Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 611 posts

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

#251

Post by thuuuomas »

lenerdenator wrote: post #236
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, bu…

If your safety systems fail, we pierce the corporate veil.

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

#252

Post by paulnpace »

taspeotis wrote: post #241
paulnpace wrote: post #234

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.

But then the shareholders wouldn't own the company anymore, so they'd be victims of the crime too, and get ownership transferred straight back to them.

I think you pretty much have to make that argument work for all cases of restitution (you can't), because at the base of the claim is that the previous owners are minimally negligent, thus should not own the property.

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

#253

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

Arnt wrote: post #167
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.

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 f…

Eh, my current project manager does not even seem to check every detail and we appear to be moving by pretty dashboards, so I expect CEO will have even smaller, simpler dashboard. Fwiw, if CEO got in front of the jury, I would expect things to look bleak for the CEO ( it is not exactly a favored class now ). There is a reason it does not happen often ( for example outright fraud ala Bankman ).

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

#254

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

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.

In this case they've clearly done the opposite.

You seem to be arguing that the C-suite can do anything it wants to. As long as it does it in an official capacity, it can cause whatever harm it wants.

That seems like a very strange argument. Do you believe corporations and corporate officers have no moral obligation to act ethically?

Because if so, I'm finding it hard to understand the difference between a corporation and a crime family.

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

#255

Post by smackeyacky »

davedx wrote: post #59
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…

> 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??

The board is responsible for keeping the C suite honest. They need to be removed.

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

#256

Post by perilunar »

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…

Sounds good to me. We'd end up with aerospace companies run by engineers who understand the technical decisions in detail, instead of MBAs and accountants.

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

#257

Post by perilunar »

isolli wrote: post #242
sumedh wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Wipe out existing shareholders and sell fresh shares on the open market. Nothing else needs to change.

I think you'd probably want to replace the board and the top management also.

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

#258

Post by bluGill »

zarzavat wrote: post #181
swarnie wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The second crash was murder. No civilised justice system in the world is getting to murder from these facts. Manslaughter via negligence if you're feeling really lucky

Depends on if it could be shown that the decision to not ground was motivated by a desire for profit or not.

There are different degrees of murder. First degree requires you to plan in advance kill someone (either particular person or a specific group). Second degree murder doesn't require the plan to kill, and so negligence for financial gain COULD be second degree murder depending on the details. (Boeing knew or should have known that their mistakes could lead to death and so mitigated this)

Note that US states are not consistent on what is second degree murder. I cannot find a federal definition (I'm not a lawyer - this should be seen as me not knowing the right search terms). There are many other countries with their own definitions of murder which are all slightly different.

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

#259

Post by [deleted] »

lenerdenator wrote: post #236
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, bu…

[deleted]

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

#260

Post by robertlagrant »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #244
robertlagrant wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Actually, it's the same point. We are currently trying to punish entities (with fines), and it's ineffective. We should move back to punishing people more, and moving back the responsibility to people, instead of pretending companies are people, and therefore responsible.

But it's such a strange angle. Should we stop companies having bank accounts in order to do that? Who cares if they have a bank account?
Post reply on HN