The debacle, and the dilemma of who to blame, exposes a pretty big flaw in capitalism theory: the idea that the market will choose to punish the shareholders. T

The debacle, and the dilemma of who to blame, exposes a pretty big flaw in capitalism theory: the idea that the market will choose to punish the shareholders. The reality is, the shareholders have been insulated from the negatives and rewarded with the gains. Boeing's board has no meaningful aerospace expertise at all on it, going back to the McDonald Douglas merger. Shareholders have been rewarded for this successfully executed, multi-decade, and anti-competitive plan, so they keep re-electing the same board members who in turn ensure the shareholders aren't punished for objectively unethical decisions. But capitalism doesn't require any ethics, it's completely amoral. Corporate charters don't require morality, ethics, or for companies to be a benefit to society or disallow them from being a negative to society (except insofar as they aren't breaking laws). And none of what Boeing has done has broken any laws, such as they are. No one is going to prison. They're all protected by an explicitly designed system. The Commerce Department, overseeing the FAA, has had their select panel of industry experts and insiders say in a report this week, that everything at Boeing and the FAA is perfect. It's completely, totally, unquestionably perfect. And Congress would be risking this perfection by changing even one single thing about the existing arrangement. Commerce won't change without a significant leadership change. Congress has cut FAA funding for decades, relative to the growth of commercial aviation, meaning there aren't enough regulators to move even a little bit away from manufacturer "self-certification". What we have is what the industry wants, the politicians want, the average American consumer wants, and the American citizen wants -> profits for shareholders, kickbacks for politicians, cheap airfares, and please stop talking policy so I can get back to my consumerism.