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Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

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Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#151

Post by close04 »

constantcrying wrote: post #105
michaelt wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the ship's captain was asleep in a drunken stupor while the 17 year old helmsman crashed the ship into an iceberg, should the captain go unpunished? I feel that punishing sobriety and rewarding drunkenness is probably not a good idea, if we want to avoid our ships hitting icebergs.

Bad analogies won't help anyone. Did the CEO believe his people were incompetent to develop and verify the software?

Analogies don't have to be perfect unless you don't want see inconvenient arguments. Boeing CEO(s) shot hundreds of people in the head and then claimed they had no idea the gun was loaded and the safety was off. "My assistants said it's fine to point and shoot".

It's not about the result or what the CEO "believes", it's about what they reasonably did to avoid bad outcomes. Did the CEO do anything to be certain his people are competent, or that an incompetent person cannot tank the quality of the product? Did they take any reasonable measures, implemented checks, ordered audits, spent more to prioritized safety and quality?

The CEO has the highest executive authority and the highest pay. This means the highest level of accountability. Until the shit hits the fan, or the ground, and then the employees were incompetent, the processes were weak, the consultants that weren't picked by the CEO said it's all good.

The reason they get away with this isn't that the law protects them, it's that they fill pockets and buy laws to protect them. Random "Empty Pockets" Joe won't get a pass for building something that kills people because they didn't bother to verify anything.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#152

Post by tialaramex »

michaelt wrote: post #88
constantcrying wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can not punish someone for a crime they didn't commit and had no knowledge of. That is ridiculous and a perversion of justice.

If the ship's captain was asleep in a drunken stupor while the 17 year old helmsman crashed the ship into an iceberg, should the captain go unpunished? I feel that punishing sobriety and rewarding drunkenness is probably not a good idea, if we want to avoid our ships hitting icebergs.

A vessel's master will always leave standing orders to be followed while they're asleep. Typically these orders solve only some routine choices that were anticipated, and for anything extraordinary the master should be awoken at once and consulted.

The junior watch officer should have summoned the master long before the ship hit an iceberg, if they are inattentive (e.g. they fall asleep in the warm dark of a bridge at night) the BNWAS will alarm to try to wake them, then eventually summon senior officers (typically the master, but maybe also a chief engineer and others) to the bridge. The master is responsible for ensuring the BNWAS is operable.

It would be extremely unusual for a commercial vessel (not to mention military vessel) to allow officers to drink booze, especially enough booze to fall "asleep in a drunken stupor". Of course just because something is prohibited doesn't mean it won't happen, but now we're talking about culpability and of course you're culpable if as a foreseeable consequence of your prohibited actions bad things happen, that's negligence at best.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#153

Post by tossandthrow »

roenxi wrote: post #143
constantcrying wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can not punish someone for a crime they didn't commit and had no knowledge of. That is ridiculous and a perversion of justice.

And the level of risk the CEO/C Suite would have to take on would be insane. Who would want to be in charge of an aerospace company if there was a real risk that you'd get charged with murder if you don't have an almost psychic insight into the technical decisions of your company? There'd be a filtering effect where the best and brightest avoid industries where we need them to be. That standard would likely reduce th…

Why, again, are the c suite being paid as much as they do if not to take on this risk?

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#155

Post by oersted »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #29
supernova87a wrote: post #25

Our governmental methods of punishment for corporations strike me as lacking. This seems similar to Wells Fargo, where ok, the company was fined, sued, made to pay restitution (somewhat) to victims. But underlying it all, the culture and incentives at the company that produced the situation didn't get fundamentally changed. Which often perpetuates across specific leaders, boards, and is a part of what a company is --…

Companies are persons, except they are not. They cannot die. They cannot go to prison. This concept of a moral person is a totally unfair advantage that they exploit again and again.

Modern companies are a lot like we expect AGIs to be.

It's an interesting thought that I keep coming across, I'm not sure if I necessarily agree with it.

In a sense, companies are super-human intelligent autonomous beings, with much more power to act on the world than any individual. We are able to partially control them within a complex incentive and enforcement structure, but it is difficult to fully align them with what society needs.

