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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

#221

Post by sumedh »

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 --…

> You have to dismantle a company before it changes these kinds of deep-rooted issues?

When you dismantle a company, people lose jobs, that does not look good on TV for politicians.

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

#222

Post by Varqu »

hibikir wrote: post #213
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 --…

Most corporations end up building systems that spread responsibility and make it very difficult for anyone to believe they can say no to things they disagree with. How many decisions are supposed to be made by groups where nobody can claim actual responsibility? Commitments that are supposedly made by a team, but where it's clear to the team they have to say yes? People get very nervous, and reviews tend to suffer, w…

How about we put responsibility on the CEOs and other C-levels?

When it comes to justifying the compensation packages, they are first to claim that they are responsible for the company achievements.

If they would actually face jail-time for non-disputable wrongdoing, then it would actually balance it out.

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

#223

Post by sumedh »

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.

Does management get to enjoy profits/bonuses when things are going good, if yes then why can they share the pain as well?

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

#224

Post by bilbo0s »

jltsiren wrote: post #148
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.

In the legal culture I'm familiar with, the CEO and the board of directors can be held liable for everything the company does. If they are not aware of the crime but they should have been, it can be seen as gross negligence. As far as I understand, the legal theory is that the CEO and the directors are organs of the company rather than natural persons when acting in their roles. Therefore some of the usual legal prot…

You are all arguing irrelevant points. Because the premise is false.

You can identify the people responsible. I won't bother to explain it all, but at very step of the manufacturing process different workers signed off on the integrity of their work. All of that paperwork was logged with the US government. If you let me peruse those papers I could tell you who designed each and every component of the landing gear, and which workers assembled that landing gear on each and every MAX out there. I can tell you which executives signed off on it, and if you subpoena the documents I could even tell you what they were all emailing back and forth. More importantly, I can tell you which QA engineers and executives were involved in the QA and testing process for that landing gear and give you the results of the tests they ran. So on and so forth, all the way up to the CEO.

We can identify people. We've simply decided that we won't. You guys are arguing an orthogonal point as to whether or not to hold C level executives accountable. I can tell you right now you're going to effect much better change if you target key executives at the director-VP level than if you target C level people.

We do need to get rid of the rats. And a lot of those are C level executives, but it's important right now to get rid of all the rats. And right now, many of those rats are being promoted.

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

#225

Post by mminer237 »

immibis wrote: post #69
potsandpans wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To commit criminal fraud with impunity?

Kind of, yes. The legal purpose of a corporate structure is that the corporation is a liability shield for the people in it.

It's to provide limited financial liability for the shareholders; the actual employees don't get any. And it has nothing to do with criminal liability.

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

#226

Post by hnthrow289570 »

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.

We should certainly do something about CEOs being in charge of large multi-billion dollar companies, rarely having direct consequences, and still being rich. It is currently reasonable that a CEO might not know everything when something happens the first time in a huge company. We shouldn't have only one person responsible, but likely a group. This is more important in safety critical industries, but less so for something like a luxury goods company, so you wouldn't want to force every company to this structure.

This is currently an advantageous single point-of-failure for companies and CEOs, and the advantage grows the more safety critical the industry that they're in. The company structure prevents any real responsibility except when the crime is blatant (like the CEO was recorded or wrote down something).

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

#227

Post by harimau777 »

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.

CEOs get paid massive amounts for supposedly being responsible for the company. So why shouldn't they be held responsible for the company?

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

#228

Post by virtue3 »

hibikir wrote: post #213
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 --…

Most corporations end up building systems that spread responsibility and make it very difficult for anyone to believe they can say no to things they disagree with. How many decisions are supposed to be made by groups where nobody can claim actual responsibility? Commitments that are supposedly made by a team, but where it's clear to the team they have to say yes? People get very nervous, and reviews tend to suffer, w…

Toyota also failed miserably with the unintended accelerator pedals. And basically pulled some of the same stunts with denial and cover ups and blaming everyone but themselves (legally you have to do this I suppose).

So I don't think they're a great example of having excellent QA everywhere. And kind of helps with your point of if the ORG and the division of that org is really thinking about quality and what they ship then it carries through. But that might not be the case for every part of the company (I.E. Boeing)

Turned out to be extremely bad code and some potential mechanical issues from what I understand[1]

[1] https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_...

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

#229

Post by oersted »

robertlagrant wrote: post #171
oersted wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... I…

Sorry, again I don't understand why this matters.

I think the point of OP was that in many ways companies have many of the same rights and privileges as individuals, but cannot be punished in the same ways.

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

#230

Post by gruez »

immibis wrote: post #212
gruez wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still not murder unless they intended for the deaths to occur.

> The felony murder rule is a rule that allows a defendant to be charged with first-degree murder for a killing that occurs during a dangerous felony, even if the defendant is not the killer.

Is whatever Boeing did a "dangerous felony"? Wikipedia suggests not every crime qualifies:

>To avoid the need for reliance upon common law interpretations of what felony conduct merges with murder, and what offenses do and do not qualify for felony murder, many U.S. jurisdictions explicitly list what offenses qualify in a felony murder statute. Federal law specifies additional crimes, including terrorism, kidnapping, and carjacking.

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