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

cnbc.com

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

#491

Post by afavour »

tomp wrote: post #485
ilyagr wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you think it will take for Congress to fix the law? Until then, the ancestor poster's interpretation of "Don't worry, it's now legal for the judge and everyone else involved to get a nice present from Boeing, as long as it happens afterwards!" is more or less correct AFAICT (though I'd appreciate more educated opinions).

This ”congress is too slow” is an oft-repeated trope but completely wrong. What people like you don’t understand is that slowness is a feature, not a bug ! The first COVID relief bill was passed in less than a month. Because it had broad support and was urgent! Laws that have broad support are passed quickly. Laws that lack broad support are passed slowly or not at all. That how lawmaking should work!

> Laws that have broad support are passed quickly. Laws that lack broad support are passed slowly or not at all

Not really. COVID relief got passed because of incredible urgency to people’s everyday lives. Reform to stop a corporation from effectively bribing a judge would have plenty of broad support. It just wouldn’t have the urgency. There are a ton of popular ideas that get zero traction in congress.

And still none of this engages with the OP’s broader point which is that it’s sub optimal for courts to substantially change the interpretation of law and then punt to a slow moving congress to follow up. The power in congress is not directly connected to broad popularity, a representative of a tiny fraction of the population is able to halt any and all progress. That’s not efficient lawmaking.

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

#492

Post by worik »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #364
tsunamifury wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really want the engineer who was last on the line of decisions to go to jail? Because that’s how this will go.

Yes! Even as an engineer. I've quit jobs over ethics / safety concerns and I want that pushback to be the norm. When I need to convince other engineers I want to be able to point to such consequences as to why we shouldn't be dangerously cutting corners. And even if you only punish engineers it will decrease the pool of talent / cost effectiveness of workers available to the unscrupulous managers such that cutting co…

> Yes! Even as an engineer. I've quit jobs over ethics / safety concerns and I want that pushback to be the norm

Yes

But it will be much more effective if the managers risk jail

Engineers often need the money and simply cannot quit like thar

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

#493

Post by mburns »

tomp wrote: post #485
ilyagr wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you think it will take for Congress to fix the law? Until then, the ancestor poster's interpretation of "Don't worry, it's now legal for the judge and everyone else involved to get a nice present from Boeing, as long as it happens afterwards!" is more or less correct AFAICT (though I'd appreciate more educated opinions).

This ”congress is too slow” is an oft-repeated trope but completely wrong. What people like you don’t understand is that slowness is a feature, not a bug ! The first COVID relief bill was passed in less than a month. Because it had broad support and was urgent! Laws that have broad support are passed quickly. Laws that lack broad support are passed slowly or not at all. That how lawmaking should work!

Lots of bills with broad public support don’t even come to a vote let alone become law.

What you meant to say is broad support amongst politicians, assuming that group represents a supermajority of votes in both chambers.

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

#494

Post by robertlagrant »

actionfromafar wrote: post #417
robertlagrant wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have those terms. The way they are used is not relevant here.

If the entity (be it a corporation or AGI-driven corporation) learns from the punishment (or its peers learn by observation) it doesn't matter if the entity is sentient, the outcome is less of the unwanted behaviour. I didn't mean anything more complicated than that.

The corporation cannot learn. Why anthropomorphise when you can actually think about the real problem: how to incentivise the people who own and direct companies to behave well.

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

#495

Post by TylerE »

tomp wrote: post #485
ilyagr wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you think it will take for Congress to fix the law? Until then, the ancestor poster's interpretation of "Don't worry, it's now legal for the judge and everyone else involved to get a nice present from Boeing, as long as it happens afterwards!" is more or less correct AFAICT (though I'd appreciate more educated opinions).

This ”congress is too slow” is an oft-repeated trope but completely wrong. What people like you don’t understand is that slowness is a feature, not a bug ! The first COVID relief bill was passed in less than a month. Because it had broad support and was urgent! Laws that have broad support are passed quickly. Laws that lack broad support are passed slowly or not at all. That how lawmaking should work!

