7 ms·

Great. Now what we do to keep it from happening again? How do we reduce corporatocracy and regulatory capture?

Operyl 6y ago
In classic American fashion it’ll be increased as the solution!
gmac 6y ago
If the US system is even slightly functional, the FAA will get beefed up and we'll be fine for a decade or two. Then people will again start saying "we've had no accidents for years, therefore flying is really safe, so why all this burdensome regulation?". Regulation will get scaled back, something like the 737 MAX will happen again, the FAA will get beefed up, and so on, ad infinitum. It's this sort of regulatory boom and bust that makes me feel humans shouldn't be allowed to do anything that's dangerous on a really large scale (such as nuclear power).
- joss82 6y ago
  Nuclear power is not that dangerous on a large scale compared to coal power. Or burning any fossil fuel for that matter.
  - sgt101 6y ago
    Juggling chainsaws is not so dangerous compared to Russian roulette.
    - joss82 6y ago
      Well, I cannot undo years of pervasive anti-nuke sentiment in a small hacker news comment. I was like you before, it's the "default" sentiment to feel like nuclear power is dangerous and dirty. Please do your homework and collect information from reliable sources on the matter. It might change your mind, or at least give you a more balanced viewpoint.
      - bob29 6y ago
        Or do your homework and find that it’s actually far worse than pro-nuclear propagandists constantly claim. Huge increases in rates of multiple forms of cancer near nuclear sites, while the rest of the country is seeing decreases - but not attributed to nuclear. Huge environmental problems and costs pawned off on the US dept of energy and taxpayers, but not attributed to nuclear. Assassinated whistleblowers. Nuclear industry is a textbook example of regulatory capture. If the renewable guys were anywhere near as good we’d see 0 deaths from solar and wind. “The solar panel didn’t kill him, it was gravity and a slippery ladder”
        joss82 6y ago
        > Or do your homework and find that it’s actually far worse than pro-nuclear propagandists constantly claim. Well, I did. And did not find any convincing claims. Try to take a step back and not see everyone as either anti or pro. Show me your evidence for your claims. "Assassinated whistleblowers" is a pretty strong statement, it requires pretty strong evidence.
        bob29 6y ago
        Karen Silkwood?
  - yrro 6y ago
    So far, no. But a single nuclear power plant has the potential for continent-wide devastation. Is the same true of the world's largest coal power plants (~6.7 GW)?
    - joss82 6y ago
      > But a single nuclear power plant has the potential for continent-wide devastation. This is not true. The space destroyed to make way for coal strip-mining in Germany alone, is larger than Tchernobyl exclusion zone.
    - Schiendelman 6y ago
      A nuclear power plant from 50 years ago, yes. A new one can’t do that.
- ekianjo 6y ago
  > It's this sort of regulatory boom and bust that makes me feel humans shouldn't be allowed to do anything that's dangerous on a really large scale (such as nuclear power). You had a good comment except for the last line. Nuclear power is the safest form of energy production out there (and by far).
  - furyg3 6y ago
    His point is not that nuclear power is not dangerous, his point is that according to his theory, humans will get complacent and walk-back regulations when nothing happens, leading to potential nuclear accidents that were needless.
    - ekianjo 6y ago
      How long do we have to wait to see this prophecy realize? Because nuclear power has been around for a long time already, and the industry remains extremely regulated.
      - jsjohnst 6y ago
        > Because nuclear power has been around for a long time already, and the industry remains extremely regulated. The industry was very heavily regulated globally before Chernobyl and Fukushima, but look what happened. I’m not saying I’m against nuclear power (as I’m not). I’m not saying that any industry regulation is generally ineffective most of the time, especially when financials and greed gets involved (even though it appears to be true). I’m just saying humans are bad at moderating risk over long periods of time.
        sofixa 6y ago
        > The industry was very heavily regulated globally before Chernobyl and Fukushima, but look what happened Gross incompetence and huge design issues 40 years ago on one hand, and complacency+incompetence that required a huge natural disaster to pose a problem, and even then it resulted in less death and destruction than the evacuation, the natural disaster itself or your regular fossil fuel power plant? Not sure that's a good example.
