Live data from Hacker News

US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

on.ft.com

271–280 of 367 posts

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#271

As an aside, For all those who talk about corruption and getting money out of politics I suggest reading Federalist 10 by Madison. Its a deep analysis of a need for a republican democracy. Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another.

Neither this nor any of the top replies make even a cursory effort to connect these thoughts to the friggin article this conversation is supposed to be about. It’s literally dozens of irrelevant comments sitting like deadweight at the top of the post.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#272
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another. Absolutely! Any form of government that depends on an unbroken line of "good people" in power will fail, and fail much sooner than anybody thinks. Modern China has already reached the end of their…

> And government should only have as much power as you think the worst possible people in charge should have. This immediately falls apart, by that logic we should literally have no government or society to speak of. "Only as much power as you think the worst possible person should have" would mean literally no power - there isn't a single decision in my life I would pass off to the worst person I could think of. Wha…

Taking an argument to it's logical conclusion isn't "falling apart". The best scenario for governance is anarchy; ideally we could all just do what we want. It is a tautology that anything we're forced to do by the police is something we don't think is a good idea/in our interests.

The problem with anarchy is that it will get toppled by a group - probably internally to the society - that is organised and forms a standing military. Organised factions tend to grow. The US is creeping in the same direction as a group like the USSR or China - an overdeveloped and too-powerful central bureaucracy - but much more slowly because it started from a well designed system with lots of checks and balances. But just because centralised power tends to be stable doesn't mean it is good, decentralised power is much more pleasant to live under.

So the ideal government is anarchy, the practically ideal government is as close to anarchy as we can get without being destabilised by a military, and the reality of the situation is militarys form and tend to move away from anarchy towards tyranny. But that doesn't make them good.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#273
post #141

As an aside, For all those who talk about corruption and getting money out of politics I suggest reading Federalist 10 by Madison. Its a deep analysis of a need for a republican democracy. Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another.

> The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances I don't think this viewpoint can be supported empirically. The US government has much stronger checks and balances than most parliamentary systems where the prime minister is elected by the parliament. This means that there's no split possible between the executive and legislative branch. I think the result of this in the US is that…

> in the US is that the government tends to deadlock

This is a feature. In a unitary state, it would be suicide. But in a federation, national disagreement prompts gridlock which automatically devolves the question.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#274
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the Federalist Papers are great works, I don't agree with taking them as enlightened guidance from on high. They were theorizing. No one of them really knew how a modern democracy/republic would actually work in practice. Remember, the authors of the constitution (large overlap) stated on the record that they expected they got a lot of it wrong, and expected large swathes of it to be amended and replaced once a…

The Supreme Court itself wasn't really defined by the constitution - they conveyed a need for it - but not how to structure it, given the lack of historical data. They also foresaw the problems with parties but didn't take enough steps to retire them. This is why things like Roe V. Wade are (/were) so controversial. Does the Supreme Court have the right to imagine new rights to abortion with no textual basis in the C…

The Supreme Court's power of judicial review isn't defined in the text of the Constitution. It was applied by the Court to itself not by interpreting the text but reading between the lines and deciding it should have been there.

It seems to me that if we can accept that then we've already accepted that the Supreme Court can imagine new rights with no textual basis in the Constitution. After all, the Constitution isn't meant to describe an exhaustive list of rights so much as maximally bind the Federal government as to what rights it is allowed to abridge. So the concept of "rights having a textual basis in the Constitution" is nonsensical, ̶a̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶C̶o̶n̶s̶t̶i̶t̶u̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶t̶s̶e̶l̶f̶ ̶c̶l̶a̶i̶m̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶r̶i̶g̶h̶t̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶g̶r̶a̶n̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶a̶ ̶"̶C̶r̶e̶a̶t̶o̶r̶,̶"̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶o̶v̶e̶r̶n̶m̶e̶n̶t̶.̶ (edit: ... ok that was in the Bill of Rights my bad but still, rights aren't defined by the Constitution.)

Also, RBG believed abortion could be supported as Constitutional right, but she preferred an argument on the basis of equal protection over the arguments from privacy that underpinned Roe V. Wade, which she believed were too weak and easily undermined (and she was correct.)

