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> a once great company doing real innovation turned into a financial engineering instrument to funnel wealth upwards That is a failure of the government. On on

> a once great company doing real innovation turned into a financial engineering instrument to funnel wealth upwards That is a failure of the government. On one hand the government should not have allowed Boeing to become the gigantic monopolistic manufacturer that it has become after lots of mergers, including the famed one with McDonnell Douglass. That's a failure of the FTC. Once Boeing became a monopoly, it felt much less the invisible hand of the market, and it could afford to shift its attention from engineering excellence to milking the brand. That's where the FAA should have been a hawk, and it was not. After the 737-Max grounding, Congress got involved, and their report [1] looks quite thorough. I find this paragraph quite telling: > Despite the sweeping and substantive problems that have been identified by this Committee’s investigation as well as various other investigations, both Boeing and the FAA have suggested that the certification of the 737 MAX was compliant with FAA regulations. The fact that a compliant airplane suffered from two deadly crashes in less than five months is clear evidence that the current regulatory system is fundamentally flawed and needs to be repaired. [1] https://democrats-transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2020.09.15%20FINAL%20737%20MAX%20Report%20for%20Public%20Release.pdf https://democrats-transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/202...

llamaimperative 2y ago
First of all, Boeing wasn’t and isn’t a monopoly. In absence of these disasters there would’ve been no general appetite to break it up except from “socialists hellbent on destroying American greatness” or some such. Second, were you advocating for stronger regulations when it would’ve mattered? Or is this just another exercise of pinning failure on everything except profit motive (which of course is the reason the regulators are so weak to begin with)?
- credit_guy 2y ago
  > of pinning failure on everything except profit motive I see. Profit motive is bad. The world would be so much nicer if people were just less greedy. I do agree with that. And then what? Will you appeal to people to just stop being greedy, and join in a brotherly harmony? Or you will try to strengthen the state mechanisms that make greed less dangerous? For example, greed could make some people steal. Rather than appeal to people not to steal, we can (and do) have law enforcement that deters people from stealing. Well, recently that deterrence started losing its potency. Do I hear you criticizing the human greed and deploring those who go in stores and steal in plain daylight to satisfy their greed?
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    Obviously I’m an advocate for stronger regulation. I am saying that cannot be sufficient against a cultural backdrop that glorifies greed above all else. So we should be both regulating more effectively and encouraging an ethical culture of obligation to more than just one’s own bottom line — especially in large scale and/or safety-critical business. Given that most of us here on HN aren’t policymakers but we are creators and receivers of culture, I am focusing on the latter dimension. Greed is not a virtue, it is a local vice that can be converted into positive outcomes through a system that constrains it. But the necessary prerequisite to constraining greed is seeing it as a vice, a thing to be constrained and not celebrated for its own sake.
    - credit_guy 2y ago
      I'm not sure what culture you are talking about that celebrates greed. Maybe you are thinking of Michael Douglas's character in the Wall Street movie, and his meme-like "Greed is good". The guy was the negative character, the movie's message was that greed is bad. What you hear in America, at least, is a culture that celebrates hard work, and generally considers laziness a vice. Why are people willing to work hard? Because they want to succeed in life. That's what the American dream is, after all. You could try to look at it from the angle of "because they are greedy", and, in the end it comes down to dollars: people work hard because they want more of those green bills. But pretty much nobody perceives that as greed, they perceive it as the right compensation for hard work. And certainly nobody goes out there with the message "kids, be greedy; follow my lead, I was greedy in life and look how well I did in life". What I have noticed though is that a lot of people deplore grid, just like you are doing. It's very easy to perceive that other people are greedy. But very few people perceive themselves as being greedy. Well, duh, you could say. But here's the thing: in a culture that celebrated greed, people would be proud to call themselves greedy, and to perceive themselves as greedy. But that is just not the case. Happy to hear counterarguments. Especially examples in popular culture where greed is glorified.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        Extreme shareholder primacy is effectively an imperative to capture as much upside as possible and externalize as much cost/risk/downside as possible. What is greed if not the systematic capture of upside and distribution of downside to others? Then a culture that holds shareholder primacy in as high regard as the US’s does is de facto a culture that celebrates greed.

llamaimperative 2y ago

First of all, Boeing wasn’t and isn’t a monopoly. In absence of these disasters there would’ve been no general appetite to break it up except from “socialists hellbent on destroying American greatness” or some such. Second, were you advocating for stronger regulations when it would’ve mattered? Or is this just another exercise of pinning failure on everything except profit motive (which of course is the reason the regulators are so weak to begin with)?

credit_guy 2y ago
> of pinning failure on everything except profit motive I see. Profit motive is bad. The world would be so much nicer if people were just less greedy. I do agree with that. And then what? Will you appeal to people to just stop being greedy, and join in a brotherly harmony? Or you will try to strengthen the state mechanisms that make greed less dangerous? For example, greed could make some people steal. Rather than appeal to people not to steal, we can (and do) have law enforcement that deters people from stealing. Well, recently that deterrence started losing its potency. Do I hear you criticizing the human greed and deploring those who go in stores and steal in plain daylight to satisfy their greed?
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  Obviously I’m an advocate for stronger regulation. I am saying that cannot be sufficient against a cultural backdrop that glorifies greed above all else. So we should be both regulating more effectively and encouraging an ethical culture of obligation to more than just one’s own bottom line — especially in large scale and/or safety-critical business. Given that most of us here on HN aren’t policymakers but we are creators and receivers of culture, I am focusing on the latter dimension. Greed is not a virtue, it is a local vice that can be converted into positive outcomes through a system that constrains it. But the necessary prerequisite to constraining greed is seeing it as a vice, a thing to be constrained and not celebrated for its own sake.
  - credit_guy 2y ago
    I'm not sure what culture you are talking about that celebrates greed. Maybe you are thinking of Michael Douglas's character in the Wall Street movie, and his meme-like "Greed is good". The guy was the negative character, the movie's message was that greed is bad. What you hear in America, at least, is a culture that celebrates hard work, and generally considers laziness a vice. Why are people willing to work hard? Because they want to succeed in life. That's what the American dream is, after all. You could try to look at it from the angle of "because they are greedy", and, in the end it comes down to dollars: people work hard because they want more of those green bills. But pretty much nobody perceives that as greed, they perceive it as the right compensation for hard work. And certainly nobody goes out there with the message "kids, be greedy; follow my lead, I was greedy in life and look how well I did in life". What I have noticed though is that a lot of people deplore grid, just like you are doing. It's very easy to perceive that other people are greedy. But very few people perceive themselves as being greedy. Well, duh, you could say. But here's the thing: in a culture that celebrated greed, people would be proud to call themselves greedy, and to perceive themselves as greedy. But that is just not the case. Happy to hear counterarguments. Especially examples in popular culture where greed is glorified.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      Extreme shareholder primacy is effectively an imperative to capture as much upside as possible and externalize as much cost/risk/downside as possible. What is greed if not the systematic capture of upside and distribution of downside to others? Then a culture that holds shareholder primacy in as high regard as the US’s does is de facto a culture that celebrates greed.