- DangerousPie 6y ago
  > If the US system is even slightly functional I have some bad news for you...
- bufferoverflow 6y ago
  Nuclear power in western countries has been regulated to the crazy safety standards (not to confuse with the military fuckups).
- notimetorelax 6y ago
  I think it’s an optimization problem and incentives problem. We should be reevaluating level of funding over time, otherwise government organizations will grow indefinitely, but here’s where the incentives come in play, who would be interested in doing this evaluation gradually and with the backing of data? I believe the latter depends on the society and the politics.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  > regulatory boom and bust The root cause is pretty easy to describe: benefits are apparent and risks are hidden. It's much harder for people to weigh things that might happen against things that will happen. Especially when the former is negative and latter is positive (positive outcome bias). Consequently, in meeting after meeting, risk safeguards are erroded. Because each meeting has a relatively minor "Do we want this benefit, or to hedge this risk?" decision, and in aggregate, people pick the former.
- emarsden 6y ago
  > It's this sort of regulatory boom and bust that makes me feel humans shouldn't be allowed to do anything that's dangerous on a really large scale (such as nuclear power). For more thinking along these lines, see the book “Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies” (1984) by sociologist Charles Perrow (concerning nuclear power), the book “The Limits of Safety — Organizations, Accidents and Nuclear Weapons” (1993) by Scott Sagan concerning nuclear weapons, and the work of philosopher Hans Jonas on the “imperative of responsibility” (1980s).
- Chris2048 6y ago
  Fine if humanity will never have to tackle anything complex for it's own survival, e.g. deflecting an asteroid on a collision course with earth (or evacuating the planet before it does), dealing with global warming, or some other planetary change (natural or otherwise), dealing with overpopulation / resources etc. It would also require every other nation on earth to agree with the restriction, which isn't really compatible with the premise in the first place; if the regulations are self-imposed, people will stop following them.
mcny 6y ago
I still believe capping executive pay is a necessary (though not sufficient) part of any practical solution. At least for publicly traded companies, we must cap compensation at no more than 50x minimum wage or something. No, executive compensation does not "come from a different pot" or any such nonsense. Don't listen to such silly arguments. Literally no shareholder wants to pay executives more unless they are executives at a different company where their buddies are on the board. Some HN readers apparently don't like to hear this but I don't see any other way. As for how we can reduce regulatory capture, I don't believe there is any good solution other than constant vigilance.
- tremon 6y ago
  Some things come to mind: - Better whistleblower protections - Personal liability for making false or misleading statements to a regulatory agent - Corporate death penalty. No more "too big to fail" nonsense. If there were actual competition among aviation manufacturers, the government could just dissolve the company and auction off the product lines to competitors. Safeguarding against capture from the regulatory side is more difficult. But I guess term limits for decision-making positions could help, or having a good process for identifying and declaring conflicts of interest?
  - sneak 6y ago
    Not only would such a corporate death penalty never, ever get used against Boeing by the USG if such a thing were to exist, the USG would not advance such a circumstance where it could exist in the first place. There are a number of industries and companies that will exist as long as the current USG does, at least for our lifetimes, due to decisions that were made long ago. Examples include Lockheed, Boeing, and Microsoft. Any solution to the problem needs to accept and address the levels of deep integration between these companies and the state.
    - xxpor 6y ago
      The first step could be forcing Boeing to spin out McDonnell Douglas again. The real issue is there are 0 alternatives to Boeing right now for US based design for the DoD.
