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The people saying “send the CEO to jail” or “make the board liable” are vastly oversimplifying the complexity of the issue here, which is about how to enforce r

The people saying “send the CEO to jail” or “make the board liable” are vastly oversimplifying the complexity of the issue here, which is about how to enforce regulations and standards without torpedoing your economy. One of the single most important reasons why the US has such a successful business culture is because of its approach to liability - virtually all business debt can be erased in a bankruptcy, and the entrepreneur is not personally responsible. This is not the case in many other developed countries, with one consequence being that the entrepreneurial culture there is nowhere near as developed as in the US. https://swz.it/europes-failure-to-deal-with-failure/ https://swz.it/europes-failure-to-deal-with-failure/ And so you really don’t want to set up a situation where the operators of a company are by-default responsible for anything that their company does. Of course, that has limits and people can still be individually charged for crimes, but the point here is that this is not a by-default thing. This problem is magnified by a thousand with a company like Boeing that is so intertwined with the government and not easily replaceable. It seems to me that the solution to this kind of issue might come from studying successful occupations done by the US - post-WW2 Japan is the one that comes to mind. The Allies (mainly the Americans) managed to defeat an enemy state, punish some (but not all) of the people it deemed to have done wrong, and then set up systems which turned out to be largely effective at putting the country on a good path. Fixing an entity like Boeing seems similar in nature, if much smaller than an actual country.

computerex 2y ago
Maybe something needs to change because America's "strong business culture" seems to only benefit the presently wealthy get wealthier at the expense of the working class.
- keiferski 2y ago
  I don’t think that is contradictory with what I wrote. It is possible (and I think the actual case) that all American classes benefit from the strong American economy compared to say, Europe, while intra-economically inequality grows.
BartjeD 2y ago
`without torpedoing your economy` It's OK to kill people, just let the company go bankrupt afterward... Better luck next time! What an immensely unsatisfying bunch of intellectually corrupt market-speak regurgitation. There are laws. Those laws should apply the same to service workers as they do to service operators and CEO's. That is: If you believe in the integrity of your own society. Flouting the law to do influential people a favor, under the guise of not-torpedoing-your-economy, is just another way to have favoritism appear justified. A societies' law already decided on - and struck a balance on the question of -'not-torpedoing'. Ignoring that later on is inherently political and smacks of corruption and sweetheart-dealing. --- For spilling a hot coffee cup you get $ 2.7 million worth of punitive damages. But for killing more than 200 people and trying to hide the evidence, we'll charge you 200 million and call it a day. That's less per person than the price of a hot-coffee spill.
- keiferski 2y ago
  Nowhere did I write that Boeing shouldn’t be punished or that killing people is absolved by bankruptcy. I said that making company operators by default liable would have bad economic consequences. In fact, I suggested that Boeing ought to be treated like Occupied Japan, which to me seems like it ought to be treated pretty harshly.
  - jampekka 2y ago
    > In fact, I suggested that Boeing ought to be treated like Occupied Japan, which to me seems like it ought to be treated pretty harshly. Seven were hanged and sixteen sentenced to life in prison as the result of Tokyo Trials.
kristjank 2y ago
I do not care about the economy bottom line. I want deaths of people caused by the arguably same motivation of penny-pinching and ever-growing profits translate into at the very least jail times of people that represented and concurred with these horrendously dangerous decisions. When economists are left alone too long, their results do not differ very much from those of serial killers.
- keiferski 2y ago
  The real world isn’t that simple. If you just dismantled Boeing and sent everyone to jail, thousands of people would lose their jobs. America would lose a competitive edge compared to foreign adversaries. As I said in the original comment, the difficulty is in punishing the people responsible while maintaining/rebuilding systems that have better outcomes. Blowing everything up doesn’t do that.
  - Dah00n 2y ago
    >America would lose a competitive edge compared to foreign adversaries. So murder is okay in a private company if it is important enough for "a competitive edge"? That means specifically that they are above the law.
    - keiferski 2y ago
      Did I say that? I said it’s complicated and the world isn’t as simple as destroying things because people do evil things. The lack of nuance in this conversation is getting tiring.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    “But people are going to lose jobs” is always the excuse used when arguing to treat a criminally fraudulent company with kid gloves. Do we really think ~100k people temporarily losing their job (at a criminal enterprise) is going to make America lose its edge? EDIT: Also: if America’s “edge” largely comes from its business leaders’ immunity from their company’s wrongdoing, then I’m not sure that’s an edge worth keeping.
rlpb 2y ago
> And so you really don’t want to set up a situation where the operators of a company are by-default responsible for anything that their company does. I think you're conflating criminality with civil liability here (covering legal risk taking and mere incompetence). The former is what's under discussion here. The latter is what allows entrepreneurs to take risk for economic benefit.
- keiferski 2y ago
  Sure they are different things, but culturally I do think they are treated interchangeably. The average person on the street probably couldn’t tell you if X celebrity was embroiled in a civil or criminal trial, merely that they’re in a trial. I still think it would be very anti-entrepreneurial culture to make company operators liable by default for everything their company does. Again the key word phrase here is “by default” and that obviously excludes executives knowingly committing crimes. But this distinction doesn’t seem to be understood by many commenters on this Boeing topic.
  - rlpb 2y ago
    > I still think it would be very anti-entrepreneurial culture to make company operators liable by default for everything their company does. Again, by missing out the distinction in this sentence, you're using the implied (valid) case to limit civil liability to make it sound like the same should apply for criminal liability. You're failing to explain why arguments for this in the civil liability case should also apply in the criminal case.
    - keiferski 2y ago
      Because I think it would still result in a culture that is hostile to entrepreneurship not dissimilar to how bankruptcy is treated in other countries. And just to be clear here, I’m arguing against the idea that company operators should be by-default guilty if the company they operate commits a crime. Because that is what a lot of commenters here are arguing for. Not that they should be not be liable for crimes they personally, knowingly, commit.
  - 2y ago
Dah00n 2y ago
>punish some (but not all) of the people it deemed to have done wrong, In other words it punished those that couldn't add something to the US -like engineers that could build rockets for example. Basically what you are saying is crime has no upper limit of evil if the criminal is seen as better unpunished for the state than not. That's how a lot of Nazis and Japanese that did mass murder and human experiments became US citizen in good standing. To me giving them this out was more evil than the deeds they did.
wasmitnetzen 2y ago
Boeing killed 200 people, but now Europe needs to change its failure culture? No thanks.

