DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy • Hacker News Board

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#71

Post by mehrdadn » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:43 AM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #68

chmaynard wrote: post #17

Corporations in the USA have the same legal rights as individuals in matters such as free speech, political lobbying, and so on. But when it comes to criminal liability, the people in charge are not held accountable and can buy their way out of jail with corporate funds. What a great country.

Hypothetically, let's say you had perfect access to all internal communications, emails, etc. And after all of this, you never found a smoking gun - not anyone to blame directly for this. The Max issue was caused by a culture of stupidity, greed, cronyism, etc. etc. What then? Should we shut Boeing down? Should we arrest the executive team out of principle? I think a lot of enormous fuckups like this are not directed…

> Should we arrest the executive team out of principle?

How about prohibiting them from holding executive positions in the future?

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#72

Post by seibelj » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:46 AM UTC

snovv_crash wrote: post #70

seibelj wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically, let's say you had perfect access to all internal communications, emails, etc. And after all of this, you never found a smoking gun - not anyone to blame directly for this. The Max issue was caused by a culture of stupidity, greed, cronyism, etc. etc. What then? Should we shut Boeing down? Should we arrest the executive team out of principle? I think a lot of enormous fuckups like this are not directed…

Isn't this why we pay the executive team the big bucks?

It’s one thing to fire the exec team. It’s another to charge them with criminal responsibility, especially when the shareholders will ultimately fund their defense one way or another. I don’t think it would be proven.

My comment was a broader point about why corporations never seem to have employees get charged. It’s because they usually aren’t liable and won’t get convicted by a jury, and the government subpoenas all the records and determined it won’t fly.

If you disagree with my assessment, you must think there is a conspiracy in which government lawyers collude with corporate leaders to protect them. That’s a very strong conspiracy. I’m not saying you are wrong, but recognize what you are asserting.

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#73

Post by haltingproblem » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:49 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #61

haltingproblem wrote: post #15

There is a notion that Boeing is/was a company with an insanely great engineering culture and their engineers lived in an idyllic culture of building great and safe products. This great culture was all lost as a result of the merger with McDonnell Douglas [1], [2], [3]. This argument is frequently put forth by ex-Boeing engineers. This is an apologia for Boeing's behavior which killed 346 people and endangered the li…

> Not a single engineer raised issues with the engineering of the aircraft. Not a single engineer wrote a blistering memo calling out its failing or quit in protest. I don't think this is true. There was an HN thread some time ago on an article describing how one senior production manager, who was an engineer by background and had previously worked at Boeing as an engineer, looked at the design specs, talked to peopl…

I would appreciate the citation, not doubting but would love to read it since I have not seen anything like it in the public domain.

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#74

Post by haltingproblem » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:51 AM UTC

1123581321 wrote: post #52

haltingproblem wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh. The mythmaking contines. In the theory of causation, we distinguish between proximate vs. ultimate causality. Every proximate event can plausibly be claimed to be the cause for a subsequent event. As they say for want of a nail the war was lost. We don't say the war was lost because the nail was missing because 20 years ago they changed the way they cataloged the nails in the hardware store which sold the nails…

This is uninteresting as the engineers are only making a limited point that the superior character of the engineering organization has been lost, relative to the demands of buyers and the FAA. It’s not a novel theory to suggest a merger or acquisition can cause this to happen more obviously than a national or world event.

The theory is just that - a theory and a convenient one at that since it exonerates Boeing engineers.

The is no evidence supporting the theory (verification) and more interesting it is not falsifiable. It is just a narrative.

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#75

Post by haltingproblem » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:55 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #62

haltingproblem wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh. The mythmaking contines. In the theory of causation, we distinguish between proximate vs. ultimate causality. Every proximate event can plausibly be claimed to be the cause for a subsequent event. As they say for want of a nail the war was lost. We don't say the war was lost because the nail was missing because 20 years ago they changed the way they cataloged the nails in the hardware store which sold the nails…

> In the theory of causation, we distinguish between proximate vs. ultimate causality. Yes, and you have them backwards. "The engineers failed to raise the issue" is a proximate cause, not an ultimate cause. If engineers in your company are failing to raise obvious technical issues, then either you're hiring incompetent engineers, or your corporate culture discourages engineers from speaking up and punishes those who…

How do I have them backwards? The theory attributes ultimate cause to something that is way way in the past. The event is chosen to maximize narrative plausibility. There is no way to verify the narrative or better falsify it.

