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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

#61

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #45
supercanuck wrote: post #2

It has been like that for 20 years.

Even longer. American business operates like a feudal system with lords and peasants. Management are the lords and everyone else are the expendable peasants. Occasionally, the lords are forced to acknowledge that the peasants are just as essential as they are. Without them there is nothing and no one to "lord" over. This is the abherrent phase that Boeing has just entered. The system will be forced to either return t…

> Management are the lords and everyone else are the expendable peasants

Boards are the lords. Management without a board seat are the bourgeoisie; Boeing engineers, too. To the degree we have peasants in modern America, it’s in agriculture and retail, not at Boeing.

Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout

#62

Post by dreamcompiler »

rhelz wrote: post #31

Curious 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…

> Would you be willing to drive slower to save lives?

No. Because people still died when the speed limit was 55. Why then didn't we lower the speed limit to 45? Heck, we could stop people from dying altogether by simply banning driving!

So why didn't we do that?

Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout

#63

Post by JumpCrisscross »

someone7x wrote: post #57
rhelz wrote: post #31

Curious 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.

> Could it be that the electorate’s power to effect change has become usurped by lobbyists?

To the degree voters get apathetic or distracted by culture war issues, sure. When the electorate gives a shit about something, electeds listen. Most issues simply don’t rise to that level. Case in point: Boeing; nobody is going to beat their competitor by promising to be tougher on Boeing.

Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout

#64

Post by [deleted] »

flandish wrote: post #48
rhelz wrote: post #31

Curious 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…

Easy: If this is proven to be a criminal act, even of criminal negligence, charge not only the people making decisions, the board members, but also shareholders, relative to their holdings. Including grouped stocks such as funds. All it will take is once for this to happen and shareholders to actually think about the repercussions of “investing” in corporations that do this kind of thing.

[deleted]

Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout

#65

Post by JumpCrisscross »

flandish wrote: post #48
rhelz wrote: post #31

Curious 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…

Easy: If this is proven to be a criminal act, even of criminal negligence, charge not only the people making decisions, the board members, but also shareholders, relative to their holdings. Including grouped stocks such as funds. All it will take is once for this to happen and shareholders to actually think about the repercussions of “investing” in corporations that do this kind of thing.

> All it will take is once for this to happen and shareholders to actually think about the repercussions of “investing” in corporations that do this kind of thing

Right, you wouldn’t invest in American business, period. (Also, how do you criminally charge someone on a pro rata basis? Do you send every American with a pension to jail for 1/31,000,000th the jail time?)

Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout

#66

Post by TheLoafOfBread »

flandish wrote: post #42
supercanuck wrote: post #2

It 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 somebody from Eastern Block, it is not much worse. Government will forcibly create monopoly businesses, they have no reason to improve their products and to top it off, you can't create competing business, because government does not allow that.

Just look what was the result after 1989 - companies who could compete with western ones, because government did not required innovation last 40 years and 5 year plans were solved by throwing more people at the problem or outright lying. Result was that products were often obsolete long before manufacturing even started, what was made were poor quality (i.e. we called it finish it at home) and much more expensive than in the rotten West.

Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout

#67

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pants2 wrote: post #40
javiramos wrote: post #29

We don’t need regulation. Let the free markets take care of Boeing. /s

Well, considering Boeing stock is down over 70% vs it's primary competitor, I would say the free market has taken care of them to some degree.

> the free market has taken care of them to some degree

It’s pricing in the risk of fines, the cost of groundings and the potential penalties thereafter. Put another way, the market is reacting to regulation, actual and potential.

Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout

#68

Post by jdlshore »

flandish wrote: post #48
rhelz wrote: post #31

Curious 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…

Easy: If this is proven to be a criminal act, even of criminal negligence, charge not only the people making decisions, the board members, but also shareholders, relative to their holdings. Including grouped stocks such as funds. All it will take is once for this to happen and shareholders to actually think about the repercussions of “investing” in corporations that do this kind of thing.

Easy? You’re letting your outrage short-circuit your brain. There’s no way you’ve thought this ridiculous proposal through.

Boeing is part of the S&P 500. Almost every American who has stocks is going to have a fund that includes Boeing. That includes people with 401Ks, so basically everyone in the middle class. You’re talking about charging a 100 million people.

Okay, so maybe that’s what you intended. Now what? Does everybody now have a criminal record? What exactly are they charged with? Negligent homicide? A fraction of a percent of the deaths from the 737 Max? Who charges them? How does it get through the courts? What are the exact consequences, and why does Joe Random Schmoe deserve those consequences? Let’s see you actually think this through.

Re: Boeing put Wall Street first, safety second ahead of Alaska Air blowout

#69

Post by swed420 »

whythre wrote: post #52
whalesalad wrote: post #50

I 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.

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2024/04/01/bitcoin-24...

> Back to Marx here. “The two characteristics immanent in the credit system are, on the one hand, to develop the incentive of capitalist production, from enrichment through exploitation of the labour of others, to the purest and most colossal form of gambling and swindling.” So the finance sector carries on just as before, engaging in speculation and regulators cannot and do not stop them.

> The answer is not regulation (before or after the event), but the banning of fictitious capital investment. Close down hedge funds, bitcoin exchanges and exchange trade funding. Instead, banking should be a public service for households and small companies in order to take deposits and make loans – not funding for a massive financial casino where criminals and swindlers gamble away our livelihoods.

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