They couldn't even convict for obvious treason. Congress isn't working.

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

#496

Post by ilyagr »

tomp wrote: post #485
ilyagr wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you think it will take for Congress to fix the law? Until then, the ancestor poster's interpretation of "Don't worry, it's now legal for the judge and everyone else involved to get a nice present from Boeing, as long as it happens afterwards!" is more or less correct AFAICT (though I'd appreciate more educated opinions).

This ”congress is too slow” is an oft-repeated trope but completely wrong. What people like you don’t understand is that slowness is a feature, not a bug ! The first COVID relief bill was passed in less than a month. Because it had broad support and was urgent! Laws that have broad support are passed quickly. Laws that lack broad support are passed slowly or not at all. That how lawmaking should work!

I intentionally made my previous comments as factual as possible.

To editorialize a but, I don't believe Congress will fix this law in the near future, because enough congresscritters and their donors benefit from congresscritters being able to take "gratuities". The present state of American democracy is not healthy enough to keep them accountable for such self-serving decisions.

Until recently, rightly or wrongly, the court system was one of the few remaining checks on such corruption. The Supreme Court just decided the federal courts (at least, it might affect state courts too) will no longer care about much of it.

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

#497

Post by worik »

Aurornis wrote: post #341
Joel_Mckay wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually in most places, technically as president/CEO of a firm you are already liable for any criminal conduct by your firm/employees-on-the-job. The corporate lawyers should have clearly warned them about this already. Additionally, any criminal lawyer should have warned Boeing people it is often around a 10 year jail term for criminal negligence. Unless the president/CEO can prove they enforced policy to mitigate…

> Actually in most places, technically as president/CEO of a firm you are already liable for any criminal conduct by your firm/employees-on-the-job. This isn't true as written. CEOs aren't automatically liable for crimes of the company or employees. If a CEO intentionally facilitates or participates in those crimes: Yes, open to liability. If an employee or department commits crimes without the knowledge of the CEO:…

> I've personally seen several cases of people committing fraud and even a federal crime on the job,

Golly

We should play "guess the industry "

Finance?

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

#498

Post by quonn »

robertlagrant wrote: post #231
oersted wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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?

Because limited liability means exactly that the owners are shielded to a degree. That‘s my point. That‘s why corporations were created as a concept.

This concept is necessary because the company represents collective decisions and if each and every one of those would be individually accountable then less business would be done.

As someone else pointed out it‘s a union type. Instead of person you could call it „entity“ and rewrite all the laws. Happy now?

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

#499

Post by robertlagrant »

akira2501 wrote: post #426
robertlagrant wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "We don't negotiate with [economic] terrorists." This is just so silly. Shutting down a company results in people losing their jobs. No terrorists involved.

> Shutting down a company results in people losing their jobs. And ending murder and child victims results in people (investigators, litigators, counselors) losing their jobs. Should we stop trying to solve these problems too?

Once again, what I'm saying is "people losing their jobs is a consequence of shutting down a business" is not "economic terrorism".

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

#500

Post by bpodgursky »

abeppu wrote: post #405
abeppu wrote: post #399

> If the deal is accepted, it could complicate Boeing’s ability to sell products to the U.S. government as a felon, though the company could seek waivers. About 32% of Boeing’s nearly $78 billion in revenue last year came from its defense, space and security unit. My understanding is that getting security clearance involves a bunch of checks and statements about your character, and having a federal felony conviction…

Also in the "corporations as people" x "criminal justice system" vein, I would be in favor of moving towards a standard where, if a person convicted of the same crime would receive a prison sentence, a company should be forced to cease operations for an equivalent period, and put all its assets into frozen fund which can only be used to pay out debts/obligations, and which earns no interest.

This is a dumb proposal that benefits nobody.

The only way to guarantee that Boeing becomes worse at making planes, is to ask them to stop doing it for 18 months and then start up again.

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