lobbyists?
No, it is the voters who are wrong.
Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout
#58When public companies get fined, those fines should come 100% out of profits, not revenue. That might help resolve this kind of conflict of interest.
What? Fines are expenses, they do "come out of profits" to whatever extent that has meaning. They also aren't deductible expenses for taxable income if that's what you're talking about.
Sure my comment was probably over-simplified, but I was imagining fines as coming out exclusively of whatever slice of money goes to the beneficiaries of public companies, vs. something that comes out of a bank account or operating expenses.
So any money that _would_ have been paid out to shareholders (bonuses, dividends, buybacks) is what goes to pay the fine, until it is paid. This would dis-incentivize decisions that benefit shareholders at the risk of breaking rules. We all hear about fines being "one day of operating expenses" and so on.. So who cares about getting fined then.
In retrospect I'm sure this isn't that realistic as companies would just do accounting gymnastics to get around this, as many do for other accounting rules.
And it would probably impose an undue burden on auditing to make sure money is put in the right buckets etc...
Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout
#59[deleted]
Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout
#60If corporations are people (remember that Supreme Court ruling?) then Boeing should be held criminally liable for their missteps
> remember that Supreme Court ruling
Corporate personhood is a centuries-old legal concept [1], finding first mention at the Supreme Court in the 19th century.
> then Boeing should be held criminally liable
They were charged in 2021, and entered into a deferred-prosecution agreement after paying a $2.5bn fine [2]. It appears the DoJ is already looking into the Alaska Airlines blow-out [3].
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood
[2] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged-737-max-fraud-...
[3] https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/justice-department-ope...