redis_mlc 6y ago
It's worse than regulatory capture. The FAA delegates oversight to non-FAA contractors working and being paid at Boeing. If they don't agree with Boeing mgmt., they are fired. Also, the FAA manages safety using paperwork. The submitted paperwork did not match the excessive MCAS trim rate. "The problem is it was compliant and not safe." is a false statement. MCAS performance did not match the paperwork filed with the FAA. The Republican comment about it not being a system problem is also false. The FAA has a history of losing control until an accident. The result of the 1956 Grand Canyon accident was that they determined the ATC system "was not a system." In the case of the 737 MAX, the FAA latitude given to Boeing allowing it to outsource everything and self-certify bad designs is a system failure for airliner design and mfg. Midair collision between a Trans World Airlines Lockheed 1049A and a United Airlines Douglas DC-7 https://lessonslearned.faa.gov/ll_main.cfm?TabID=1&LLID=50 https://lessonslearned.faa.gov/ll_main.cfm?TabID=1&LLID=50 Equally disturbing, and it illustrates Boeing's extreme mgmt. dysfunction, is the gamifications with the meeting room shotclock and the Southwest $1 million penalty per plane for a different sim. Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.
yholio 6y ago
A big part of the solution that does not involve the government is the market reaction driven by sometimes irrational consumer behavior. Some passengers are now weary of all recent Boeing designs, and even of the excelent 737. The margins are razor thin and if 5% decide to book elsewhere, it can turn a profitable route into a flop. So Boing will pay not only the massive costs of withdrawing the MAX since orders for it are plummeting. But this event will affect all its business. This is why there is lobbying/political pressure to divert at least some of the blame, the implications are in the tens of billions in the next few years. So the good news is that the company will be forced to clean-up its act voluntarily, a similar safety disaster could mean extinction.
- tboyd47 6y ago
  I wish that kind of free-market-driven correction were possible, but passengers have no control over which airplanes they fly in. You don't book tickets with Boeing or Airbus; you book tickets with Southwest or Spirit, and even if they tell you the make of the plane you'll be flying, they can change it up at any time without refunding you.
  - yholio 6y ago
    Many european airlines announced a no questions asked refund policy on 737 Max tickets. Even Ryanair who initially rejected the idea, latter made a U-turn under pressure from concerned passengers: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ryanair-boeing-737-max-cancel-flight-refund-nervous-flyer-a9375746.html https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ryanair... The refund would be made at gate level, since the plane allocations are made in the last minute. It's certainly a factor behind the hundreds of MAX orders that were canceled thus far. Fitch lowered it's delivery estimate from 700 to 75 MAX planes for 2020.
dirtyid 6y ago
Actually punish white collar crime.
lordnacho 6y ago
Not meaning to open a whole can of worms, but it might be the case that the US needs a better constitution. It seems like the current two-party system is in fact part of the "corporatocracy and regulatory capture", but with current electoral law they are unlikely to ever be dislodged.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  > with current electoral law they are unlikely to ever be dislodged. Fortunately, the individual states are not prevented from implementing reforms like Ranked Choice Voting, which would allow new parties to form and gain a reputation in politics at least at the state level. If a party repeated that success across multiple states, that could be used to pressure the largest two parties to support similar reforms, like making Congressional districts return multiple representatives (proportional to the vote within that district).
dfxm12 6y ago
How do we reduce corporatocracy and regulatory capture? There are elections coming up in November. You'll have at least 2 federal races on the ballot. Figure out where the candidates stand with regards to corporatocracy and regulatory capture and vote accordingly. If you don't like where any of the candidates stand, there will be another election in 2 years. In the mean time, let the candidates know how you feel. Donate to, or volunteer for the candidates who you want to win.

