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The market can't do much in this case, as within the US, Boeing has a monopoly, and internationally its only competitor is Airbus. And there is a very strong "l

The market can't do much in this case, as within the US, Boeing has a monopoly, and internationally its only competitor is Airbus. And there is a very strong "lock-in" in regards to pilot type rating. So while there is some competition, the airline industry is very much controlled and regulated by government. And here in particular there was a lot of failures in particular with the FAA allowing Boeing to self-regulate (when has that ever worked?) and then the DOJ failing to prosecute after the two deadly crashes. It really seems like a systematic problem, not an exception to an otherwise healthy situation. Time and time again we see a lack of consequences to corporate greed when those actions are literally killing people. You're quite correct that things are not as bad as during the robber barons era, but that is a pretty low bar. We can do much better.

oersted 2y ago
I agree with all your points. And there is indeed a fundamental systemic issue with how private companies that deliver critical social services interact with the government: healthcare, education, energy, banking, logistics, real-state... In my anecdotal experience, the EU social-democratic model seems to be the most competent one right now specifically for this problem: more of these should be state-owned. Don't get me wrong, this is a crappy solution too, you are making a lot of sacrifices for it, but generally, these state-owned corporations do seem to be better at delivering critical services, and often (unintuitively) more efficiently than private ones. My point was that this is not necessarily about "late-stage capitalism" (as I understand it), this was not a case of the open market harming society. Because indeed Boeing is a state-supported monopoly and that's the root of the issue, at least in theory capitalism abhors monopolies. This happened because Boeing has both the duty to make the most money possible, and is protected by the government because they offer a critical service. There is something fundamentally broken in this incentive model. Either let them play in the open market and encourage competition, or make it non-profit and serve the state directly. A mix of both is a recipe for disaster.

oersted 2y ago

I agree with all your points. And there is indeed a fundamental systemic issue with how private companies that deliver critical social services interact with the government: healthcare, education, energy, banking, logistics, real-state... In my anecdotal experience, the EU social-democratic model seems to be the most competent one right now specifically for this problem: more of these should be state-owned. Don't get me wrong, this is a crappy solution too, you are making a lot of sacrifices for it, but generally, these state-owned corporations do seem to be better at delivering critical services, and often (unintuitively) more efficiently than private ones. My point was that this is not necessarily about "late-stage capitalism" (as I understand it), this was not a case of the open market harming society. Because indeed Boeing is a state-supported monopoly and that's the root of the issue, at least in theory capitalism abhors monopolies. This happened because Boeing has both the duty to make the most money possible, and is protected by the government because they offer a critical service. There is something fundamentally broken in this incentive model. Either let them play in the open market and encourage competition, or make it non-profit and serve the state directly. A mix of both is a recipe for disaster.