The theory conveniently exonerates Boeing engineers without any supporting evidence, forget falsification.

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#76

Post by haltingproblem » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:56 AM UTC

InTheArena wrote: post #22

Don’t worry, Boeing gave 19 million dollars in lobbying. They will make this back with sweet sweet new contracts from the DoD and NASA, especially now that Bridenstein is gone and won’t fire their corrupt cronies at the agency.

Boeing being banned from lobbying would have a good clause to include in the agreement but that would be a bridge too far.

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#77

Post by hndudette2 » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 7:01 AM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #71

seibelj wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically, let's say you had perfect access to all internal communications, emails, etc. And after all of this, you never found a smoking gun - not anyone to blame directly for this. The Max issue was caused by a culture of stupidity, greed, cronyism, etc. etc. What then? Should we shut Boeing down? Should we arrest the executive team out of principle? I think a lot of enormous fuckups like this are not directed…

> Should we arrest the executive team out of principle? How about prohibiting them from holding executive positions in the future?

The upside of your proposal is that it'll create a very strong disincentive for this kind of behavior.

But if we really can't attribute blame to specific individuals, your proposal is effectively collective punishment where individuals that are genuinely innocent are punished because of wrongdoings of other members of the group. From a justice perspective, we're in murky moral waters. An analogy would be to punish everyone in a shared household if we know that one member of that household committed a crime but we can't determine which one specifically (and let's assume that the innocent members of the household don't know and aren't hiding information). This would be a state of affairs that everyone would rightly protest. So we need to think carefully as to whether we want to enact your proposal.

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#78

Post by mehrdadn » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 7:11 AM UTC

hndudette2 wrote: post #77

mehrdadn wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should we arrest the executive team out of principle? How about prohibiting them from holding executive positions in the future?

The upside of your proposal is that it'll create a very strong disincentive for this kind of behavior. But if we really can't attribute blame to specific individuals, your proposal is effectively collective punishment where individuals that are genuinely innocent are punished because of wrongdoings of other members of the group. From a justice perspective, we're in murky moral waters. An analogy would be to punish ev…

Your comparison is incredibly exaggerated. Being a highly-paid C-level exec of a $120B corporation that holds people's lives in its hand isn't exactly a human right like living in a household. It's as much a privilege as anything can be. And it can and absolutely should be revocable when you show your leadership allows people to people die under your authority, your awareness notwithstanding. When hundreds of people die under your watch, it isn't about you anymore. It's about the rest of society. You can tweak it if you feel it prohibits things like being a CEO of a self-proprietorship or a small family business or whatever; I don't care if you want to do that. Just draw a line that ensures they would get nowhere near a position like this in the future.

The ultimate point being: you can still let them make decisions about their own lives if you want, but that doesn't imply you have to let them make decisions that affect other people's lives.

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#79

Post by Number157 » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 7:20 AM UTC

mehrdadn wrote: post #71

seibelj wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypothetically, let's say you had perfect access to all internal communications, emails, etc. And after all of this, you never found a smoking gun - not anyone to blame directly for this. The Max issue was caused by a culture of stupidity, greed, cronyism, etc. etc. What then? Should we shut Boeing down? Should we arrest the executive team out of principle? I think a lot of enormous fuckups like this are not directed…

> Should we arrest the executive team out of principle? How about prohibiting them from holding executive positions in the future?

Good luck hiring anyone for a struggling company. Can't turn it around? You get punished.

Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy

#80

Post by bdowling » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 7:21 AM UTC

chmaynard wrote: post #17

Corporations in the USA have the same legal rights as individuals in matters such as free speech, political lobbying, and so on. But when it comes to criminal liability, the people in charge are not held accountable and can buy their way out of jail with corporate funds. What a great country.

> Corporations in the USA have the same legal rights as individuals...

They don't. For example, 5th Amendment protections against self-incrimination do not apply to corporations. Also, corporations have a right to an attorney but one is not provided to them free of charge by the government.

> But when it comes to criminal liability, the people in charge are not held accountable...

Bernie Madoff, Jeffrey Skilling, Martha Stewart, and others put in jail for corporate crimes would disagree with you.