In classic American fashion it’ll be increased as the solution!

gmac 6y ago

If the US system is even slightly functional, the FAA will get beefed up and we'll be fine for a decade or two. Then people will again start saying "we've had no accidents for years, therefore flying is really safe, so why all this burdensome regulation?". Regulation will get scaled back, something like the 737 MAX will happen again, the FAA will get beefed up, and so on, ad infinitum. It's this sort of regulatory boom and bust that makes me feel humans shouldn't be allowed to do anything that's dangerous on a really large scale (such as nuclear power).

joss82 6y ago
Nuclear power is not that dangerous on a large scale compared to coal power. Or burning any fossil fuel for that matter.
- sgt101 6y ago
  Juggling chainsaws is not so dangerous compared to Russian roulette.
  - joss82 6y ago
    Well, I cannot undo years of pervasive anti-nuke sentiment in a small hacker news comment. I was like you before, it's the "default" sentiment to feel like nuclear power is dangerous and dirty. Please do your homework and collect information from reliable sources on the matter. It might change your mind, or at least give you a more balanced viewpoint.
    - bob29 6y ago
      Or do your homework and find that it’s actually far worse than pro-nuclear propagandists constantly claim. Huge increases in rates of multiple forms of cancer near nuclear sites, while the rest of the country is seeing decreases - but not attributed to nuclear. Huge environmental problems and costs pawned off on the US dept of energy and taxpayers, but not attributed to nuclear. Assassinated whistleblowers. Nuclear industry is a textbook example of regulatory capture. If the renewable guys were anywhere near as good we’d see 0 deaths from solar and wind. “The solar panel didn’t kill him, it was gravity and a slippery ladder”
      - joss82 6y ago
        > Or do your homework and find that it’s actually far worse than pro-nuclear propagandists constantly claim. Well, I did. And did not find any convincing claims. Try to take a step back and not see everyone as either anti or pro. Show me your evidence for your claims. "Assassinated whistleblowers" is a pretty strong statement, it requires pretty strong evidence.
        bob29 6y ago
        Karen Silkwood?
- yrro 6y ago
  So far, no. But a single nuclear power plant has the potential for continent-wide devastation. Is the same true of the world's largest coal power plants (~6.7 GW)?
  - joss82 6y ago
    > But a single nuclear power plant has the potential for continent-wide devastation. This is not true. The space destroyed to make way for coal strip-mining in Germany alone, is larger than Tchernobyl exclusion zone.
  - Schiendelman 6y ago
    A nuclear power plant from 50 years ago, yes. A new one can’t do that.
ekianjo 6y ago
> It's this sort of regulatory boom and bust that makes me feel humans shouldn't be allowed to do anything that's dangerous on a really large scale (such as nuclear power). You had a good comment except for the last line. Nuclear power is the safest form of energy production out there (and by far).
- furyg3 6y ago
  His point is not that nuclear power is not dangerous, his point is that according to his theory, humans will get complacent and walk-back regulations when nothing happens, leading to potential nuclear accidents that were needless.
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    How long do we have to wait to see this prophecy realize? Because nuclear power has been around for a long time already, and the industry remains extremely regulated.
    - jsjohnst 6y ago
      > Because nuclear power has been around for a long time already, and the industry remains extremely regulated. The industry was very heavily regulated globally before Chernobyl and Fukushima, but look what happened. I’m not saying I’m against nuclear power (as I’m not). I’m not saying that any industry regulation is generally ineffective most of the time, especially when financials and greed gets involved (even though it appears to be true). I’m just saying humans are bad at moderating risk over long periods of time.
      - sofixa 6y ago
        > The industry was very heavily regulated globally before Chernobyl and Fukushima, but look what happened Gross incompetence and huge design issues 40 years ago on one hand, and complacency+incompetence that required a huge natural disaster to pose a problem, and even then it resulted in less death and destruction than the evacuation, the natural disaster itself or your regular fossil fuel power plant? Not sure that's a good example.
DangerousPie 6y ago
> If the US system is even slightly functional I have some bad news for you...
bufferoverflow 6y ago
Nuclear power in western countries has been regulated to the crazy safety standards (not to confuse with the military fuckups).
notimetorelax 6y ago
I think it’s an optimization problem and incentives problem. We should be reevaluating level of funding over time, otherwise government organizations will grow indefinitely, but here’s where the incentives come in play, who would be interested in doing this evaluation gradually and with the backing of data? I believe the latter depends on the society and the politics.
ethbr0 6y ago
> regulatory boom and bust The root cause is pretty easy to describe: benefits are apparent and risks are hidden. It's much harder for people to weigh things that might happen against things that will happen. Especially when the former is negative and latter is positive (positive outcome bias). Consequently, in meeting after meeting, risk safeguards are erroded. Because each meeting has a relatively minor "Do we want this benefit, or to hedge this risk?" decision, and in aggregate, people pick the former.
emarsden 6y ago
> It's this sort of regulatory boom and bust that makes me feel humans shouldn't be allowed to do anything that's dangerous on a really large scale (such as nuclear power). For more thinking along these lines, see the book “Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies” (1984) by sociologist Charles Perrow (concerning nuclear power), the book “The Limits of Safety — Organizations, Accidents and Nuclear Weapons” (1993) by Scott Sagan concerning nuclear weapons, and the work of philosopher Hans Jonas on the “imperative of responsibility” (1980s).
Chris2048 6y ago
Fine if humanity will never have to tackle anything complex for it's own survival, e.g. deflecting an asteroid on a collision course with earth (or evacuating the planet before it does), dealing with global warming, or some other planetary change (natural or otherwise), dealing with overpopulation / resources etc. It would also require every other nation on earth to agree with the restriction, which isn't really compatible with the premise in the first place; if the regulations are self-imposed, people will stop following them.

mcny 6y ago

I still believe capping executive pay is a necessary (though not sufficient) part of any practical solution. At least for publicly traded companies, we must cap compensation at no more than 50x minimum wage or something. No, executive compensation does not "come from a different pot" or any such nonsense. Don't listen to such silly arguments. Literally no shareholder wants to pay executives more unless they are executives at a different company where their buddies are on the board. Some HN readers apparently don't like to hear this but I don't see any other way. As for how we can reduce regulatory capture, I don't believe there is any good solution other than constant vigilance.

