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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

#231

Post by robertlagrant »

oersted wrote: post #229
robertlagrant wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't really understand that as a point, though. What would punishing a company look like? Why wouldn't we want to figure out how to punish (or hold accountable) individuals, instead of focusing on the fact that we can't punish legal entities?

We can't punish countries either, even though they can also do these things. We can only punish people. So what?

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

#232

Post by tempaway4512641 »

kumarvvr wrote: post #219
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 --…

Corporations understand and fear only 2 things. Money. Control. Either the fine should be high enough to alert investors and ensure that they make the company change its ways.. Or The govt. should provisionally or in a timebound manner take a seat or two on the board. Let the govt. Do this for a few companies, and every otger company will fall in line. Corporations must be treated as children of the country they are…

how you teach manners

You can't teach a corporation manners. If you are going to talk about corporations as if they are people (and legally they want us to treat them as people) then you have to face that they are, technically speaking, artificial psychopaths (incapacity to experience guilt, failure to conform to social norms and respect the law, reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness in pursuit of profit, etc). Very powerful, immortal, artificial psychopaths.

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

#234

Post by paulnpace »

I tend to think that a more just system would transfer ownership of criminal organizations to victims, which would also supersede all outstanding financial liabilities. Especially this last point would destroy credit options for companies suspected of criminal activity as the larger creditors will hire private investigators.

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

#235

Post by sgarland »

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…

Gee, maybe we’d get people who are knowledgeable and care about engineering rigor, instead of MBAs whose sole goal is to make the share price go up.

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

#236

Post by lenerdenator »

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 put in place an incentive to not do these things. Corporate executives and boards do these things because they're incentivized to do so through stock price-based compensation.

Great risk should come with great reward. We no longer assign risk to most executives at publicly-traded, multinational corporations, but the reward is still great.

I'll leave it to your imagination to figure out what the risk should be, but it should be something that a golden parachute shouldn't be able to resolve.

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

#237

Post by ralferoo »

constantcrying wrote: post #36
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 --…

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…

> I also think people don't understand how extremely lucky Boeing is.

Disagree. I think most people can see how lucky it is for them that they can avoid an expensive and protracted court case, just say "oh yeah, we're guilty of a serious fraud" and the only consequence is some fines that amount to about 1% of their annual revenue. With consequences like that, it seems like the government is actively encouraging them to commit fraud...

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

#238

Post by robertlagrant »

thoronton wrote: post #162
constantcrying wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Their company is filled with humans, though. A human can do something illegal.

For example: if someone breaks into a bank, do you always fire the CEO?

Then: if an employee of the bank breaks into a bank, now do you always fire the CEO?

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

#239

Post by llamaimperative »

adwn wrote: post #149
rob74 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, ultimately responsible are the shareholders who demand ever higher profits, and the top management has to deliver that, even if it hurts the company long term; or, to generalize even more, capitalism.

> ultimately responsible are the shareholders who demand ever higher profits, and the top management has to deliver that That's not how this works. The shareholders don't have direct authority over the decisions made by the company's chief officers. They can demand "higher profits" all day long, but that doesn't absolve the board of directors or management from their responsibility, and it doesn't give them a blank c…

A problem doesn’t need to be specific to capitalism in order to be caused by it. Of course this is all a result (a predictable one) of a certain type of capitalist theory, namely extreme shareholder primacy.

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

#240

Post by Gujdek »

constantcrying wrote: post #81
archerx wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The criminal precedent of punishing a person for a crime they didn't commit and had no knowledge of is so bad that I honestly didn't think any reasonable person could come up with this.

In cases like this it should be even harsher than a prison or monetary punishment, I like what China is doing by executing White collar criminals such as CEO's for negligence, fraud, causing death etc:

https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-white-collar-crimina...

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