8 ms·

We all know boeing won't be "wrecked"; they're too critical for state interests to be allowed to fail. If they're smart they'll either nationalize the company t

We all know boeing won't be "wrecked"; they're too critical for state interests to be allowed to fail. If they're smart they'll either nationalize the company to remove the profit inefficiency or force the company to split to remove the profit inefficiency. Either way, the profit motive and lack of any competition is clearly a national security risk.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> We all know boeing won't be "wrecked"; they're too critical for state interests to be allowed to fail People keep repeating this without context. The auto companies are strategically significant. That didn't prevent them from going bankrupt [1][2]. Wiping shareholders doesn't mean blowing up the factories. I'm increasingly convinced Boeing needs to go bankrupt. It can then shed unprofitable units--through spin-offs, sales or liquidations--and restructure its obligations. I'm not convinced the union comes out of that better off than it is now. But America sure does. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Chapter_11_reorganization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Chapter_11_reorganiza... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reorganization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reor...
- night862 2y ago
  Maybe so, but I would say cars are different than aerospace. It’s clear that Boeing was able to squeeze costs centers at the expense of quality and business investment all while keeping the coin under shell in the form of regular old stock buybacks. But if/when Boeing goes under who is going to vet all this NDI sitting in their portfolios? They’re just gonna spin it off to another buyer—consisting of who exactly? McDonnel Douglas? Elon Musk? Tencent? Seems like a nightmare for someone, not sure for whom.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > But if/when Boeing goes under who is going to vet all this NDI sitting in their portfolios? They’re just gonna spin it off to another buyer—consisting of who exactly? McDonnel Douglas? Elon Musk? Idk, pick one that's American or closely allied [1]. Ideally not one of the three larger than Boeing. Worst case: audit and re-assign the contracts. We'll be better for it in the long run. And I'm not convinced it wouldn't result in quicker, higher-quality deliverables in the short. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defense_contractors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defense_contractors
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      Who even needs a specific buyer? Boeing itself is a publicly traded company, the spin-offs can be too. Put the business unit into its own corporate entity and give all the shares of the new entity to the existing Boeing shareholders to do with as they please, or sell them into the market.
      - night862 2y ago
        The top secret stealth formula they could possibly be privy to is not publicly traded. I was making the point that you're going to have a board filled with people who in some instances could be hand-selected to say the quiet part loud, and the list of companies who makes some of this stuff has one item in it. Its military stuff.
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        There are more than a million people with a US security clearance. Finding enough to fill the board of a new company shouldn't be prohibitively difficult.
- darby_nine 2y ago
  > The auto companies are strategically significant. Not really, they're more politically significant than economically critical. I've certainly never owned an american car and never plan to. We'll be fine continuing to rely on foreign companies to produce our vehicles. Foreigners certainly don't want our cars (outside of maybe tesla in the nordics, i guess?). None of this is true for the plane market, or at least not until boeing acquired its current popular reputation of not being very good at making planes (deserved or not) The fact we bailed out the companies but refused to take ownership should be considered treason. Same for the banks, the car companies, the airline industry we bailed out for more than its entire value, etc etc. completely corrupt and incompetent governance
  - bombcar 2y ago