It's good news in a sense, we can control AGIs with similar systems, they have the same resource constraints as any other entity if they want to have an impact in the real world.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#156

Post by thoronton »

constantcrying wrote: post #77
lordnacho wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is key. I don't see why the system shouldn't be set up that way. Company does something criminal, now boss is considered a criminal.

That is a perversion of justice. You can not transfer criminal liability for money. Your employees can be criminals regardless of culture. The precedent this would set is ridiculous.

The people in charge have to ensure that the right measures are in place to prevent illegal behavior. If they do not do that, then they are liable. At Boeing, effective measures are obviously not in place.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#157

Post by mxkopy »

keiferski wrote: post #122
rlpb wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And so you really don’t want to set up a situation where the operators of a company are by-default responsible for anything that their company does. I think you're conflating criminality with civil liability here (covering legal risk taking and mere incompetence). The former is what's under discussion here. The latter is what allows entrepreneurs to take risk for economic benefit.

Sure they are different things, but culturally I do think they are treated interchangeably. The average person on the street probably couldn’t tell you if X celebrity was embroiled in a civil or criminal trial, merely that they’re in a trial. I still think it would be very anti-entrepreneurial culture to make company operators liable by default for everything their company does. Again the key word phrase here is “by…

> The average person on the street probably couldn’t tell you if X celebrity was embroiled in a civil or criminal trial, merely that they’re in a trial.

Source?

I think the difference between criminal and civil cases is great enough that a precedent for one need not apply to the other. If you’re investigating dead bodies it’s a vastly different situation than a he-said-she-said whatever case and should be persecuted differently.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#158

Post by roenxi »

tossandthrow wrote: post #153
roenxi wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the level of risk the CEO/C Suite would have to take on would be insane. Who would want to be in charge of an aerospace company if there was a real risk that you'd get charged with murder if you don't have an almost psychic insight into the technical decisions of your company? There'd be a filtering effect where the best and brightest avoid industries where we need them to be. That standard would likely reduce th…

Why, again, are the c suite being paid as much as they do if not to take on this risk?

To fullfill their role? Management and making decisions? Taking on personal risk has never been a part of the C suite beyond the tradition of giving them shares as part of their compensation.

Shareholders use positive incentives, not negative ones. Because positive incentives generally lead to better results in this case.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#159

Post by actionfromafar »

tossandthrow wrote: post #153
roenxi wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the level of risk the CEO/C Suite would have to take on would be insane. Who would want to be in charge of an aerospace company if there was a real risk that you'd get charged with murder if you don't have an almost psychic insight into the technical decisions of your company? There'd be a filtering effect where the best and brightest avoid industries where we need them to be. That standard would likely reduce th…

Why, again, are the c suite being paid as much as they do if not to take on this risk?

We need them energetic and vigorous! /s

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#160

Post by keiferski »

mxkopy wrote: post #157
keiferski wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they are different things, but culturally I do think they are treated interchangeably. The average person on the street probably couldn’t tell you if X celebrity was embroiled in a civil or criminal trial, merely that they’re in a trial. I still think it would be very anti-entrepreneurial culture to make company operators liable by default for everything their company does. Again the key word phrase here is “by…

> The average person on the street probably couldn’t tell you if X celebrity was embroiled in a civil or criminal trial, merely that they’re in a trial. Source? I think the difference between criminal and civil cases is great enough that a precedent for one need not apply to the other. If you’re investigating dead bodies it’s a vastly different situation than a he-said-she-said whatever case and should be persecuted…

What kind of source do you expect me to give you? A study that interviews random people and asks them if they know the difference between civil and criminal law? I’d be very surprised if that has ever been done.

It’s merely my opinion that the difference between civil and criminal law is largely unclear to the average person. In defense of that I’d say my own anecdotal experience, the behavior of people during the recent ex-president’s trials, and the plethora of questions asking about it online. I think most people put “law” and “court” into one big bucket and don’t make too many sub divisions.

I’m not sure what else I could give as evidence here.

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