tremon 6y ago
Some things come to mind: - Better whistleblower protections - Personal liability for making false or misleading statements to a regulatory agent - Corporate death penalty. No more "too big to fail" nonsense. If there were actual competition among aviation manufacturers, the government could just dissolve the company and auction off the product lines to competitors. Safeguarding against capture from the regulatory side is more difficult. But I guess term limits for decision-making positions could help, or having a good process for identifying and declaring conflicts of interest?
- sneak 6y ago
  Not only would such a corporate death penalty never, ever get used against Boeing by the USG if such a thing were to exist, the USG would not advance such a circumstance where it could exist in the first place. There are a number of industries and companies that will exist as long as the current USG does, at least for our lifetimes, due to decisions that were made long ago. Examples include Lockheed, Boeing, and Microsoft. Any solution to the problem needs to accept and address the levels of deep integration between these companies and the state.
  - xxpor 6y ago
    The first step could be forcing Boeing to spin out McDonnell Douglas again. The real issue is there are 0 alternatives to Boeing right now for US based design for the DoD.

redis_mlc 6y ago

It's worse than regulatory capture. The FAA delegates oversight to non-FAA contractors working and being paid at Boeing. If they don't agree with Boeing mgmt., they are fired. Also, the FAA manages safety using paperwork. The submitted paperwork did not match the excessive MCAS trim rate. "The problem is it was compliant and not safe." is a false statement. MCAS performance did not match the paperwork filed with the FAA. The Republican comment about it not being a system problem is also false. The FAA has a history of losing control until an accident. The result of the 1956 Grand Canyon accident was that they determined the ATC system "was not a system." In the case of the 737 MAX, the FAA latitude given to Boeing allowing it to outsource everything and self-certify bad designs is a system failure for airliner design and mfg. Midair collision between a Trans World Airlines Lockheed 1049A and a United Airlines Douglas DC-7 https://lessonslearned.faa.gov/ll_main.cfm?TabID=1&LLID=50 https://lessonslearned.faa.gov/ll_main.cfm?TabID=1&LLID=50 Equally disturbing, and it illustrates Boeing's extreme mgmt. dysfunction, is the gamifications with the meeting room shotclock and the Southwest $1 million penalty per plane for a different sim. Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.

yholio 6y ago

A big part of the solution that does not involve the government is the market reaction driven by sometimes irrational consumer behavior. Some passengers are now weary of all recent Boeing designs, and even of the excelent 737. The margins are razor thin and if 5% decide to book elsewhere, it can turn a profitable route into a flop. So Boing will pay not only the massive costs of withdrawing the MAX since orders for it are plummeting. But this event will affect all its business. This is why there is lobbying/political pressure to divert at least some of the blame, the implications are in the tens of billions in the next few years. So the good news is that the company will be forced to clean-up its act voluntarily, a similar safety disaster could mean extinction.

tboyd47 6y ago
I wish that kind of free-market-driven correction were possible, but passengers have no control over which airplanes they fly in. You don't book tickets with Boeing or Airbus; you book tickets with Southwest or Spirit, and even if they tell you the make of the plane you'll be flying, they can change it up at any time without refunding you.
- yholio 6y ago
  Many european airlines announced a no questions asked refund policy on 737 Max tickets. Even Ryanair who initially rejected the idea, latter made a U-turn under pressure from concerned passengers: https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ryanair-boeing-737-max-cancel-flight-refund-nervous-flyer-a9375746.html https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/ryanair... The refund would be made at gate level, since the plane allocations are made in the last minute. It's certainly a factor behind the hundreds of MAX orders that were canceled thus far. Fitch lowered it's delivery estimate from 700 to 75 MAX planes for 2020.

dirtyid 6y ago

Actually punish white collar crime.

lordnacho 6y ago

Not meaning to open a whole can of worms, but it might be the case that the US needs a better constitution. It seems like the current two-party system is in fact part of the "corporatocracy and regulatory capture", but with current electoral law they are unlikely to ever be dislodged.

dane-pgp 6y ago
> with current electoral law they are unlikely to ever be dislodged. Fortunately, the individual states are not prevented from implementing reforms like Ranked Choice Voting, which would allow new parties to form and gain a reputation in politics at least at the state level. If a party repeated that success across multiple states, that could be used to pressure the largest two parties to support similar reforms, like making Congressional districts return multiple representatives (proportional to the vote within that district).

dfxm12 6y ago

How do we reduce corporatocracy and regulatory capture? There are elections coming up in November. You'll have at least 2 federal races on the ballot. Figure out where the candidates stand with regards to corporatocracy and regulatory capture and vote accordingly. If you don't like where any of the candidates stand, there will be another election in 2 years. In the mean time, let the candidates know how you feel. Donate to, or volunteer for the candidates who you want to win.