    The auto companies are strategically significant because war footing America will turn those F150 lines into tank lines in a matter of months instead of the years it would take to spin them up from scratch. IBM made machine guns on typewriter lines in WW2.
    - mulmen 2y ago
      Exactly correct. Good time to skim https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_Run https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_Run. Years of startup problems but when it finally started humming they were building a B-24 every 63 minutes! In the meantime existing factories were winning the war. As Americans we tend to glorify the industrial feats of WWII but the US government used a very heavy hand to pull that off. Public-private partnership is the preferred euphemism today but essentially we were a socialist economy.
      - bombcar 2y ago
        At its peak, the US had 40% of GDP going into the war. Forty percent! Today the US military budget is 3.4% of GDP. Can you imagine it being ten times as much?
    - newsclues 2y ago
      If America goes to war it will need many f-150s for the war itself.
- Dalewyn 2y ago
  >I'm increasingly convinced Boeing needs to go bankrupt. I agree and hope they do go bankrupt, but I hope so because the country needs a fucking wake up call: American Exceptionalism(tm) is simply no longer true. I sincerely think we need to see one (Boeing), maybe even a few (Intel? US Steel?) paragons of American Excellence(tm) go down in smoking ruins so we have to accept that we are not 1970s America taking mankind to the Moon and beyond anymore. Once we realize that, we can actually get started on Making America Great Again in a real, meaningful way instead of a dumb political catchphrase.
  - School-Cotton 2y ago
    > Once we realize that, we can actually get started on Making America Great Again in a real, meaningful way I see no reason to believe this will happen rather than a continued slow decline and eventual collapse.
  - gartdavis 2y ago
    The Canadian government drove its primary aerospace company, Avro Canada, not just into bankruptcy/reorganization, but to completely shutdown operations. The country lost 14,000 aerospace professionals, but more importantly, it lost its leadership position in cutting edge aerospace. Its best engineers left for the USA or the UK. Canada, more than a half century later, has never recovered anything like the leadership role it had built during the post-war period. Be careful what you ask for.
    - Dalewyn 2y ago
      Look, we're going down one way or another. We might as well get down there faster so we can start crawling back up sooner.
- spit2wind 2y ago
  You probably know more about this than I do since you claim "people keep repeating this without context." Looking at your links, it seems to me a confusion of terms. Yes, the legal entities behind GM and Chrysler went away...in order for the new entities to receive billions. So, technically, you are correct. The business entities of June 2009 failed. However, the consumer DGAF who owns www.gm.com or www.chrysler.com. They can still go to their local dealer and purchase a vehicle "made by" these companies. The "companies" live on.
donatj 2y ago
> If they're smart they'll either nationalize the company to remove the profit inefficiency So... remove the need to actually produce planes, or anything at all for that matter, subsidize their continued failures?
jajko 2y ago
Some car manufacturers are definitely not critical to national security, they just employ tons of folks in few places. Company making weapons like choppers, planes etc for whole US military is on completely different level of importance.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> We all know boeing won't be "wrecked"; they're too critical for state interests to be allowed to fail People keep repeating this without context. The auto companies are strategically significant. That didn't prevent them from going bankrupt [1][2]. Wiping shareholders doesn't mean blowing up the factories. I'm increasingly convinced Boeing needs to go bankrupt. It can then shed unprofitable units--through spin-offs, sales or liquidations--and restructure its obligations. I'm not convinced the union comes out of that better off than it is now. But America sure does. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Chapter_11_reorganization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Chapter_11_reorganiza... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reorganization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_Chapter_11_reor...