computerex 2y ago

Maybe something needs to change because America's "strong business culture" seems to only benefit the presently wealthy get wealthier at the expense of the working class.

keiferski 2y ago
I don’t think that is contradictory with what I wrote. It is possible (and I think the actual case) that all American classes benefit from the strong American economy compared to say, Europe, while intra-economically inequality grows.

BartjeD 2y ago

`without torpedoing your economy` It's OK to kill people, just let the company go bankrupt afterward... Better luck next time! What an immensely unsatisfying bunch of intellectually corrupt market-speak regurgitation. There are laws. Those laws should apply the same to service workers as they do to service operators and CEO's. That is: If you believe in the integrity of your own society. Flouting the law to do influential people a favor, under the guise of not-torpedoing-your-economy, is just another way to have favoritism appear justified. A societies' law already decided on - and struck a balance on the question of -'not-torpedoing'. Ignoring that later on is inherently political and smacks of corruption and sweetheart-dealing. --- For spilling a hot coffee cup you get $ 2.7 million worth of punitive damages. But for killing more than 200 people and trying to hide the evidence, we'll charge you 200 million and call it a day. That's less per person than the price of a hot-coffee spill.

keiferski 2y ago
Nowhere did I write that Boeing shouldn’t be punished or that killing people is absolved by bankruptcy. I said that making company operators by default liable would have bad economic consequences. In fact, I suggested that Boeing ought to be treated like Occupied Japan, which to me seems like it ought to be treated pretty harshly.
- jampekka 2y ago
  > In fact, I suggested that Boeing ought to be treated like Occupied Japan, which to me seems like it ought to be treated pretty harshly. Seven were hanged and sixteen sentenced to life in prison as the result of Tokyo Trials.

kristjank 2y ago

I do not care about the economy bottom line. I want deaths of people caused by the arguably same motivation of penny-pinching and ever-growing profits translate into at the very least jail times of people that represented and concurred with these horrendously dangerous decisions. When economists are left alone too long, their results do not differ very much from those of serial killers.

keiferski 2y ago
The real world isn’t that simple. If you just dismantled Boeing and sent everyone to jail, thousands of people would lose their jobs. America would lose a competitive edge compared to foreign adversaries. As I said in the original comment, the difficulty is in punishing the people responsible while maintaining/rebuilding systems that have better outcomes. Blowing everything up doesn’t do that.
- Dah00n 2y ago
  >America would lose a competitive edge compared to foreign adversaries. So murder is okay in a private company if it is important enough for "a competitive edge"? That means specifically that they are above the law.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    Did I say that? I said it’s complicated and the world isn’t as simple as destroying things because people do evil things. The lack of nuance in this conversation is getting tiring.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  “But people are going to lose jobs” is always the excuse used when arguing to treat a criminally fraudulent company with kid gloves. Do we really think ~100k people temporarily losing their job (at a criminal enterprise) is going to make America lose its edge? EDIT: Also: if America’s “edge” largely comes from its business leaders’ immunity from their company’s wrongdoing, then I’m not sure that’s an edge worth keeping.

rlpb 2y ago

> And so you really don’t want to set up a situation where the operators of a company are by-default responsible for anything that their company does. I think you're conflating criminality with civil liability here (covering legal risk taking and mere incompetence). The former is what's under discussion here. The latter is what allows entrepreneurs to take risk for economic benefit.

keiferski 2y ago
Sure they are different things, but culturally I do think they are treated interchangeably. The average person on the street probably couldn’t tell you if X celebrity was embroiled in a civil or criminal trial, merely that they’re in a trial. I still think it would be very anti-entrepreneurial culture to make company operators liable by default for everything their company does. Again the key word phrase here is “by default” and that obviously excludes executives knowingly committing crimes. But this distinction doesn’t seem to be understood by many commenters on this Boeing topic.
- rlpb 2y ago
  > I still think it would be very anti-entrepreneurial culture to make company operators liable by default for everything their company does. Again, by missing out the distinction in this sentence, you're using the implied (valid) case to limit civil liability to make it sound like the same should apply for criminal liability. You're failing to explain why arguments for this in the civil liability case should also apply in the criminal case.
  - keiferski 2y ago
    Because I think it would still result in a culture that is hostile to entrepreneurship not dissimilar to how bankruptcy is treated in other countries. And just to be clear here, I’m arguing against the idea that company operators should be by-default guilty if the company they operate commits a crime. Because that is what a lot of commenters here are arguing for. Not that they should be not be liable for crimes they personally, knowingly, commit.
- 2y ago

Dah00n 2y ago

>punish some (but not all) of the people it deemed to have done wrong, In other words it punished those that couldn't add something to the US -like engineers that could build rockets for example. Basically what you are saying is crime has no upper limit of evil if the criminal is seen as better unpunished for the state than not. That's how a lot of Nazis and Japanese that did mass murder and human experiments became US citizen in good standing. To me giving them this out was more evil than the deeds they did.

wasmitnetzen 2y ago

Boeing killed 200 people, but now Europe needs to change its failure culture? No thanks.