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"No individuals have been criminally charged in the government’s investigation into Boeing, which was led by the FBI and the Department of Transportation’s Office of the Inspector General. Dennis Muilenburg, who was CEO when the crashes happened, was ousted in late 2019. He left with more than $60 million in stock options and other assets, though Boeing did not give him a severance." What a cruel joke
So anyone at Boeing going to jail for killing 346 people?
Who do you think should? An engineer who worked on the system? A manager? What law was broken? If you were in their position, how would you know you were breaking the law? Diffuse responsibility is a real problem. 'Teaching to the test' is a real problem. Normalizing risk is a real problem. Blaming individuals is very satisfying, and it's very easy to do with hindsight, but if you want large complex systems to work b…
Last time I checked neither of these individuals programmed the ECU of VWAG diesel engines to cheat emissions tests although some engineers were blamed and fired.
It all starts at the top.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The upside of your proposal is that it'll create a very strong disincentive for this kind of behavior. But if we really can't attribute blame to specific individuals, your proposal is effectively collective punishment where individuals that are genuinely innocent are punished because of wrongdoings of other members of the group. From a justice perspective, we're in murky moral waters. An analogy would be to punish ev…
This is how tithings used to work. Ten men would be grouped into a tithing, and if any of those men were suspected of a crime, then the rest of the group either had to prove their innocence or had to condemn the guilty party. If they did neither, all were equally punished for the crime. In principal, it strikes me as a good idea - it promotes collective good behaviour, and responsibility for ones peers.
Boeing's fine is essentially nothing more than a one-time 10% rebate to their largest customer. (Reference: In 2017, Boeing booked over $22 BILLION in revenue from the US government. https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2020/01/02/ho... )
> Boeing booked over $22 BILLION in revenue from the US government. Which, by the way, is totally not state support, especially if anyone from Airbus is within hearing distance...
Unfortunately US justice is very unfair against foreign corporations.
Compare this to the fine which volkswagen got (6 times more) and prison term for the top managers, having killed 0 people. Unfortunately US justice is very unfair against foreign corporations.
We can’t know the small or incremental damage that VW’s emissions did to people’s health... but at face value, it feels like Boeing’s punishment is an order of magnitude or two too low.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Boeing booked over $22 BILLION in revenue from the US government. Which, by the way, is totally not state support, especially if anyone from Airbus is within hearing distance...
Well, at the level they're at, and considering the strategic and military considerations, everybody does it. I'm reasonably sure EU countries do the same with Airbus, and I'm European.
We should just drop the pretense this playing field is level...
Compare this to the fine which volkswagen got (6 times more) and prison term for the top managers, having killed 0 people. Unfortunately US justice is very unfair against foreign corporations.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/10/11/1...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The DOJ certainly seems to think a law was broken. As I see it you charge the most obvious person and let them try to blame someone else. Eventually you either find people you can blame and if you can't go up a level until you reach the CEO. If the CEO goes to prison, other CEOs will care more than this one, if some compliance officer does, the next one won't be as willing to bend to implied pressure from leadership.
that just leads the blame onto a scapegoat. It doesn't fix the problem at heart - which is that the responsibility for safety has to be taken at the org at every level.
The CEO has enough power to prevent such a thing from ever happening (by that I mean he can easily create a morally corrupt company culture) and there is a very big profit motive to do so.