night862 2y ago
Maybe so, but I would say cars are different than aerospace. It’s clear that Boeing was able to squeeze costs centers at the expense of quality and business investment all while keeping the coin under shell in the form of regular old stock buybacks. But if/when Boeing goes under who is going to vet all this NDI sitting in their portfolios? They’re just gonna spin it off to another buyer—consisting of who exactly? McDonnel Douglas? Elon Musk? Tencent? Seems like a nightmare for someone, not sure for whom.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > But if/when Boeing goes under who is going to vet all this NDI sitting in their portfolios? They’re just gonna spin it off to another buyer—consisting of who exactly? McDonnel Douglas? Elon Musk? Idk, pick one that's American or closely allied [1]. Ideally not one of the three larger than Boeing. Worst case: audit and re-assign the contracts. We'll be better for it in the long run. And I'm not convinced it wouldn't result in quicker, higher-quality deliverables in the short. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defense_contractors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defense_contractors
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    Who even needs a specific buyer? Boeing itself is a publicly traded company, the spin-offs can be too. Put the business unit into its own corporate entity and give all the shares of the new entity to the existing Boeing shareholders to do with as they please, or sell them into the market.
    - night862 2y ago
      The top secret stealth formula they could possibly be privy to is not publicly traded. I was making the point that you're going to have a board filled with people who in some instances could be hand-selected to say the quiet part loud, and the list of companies who makes some of this stuff has one item in it. Its military stuff.
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        There are more than a million people with a US security clearance. Finding enough to fill the board of a new company shouldn't be prohibitively difficult.
darby_nine 2y ago
> The auto companies are strategically significant. Not really, they're more politically significant than economically critical. I've certainly never owned an american car and never plan to. We'll be fine continuing to rely on foreign companies to produce our vehicles. Foreigners certainly don't want our cars (outside of maybe tesla in the nordics, i guess?). None of this is true for the plane market, or at least not until boeing acquired its current popular reputation of not being very good at making planes (deserved or not) The fact we bailed out the companies but refused to take ownership should be considered treason. Same for the banks, the car companies, the airline industry we bailed out for more than its entire value, etc etc. completely corrupt and incompetent governance
- bombcar 2y ago
  The auto companies are strategically significant because war footing America will turn those F150 lines into tank lines in a matter of months instead of the years it would take to spin them up from scratch. IBM made machine guns on typewriter lines in WW2.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    Exactly correct. Good time to skim https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_Run https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_Run. Years of startup problems but when it finally started humming they were building a B-24 every 63 minutes! In the meantime existing factories were winning the war. As Americans we tend to glorify the industrial feats of WWII but the US government used a very heavy hand to pull that off. Public-private partnership is the preferred euphemism today but essentially we were a socialist economy.
    - bombcar 2y ago
      At its peak, the US had 40% of GDP going into the war. Forty percent! Today the US military budget is 3.4% of GDP. Can you imagine it being ten times as much?
  - newsclues 2y ago
    If America goes to war it will need many f-150s for the war itself.
Dalewyn 2y ago
>I'm increasingly convinced Boeing needs to go bankrupt. I agree and hope they do go bankrupt, but I hope so because the country needs a fucking wake up call: American Exceptionalism(tm) is simply no longer true. I sincerely think we need to see one (Boeing), maybe even a few (Intel? US Steel?) paragons of American Excellence(tm) go down in smoking ruins so we have to accept that we are not 1970s America taking mankind to the Moon and beyond anymore. Once we realize that, we can actually get started on Making America Great Again in a real, meaningful way instead of a dumb political catchphrase.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  > Once we realize that, we can actually get started on Making America Great Again in a real, meaningful way I see no reason to believe this will happen rather than a continued slow decline and eventual collapse.
- gartdavis 2y ago
  The Canadian government drove its primary aerospace company, Avro Canada, not just into bankruptcy/reorganization, but to completely shutdown operations. The country lost 14,000 aerospace professionals, but more importantly, it lost its leadership position in cutting edge aerospace. Its best engineers left for the USA or the UK. Canada, more than a half century later, has never recovered anything like the leadership role it had built during the post-war period. Be careful what you ask for.
  - Dalewyn 2y ago
    Look, we're going down one way or another. We might as well get down there faster so we can start crawling back up sooner.
spit2wind 2y ago
You probably know more about this than I do since you claim "people keep repeating this without context." Looking at your links, it seems to me a confusion of terms. Yes, the legal entities behind GM and Chrysler went away...in order for the new entities to receive billions. So, technically, you are correct. The business entities of June 2009 failed. However, the consumer DGAF who owns www.gm.com or www.chrysler.com. They can still go to their local dealer and purchase a vehicle "made by" these companies. The "companies" live on.

donatj 2y ago

> If they're smart they'll either nationalize the company to remove the profit inefficiency So... remove the need to actually produce planes, or anything at all for that matter, subsidize their continued failures?

jajko 2y ago

Some car manufacturers are definitely not critical to national security, they just employ tons of folks in few places. Company making weapons like choppers, planes etc for whole US military is on completely different level of importance.