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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

#71

Post by rhelz »

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.

> If this is proven to be a criminal act

So who committed the crime?

The exec who wanted to save money? Saving money is the prime directive. Why is it his fault that he was given bad advice by his engineers about it?

Did the engineers commit the crime? Does your computer software have no bugs in it? Arn't the testers and inspectors supposed to give the proper feedback?

Did the testers and inspectors commit the crime? Well, some of those testers and inspectors worked for Boeing, some worked for the FAA--and some worked for the people who bought the airplanes. If there was a serious problem, surely some of them would have spoken up...

Exactly who was the criminal? Who is guilty of "criminal neglect?"

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

#72

Post by rhelz »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #62
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?

> Why then didn't we lower the speed limit to 45?

Great question. Why didn't we? How many people are you willing to kill to be able to drive at 65mph instead of 45 mph??

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

#74

Post by constantcrying »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #3

Because Boeing is so important to national security, everyone involved in leading this from the CEO to the board of directors should be treated as traitors and have all their assets seized and spend the rest of their life in a maximum security federal prison.

Incompetence is obviously not treason. It also sets up a ridiculously bad precedent.

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

#75

Post by constantcrying »

chmod775 wrote: post #11
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #3

Because Boeing is so important to national security, everyone involved in leading this from the CEO to the board of directors should be treated as traitors and have all their assets seized and spend the rest of their life in a maximum security federal prison.

If it's really that important it should be government-owned, like Airbus. You can't give random people free reign and then punish them if you retroactively didn't like it.

Airbus was created by European governments, but sold off to force it into market competition.

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

#76

Post by constantcrying »

hackerlight wrote: post #22
Lendal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what happens when monopolies are allowed to exist. In a competitive market if the CEO gives away market share to rivals due to reckless indifference to safety and becomes a liability, they will be fired or the company gets spun off to fend for themselves. When we as a society allow a monopoly to exist, then government assumes responsibility for whatever that monopoly does with its power. Government interventi…

Airplane manufacturing sounds like a natural monopoly.

But it isn't a monopoly? It is just an extremely capital intensive business. At least if you are building large passenger jets, everything else has quite a bit of competition.

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

#77

Post by [deleted] »

rhelz wrote: post #72
dreamcompiler wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> Why then didn't we lower the speed limit to 45? Great question. Why didn't we? How many people are you willing to kill to be able to drive at 65mph instead of 45 mph??

[deleted]

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

#78

Post by spxneo »

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…

I was quite surprised how authoritarian American/Canadian business environments were and subconsciously/covertly racist without saying it outright.

I still vividly remember when I was in my 20s, an American executive from a fortune 500 company forgetting to unmute himself and accidentally unmasking himself and the attitude of those around him.

They were at the forefront of "woke" and "diversity". This is when I learned it was just another slogan like "human rights" to make the citizens feel good about themselves.

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

#79

Post by spxneo »

ahartmetz wrote: post #20
chmod775 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's really that important it should be government-owned, like Airbus. You can't give random people free reign and then punish them if you retroactively didn't like it.

(Airbus is only ~25% government-owned)

but unlike the kamikaze-americana free market attitude on display by characters competing for attention on social media, this state ownership ensures that ultimately it benefits the state's interest not the executives.

This is the invisible boundaries that map the most resilient economies. Even Canada does this to a large degree but stood no chance against American Greed.

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

#80

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

constantcrying wrote: post #74
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #3

Because Boeing is so important to national security, everyone involved in leading this from the CEO to the board of directors should be treated as traitors and have all their assets seized and spend the rest of their life in a maximum security federal prison.

Incompetence is obviously not treason. It also sets up a ridiculously bad precedent.

It wasn’t incompetence. It was a deliberate decision to enrich oneself at the expense of everyone else.
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