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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

#161

Post by oersted »

robertlagrant wrote: post #130
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can make investments, sue, go bankrupt, have bank accounts, like a person, in their own name instead of the owner.

Can you explain why that matters? Yes a company can have a bank account. A company also has a name, like a person. An age, like a person. But what does that matter?

Certain laws apply to any person, which includes companies. A company can own things like you own things, and has similar protections. A company is accountable to its promises (contracts, fraud...), like you would be, although punishments might be different.

It's like a union type: `type Person = Human | Company`. Or like inheritance: `class Human(Person)`, `class Company(Person)`. Or a typeclass/trait/interface...

It allows you to reuse many laws for both humans and companies, without having to specify them or define special cases every time it is mentioned.

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

#162

Post by thoronton »

constantcrying wrote: post #71
cycomanic wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well what are the ridiculously high salaries for if they don't even take responsibility. I mean parents are liable for their children, so why should a CEO not be made responsible for the culture of the corporation underneath them?

Because that would be a perversion of justice. You can not pay someone to take on criminal liability for crimes they didn't commit and could not have any knowledge of. Just imagine what precedent this would set if it was allowed. If courts would accept that criminal liability can be transferred in exchange of cash, how would the justice system look like? "Culture" is completely ephemeral and having a court of law det…

> Parents do not take on the crimes of their children. They are criminally liable for not overseeing their children's action and/or for not preventing their actions, which is something totally different.

It is not completely different. The CEOs should be liable for not properly overseeing their company and for not preventing the illegal actions of the company they're in charge of.

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

#163

Post by endominus »

abenga wrote: post #123
constantcrying wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who should be responsible for a company's crimes if not the people who make decisions in the company? The person committing that crime. >If we want companies to have legal personhood, how about they suffer the same perils of breaking the law (prison time, etc)? Companies can not be put to jail.

The people committing the crime include those who make the decisions. Hiring an assassin makes me guilty of murder.

I'm almost certain that's not true (at least, not in my own jurisdiction). Conspiracy to commit murder, perhaps. "Murder for hire" is apparently the DoJ term (https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/murder-hire-convict-sen...).

But that's not the situation here anyway. Is an architect guilty of murder if a building he designs collapses? Flaws in his design may have contributed. What about the construction company that built it? Perhaps they were incompetent and sloppy in their construction. The suppliers might be at fault as well; they could have sold inferior steel or concrete. What about the politicians that passed faulty legislation for building codes? Does some of the blame not fall on them too? Or the maintenance company that skimped on their maintenance checks and could possibly have seen the cracks forming?

There is very rarely, despite the assurances of five-whys and other incident response practices, a clear-cut and obvious point of failure when complex systems break. The Boeing situation was a failure of culture, people say. Maybe. They justify criminal charges on the C-suite as a result. Maybe even that is just, for a certain definition of justice. But the buck doesn't have to stop there. Where are the criminal charges for the shareholders, who chose to keep these criminals at the head of the company? Where are the charges against the FAA, who continued to do leave Boeing to be its own regulator? Why not cast blame on the previous CEOs as well? After all, culture takes a long time to change, and the current CEO has only been in the role since 2020 - the MAX's first flight was in 2016!

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

#164

Post by mxkopy »

keiferski wrote: post #160
mxkopy wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 re…

My experience is way different, I think most people understand criminal and civil cases as “the cops arrest you” vs “you need to go to a hearing”, which in most cases is the practical difference. Either way I think your overall point of not disincentivizing entrepreneurship is correct, unless people are dying or otherwise being hurt as a result of it.

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

#165

Post by josefx »

constantcrying wrote: post #75
davedx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that finding the people responsible can be extremely hard > What Boeing really needs is a complete change in management culture Who is ultimately responsible for management at a company though? The CEO and the other C-level people. This isn't really the daunting difficult problem you make it out to be: the buck stops at the C-suite. Who else could possibly be ultimately responsible??

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 had no knowledge of.

A the time honored excuse of "sorry mister officer I did not know the car I was driving was stolen, I just found it on the road a few days ago and had no idea I swear".

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

#166

Post by tossandthrow »

roenxi wrote: post #158
tossandthrow wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems like the US has some really weird rules in this regard then. For the C-suite to take on personal risk is literally a part of the role where I live. the central business registry register those holding these roles for that exact reason.

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

#167

Post by Arnt »

archerx wrote: post #61
constantcrying wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that finding the people responsible can be extremely hard, so you have to go against the corporation itself. Punishing a corporation is easy, but the government hates doing it for obvious reasons. It means ruining something which is useful to you and punishing tens of thousands of completely innocent people, with inevitable layoffs. What Boeing really needs is a complete change in management culture, a…

Make the CEO responsible, want those big rewards (high ceo pay) get ready to deal with big responsibility. I’m sure if CEOs were criminally liable things would change very quickly.

So the CEO says in court: «I am now aware that some of the issues on your jira backlog caused damage to our customers. The very-well-compensated programming team leader and the highly paid programmers reported to me that there were no such issues in the backlog, and based on their written assessment I decided to release the new version. It would be impossible for me to check every detail, and therefore unreasonable for the jury to expect that.» And the jury agrees, and someone goes to prison but it isn't the CEO.

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

#168

Post by BiteCode_dev »

robertlagrant wrote: post #130
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can make investments, sue, go bankrupt, have bank accounts, like a person, in their own name instead of the owner.

Can you explain why that matters? Yes a company can have a bank account. A company also has a name, like a person. An age, like a person. But what does that matter?

We moved the power from the human to something we said is "human enough" to have them. But this thing is a concept, it doesn't exist. It can't die. It can change forms until it doesn't pay taxes. It can't experience pain or go to prison.

Basically, we gave the power to the company without the responsibilities to the humans behind it because there is less consequences, less skin in the game.

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

#169

Post by vmladenov »

consp wrote: post #134
constantcrying wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Did the CEO believe his people were incompetent to develop and verify the software? Did the CEO create the culture in which they could not despite being able to?

IIUC the decisions that led to the 737 Max happened under the prior CEO Muilenburg. Calhoun is just the fall guy. He wasn’t even CEO when the crashes happened.

He should bear responsibility for the door plugs, though.

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

#170

Post by davedx »

constantcrying wrote: post #75
davedx wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that finding the people responsible can be extremely hard > What Boeing really needs is a complete change in management culture Who is ultimately responsible for management at a company though? The CEO and the other C-level people. This isn't really the daunting difficult problem you make it out to be: the buck stops at the C-suite. Who else could possibly be ultimately responsible??

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.

Who didn't have any knowledge of what, here? Are you saying the CEO of Boeing had no idea what was going on with the 737 MAX program?
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