The only relevant question per the Constitution is not whether the right to an abortion exists, but whether the Federal government should be allowed to interfere with that right, whether states should be allowed to interfere with that right, or whether that right should be left in its default state of being claimed by the people.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another. Absolutely! Any form of government that depends on an unbroken line of "good people" in power will fail, and fail much sooner than anybody thinks. Modern China has already reached the end of their…

Strangely the UK, which has a no formal constitution and an unimaginable number "gentleman's agreement" parliamentary traditions - with absolutely no recourse for political malfeasance - has faired remarkably well for hundreds of years. The entire system is built on the notion that "the next leader will probably not undermine the entire system". It's only really faced a couple of real internal systemic threats throug…

With the French Revolution, the American Revolution, then Imperialism, then World War 2 and then its loss of influence: The UK faired remarkably simply because of the Enlightenment and later, the consequences of fighting against the people. Then antagonizing ally that shared many common interests.

Still, I can totally see the UK’s democracy devolving quickly, if in the decades and generations ahead governments trend towards authoritarianism.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#276
post #6

What other industry is allowed to inspect itself? It completely ruins the point of an inspection. It's like being the judge and jury in your own trial. I'm amazed this is a thing in the first place.

After Mattel shipped in a bunch of lead painted toys from China a law was passed requiring inspections for everyone except Mattel who were deemed large enough to inspect themselves, even though their negligence was the cause of the law.

Holy cow...if that is true

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#277

Have we concluded that the bolts/nuts/door was assembled incorrectly and not faulty metallurgy or faulty assembly instructions? Still unsure if the recent door issue was a matter of sloppy assembly (which inspection should find) or sloppy specifications/equipment (which inspection would reinforce, possibly making things worse).

Obviously the NTSB report is not finalized, but I think we can rule out metallurgy. Even just from the photos you can see that the tabs in the airplane that the door plug rides up against and the corresponding tabs on the door (even though it fell out of the airplane) are still intact. The only other faulty metallurgy issues remaining would be if certain bolts that have not yet been found had failed. The likelihood of that is extremely low given how new the plane is, and there would be evidence of wear on the corresponding parts, which has not been reported. This pretty much guarantees some level of faulty assembly with incorrectly torqued or (most likely) missing bolts. Very much the sort of accident for which aerospace has a process to prevent.

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with the two crashes air travel was still the safest form of travel those years (as it is every year, it has quite the buffer actually). This kind of fear mongering doesn't help anything. If airplanes were invented today people like you would have had them outlawed after the first accident.

[flagged]

FHWA requested 68.9 billion for 2023. How many car crashes should there be?

https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2022-03/F...

For the curious: https://www.transportation.gov/mission/budget/fiscal-year-20...

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there isn't a single decision in my life I would pass off to the worst person I could think of This is actually the point though. You shouldn't have to give power to an individual. If you're going to, you should give that power to a group of individuals who have to agree for the thing to move forward. And then have checks on that group as well. I live in South Carolina and one of the things I like about how this st…

Sounds like South Carolina follows a Westminster style government. Look at the UK, NZ, AU governments (and I assume Canada, don't know for sure): A King, or Governor-General, with the theoretical power to override parliament. A Head of State which can issue decrees and makes important decisions "on the advice of the Prime Minster". Basically a figure head and a bunch of legal fictions wrapped up in the concept of "Th…

Westminster system is not a particularly good example of checks and balances, though, given that whole parliamentary supremacy thing. A Westminster-style Parliament is essentially unanswerable to anyone but the voters; and even then it can unilaterally change election laws, so it can circumvent the voters as well. If the courts deem some act of Parliament unlawful, the latter can just pass another act explicitly declaring it lawful (the recent Safety of Rwanda Bill was a good example of just such an attempt).

Re: US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

#280
post #190
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And government should only have as much power as you think the worst possible people in charge should have. This immediately falls apart, by that logic we should literally have no government or society to speak of. "Only as much power as you think the worst possible person should have" would mean literally no power - there isn't a single decision in my life I would pass off to the worst person I could think of. Wha…

In addition to all of the theoretical responses provided, I would also say that the US has withstood the test (so far). Trump is probably one of the “worst”* people and held the highest office. And yet despite the fact that it happened, the US is still chugging along. Bad things happened but the quality of life is similar to pre-trump presidency (as long as you are willing to discount for covid’s impact on the world)…

> Trump is probably one of the “worst”* people and held the highest office. And yet despite the fact that it happened, the US is still chugging along.

until the next election occurs we haven't really seen the effect of the damage done in 2020

1 in 3 voters no longer believing that the electoral system is fit for purpose ("the election was stolen") is really very scary

Post reply on HN