People at the top need to go to jail for life. This is no punishment.
DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy
91–100 of 130 posts
Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy
#92So the fine is about the cost of twenty-five 737 Max planes. >Boeing had around 450 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft built and awaiting delivery. >Boeing has unfilled orders for over 4,000 737 MAX jets. https://simpleflying.com/737-max-deliveries-december/
You should probably see it in terms of bottom line rather than top line, i.e. the operating margin gained on each sale is about $12M according to wikipedia, so they would need to sell 200 maxes to obtain the net cash they will use to pay the fines.
You're telling me the fine is something like 5% of the profit collected from making the 737MAX?
Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I absolutely agree that leadership at Boeing was responsible for the deaths but the fact that we can’t get it right for (comparatively) petty crimes means we are unable to get out right for the big ones. I’m of course referring to the sheriff in California who has not been charged for corruption and has not been forced to resign:
Previously on HN
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25193699
They didn't even touch the Sheriff.
> Sheriff Laurie Smith, who has the authority to issue CCW permits, has not been charged with a crime.
Either i. the sheriff knew about/was in on this scheme and must be put in prison or ii. the sheriff didn't know about how her number two was soliciting bribes using her authority to grant/deny licenses and must resign because that is just gross negligence.
Which one is it?
Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy
#94So anyone at Boeing going to jail for killing 346 people?
Who do you think should? An engineer who worked on the system? A manager? What law was broken? If you were in their position, how would you know you were breaking the law? Diffuse responsibility is a real problem. 'Teaching to the test' is a real problem. Normalizing risk is a real problem. Blaming individuals is very satisfying, and it's very easy to do with hindsight, but if you want large complex systems to work b…
> What law was broken?
The above comment is very, very uninformed. Aviation is a heavily regulated industry, totally unlike IT.
There's several legal avenues for individual prosecution:
1) False certification documents about MCAS performance were submitted to the FAA, so it would be very easy to find out who those people were, and who their managers were. The US government has no problem prosecuting people for fraud in the aviation world. (FAA certification is almost totally dependent on paperwork, both in mfg. and operations.)
2) The manager of the test pilots who wrote the critical SMS messages was fired, so that is another easily traceable route related to the above.
3) Southwest asked for a penalty of $1 million per airplane if type-specific traning was required, so both Southwest and Boeing negotiators agreed in a reckless manner to disregard airliner safety with that perverse incentive. (Reckless is a catchall in the FARs for pilots, but could be applied to companies and mfgs.)
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.13
To give Congress credit, they are re-visiting the ODA delegation process because of MCAS, which Boeing abuses by having managers pressure ODAs:
https://www.aviationpros.com/aircraft/commercial-airline/new...
Boeing is the US' largest exporter, so should face intense government scrutiny as it affects not just passengers and suppliers, but all Americans.
Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot who has followed MCAS very closely, far more closely than anybody else on HN.
Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy
#95Boeing's fine is essentially nothing more than a one-time 10% rebate to their largest customer. (Reference: In 2017, Boeing booked over $22 BILLION in revenue from the US government. https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2020/01/02/ho... )
> Boeing booked over $22 BILLION in revenue from the US government.
Which, by the way, is totally not state support, especially if anyone from Airbus is within hearing distance...
Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy
#96Corporations 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, Mar…
Name one CEO of massive company with good relationship with US government that ever went to jail for things like 2008 financial crisis, or similar moral failures and criminal acts.
As much as those names you named are important, they are peasants compared to power wielded by the big guys.
Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
The DOJ certainly seems to think a law was broken. As I see it you charge the most obvious person and let them try to blame someone else. Eventually you either find people you can blame and if you can't go up a level until you reach the CEO. If the CEO goes to prison, other CEOs will care more than this one, if some compliance officer does, the next one won't be as willing to bend to implied pressure from leadership.
that just leads the blame onto a scapegoat. It doesn't fix the problem at heart - which is that the responsibility for safety has to be taken at the org at every level.
Things like company culture and focus on either shipping products fast to get as much cash as quickly as possible vs building quality products definitely comes from the top management. But this support needs to be something more than empty phrases in come corporate emails. Same principles as say in software development.
If middle managers and top engineers see that there is no reward in doing things right and taking time, in fact its shooting one's foot, then most folks +-align with this policy and move on. At the end almost everybody is in for the paycheck.
Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy
#98"No individuals have been criminally charged in the government’s investigation into Boeing, which was led by the FBI and the Department of Transportation’s Office of the Inspector General. Dennis Muilenburg, who was CEO when the crashes happened, was ousted in late 2019. He left with more than $60 million in stock options and other assets, though Boeing did not give him a severance." What a cruel joke
"CEOs have to be compensated as much as they are because they shoulder such huge responsibilities." say the apologists for why American CEOs "need" to be paid 500x as much as a typical worker.
How about this: I'll shoulder that grave responsibility for a mere 50x the typical worker, and I'll settle for a golden parachute of just $6M. That's a bargain!
Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The evidence for the theory is that there are many Boeing 'apologists' as OP states - he is trying to debate them, not people that don't care if Boeing ever had a good engineering culture.
Re: DOJ fines Boeing over $2.5B, charges it with fraud conspiracy
#100Earlier 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…
This is how tithings used to work. Ten men would be grouped into a tithing, and if any of those men were suspected of a crime, then the rest of the group either had to prove their innocence or had to condemn the guilty party. If they did neither, all were equally punished for the crime.
In principal, it strikes me as a good idea - it promotes collective good behaviour, and responsibility for ones peers.