5 ms·
Once you start thinking of Boeing as a government agency with less oversight that poses as a for-profit corporation, a lot of things start to make more sense. I
by diggan 2y ago
Once you start thinking of Boeing as a government agency with less oversight that poses as a for-profit corporation, a lot of things start to make more sense. Including what you wrote about.
- aners_xyz 2y agoI’m not really sure this framing makes any sense if I’m being honest.
- diggan 2y agoWhat private corporation could make mistakes where people lose their lives on the same scale while still operating as normal afterwards?
- jfarina 2y agoBoeing. It's literally the post.
- echoangle 2y agoThe question obviously was meant as "except Boeing".
- schmidtleonard 2y agoPeople dying due to profit-motivated corporate negligence and the corporations in question getting a slap on the wrist? Must be a day ending in "y."
- FredPret 2y agoThere must be a billion corporations out there. What % can kill customers on the scale of Boeing and get away with it? A tiny number. And for the ones that can, it’s likely that there are strong ties to the same government that’s supposed to prosecute them. For Boeing, there are significant financial and contractual ties to the US government. Having a steady stream of ultra-reliable government cash surely reminds you of a state department?
- troupo 2y agoBoeing is one of those "billions" corporations. Some are even immortalized in Oscar-winning movies. See e.g. the disasters section here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Company#Disasters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Gas_and_Electric_Compa...
- consteval 2y ago> What % can kill customers on the scale of Boeing and get away with it? 100% of the ones that are at, or near, the top of their domain. As the US and other developed nations move more towards Oligarchy, this describes a vast majority of the economy. If you pick a domain, any domain, there's typically < 5 companies that represent almost 100% of the value in that domain. There're some exceptions, like tech, but not many. Losing even just one of those companies therefore has catastrophic economic effects. So you can't lose them, or even really hurt their profit much, because what's good for them is good for you (you being the US economy). Bayer Pharmaceutical famously gave thousands of people HIV, knowingly, instead of clearing their inventory. Who knows how many of those people went on to unknowingly spread HIV to their future children or partners. We literally can't measure how many people died of AIDS because of them. But they're one of the most important pharmaceuticals out there. And we need drugs.
- Zigurd 2y agoDebatable. For all the complaints about regulation, there's lead in your cinnamon and filth in your deli meats. Listeriosis kills. The regulators are under-resourced, if anything.
- tbrownaw 2y ago> People dying due to profit-motivated corporate negligence and the corporations in question getting a slap on the wrist? As opposed to what, people dying because government workers were negligent or on a power trip and nobody getting even that much accountability?
- ryandrake 2y agoYou know, it's possible that both are bad. The root problem is that the rich and powerful[1] face no consequences for wrongdoing. It's endemic to every part of life, and nothing gets done about it because the rich and powerful make the rules. It really doesn't matter if they happen to be aligned with "Team Corporation" or "Team Government". They are equally unaccountable to justice. 1: Rich and Powerful are both the exact same thing since money is frictionlessly convertible to power and vice versa.
- tbrownaw 2y ago> the rich and powerful[1] face no consequences for wrongdoing. Bernie Madoff. Jeff Epstein & Ghislane Maxwell. Sam Bankman-Fried. Elizabeth Holmes. Harvey Weinstein. I get that sometimes you'll see things like Hunter Biden's tax issues being allowed to pass the statute of limitations, but a universal "the rich never face consequences" is just plain false.
- ryandrake 2y agoYou can always cherry pick a few counter examples to any argument without invalidating the typical case.
- slt2021 2y agocan you list how many financiers were jailed after 2008 GFC ? can you find any? can you list how many people were jailed for engineering SARS-CoV? heck, government hasn't even acknowledge that it was engineered and still pushes fairy tale about bat infecting pangolin who infected a chain of few other animals and then ended up in wet market - but no signs of viruses in 1000 miles between caves and wet market were ever found
- piva00 2y agoProbably all of the oil industry?
- Al-Khwarizmi 2y agoMonsanto, Nestlé, J&J, the whole tobacco industry, the companies that made asbestos, talidomide, etc.
- frmersdog 2y agoSo, yes. All have deep ties with government through their regulatory apparatus (some would characterize this as "capture"). Also of note: people might be confused by tobacco's inclusion here if they don't realize that North America was essentially settled as a tobacco agribusiness (Spanish gold-hunting and death-trap religious colonies notwithstanding). Tobacco's role in shaping America's socioeconomic nature is massively underrated.
- bravetraveler 2y agoTake a nice drive through the Midwest/south, you'll see all kinds of branded barns used for drying tobacco... assuming they're still standing I say this more to reminisce than anything. It used the big industry, not anymore. People either adapted or they didn't. Kentucky and Ohio for example used the be Big Tobacco. Now, in large parts - nothing.
- tbrownaw 2y agoMaybe do a search for "most dangerous jobs"?
- TehCorwiz 2y agoBP and Exxon have killed entire ecosystems including people. They lied for decades about the environmental effects of fossil fuels. Air pollution alone has conservatively killed hundreds of thousands of people. While you can't blame them for air pollution existing, you can blame them for intentionally suppressing the ability of people to mitigate it and improve air quality. EDIT: accidentally a word.
- zymhan 2y agoUnion Carbide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
- dimal 2y agoAre you joking? Once a corporation gets large enough, the worst they can get is a fine, which is usually a fraction of their income. This is how the system works. For example, depending on how you calculate it, Merck killed between 3,000 and 500,000 people with Vioxx, and they knew the risks prior to releasing it. They got a fine. And now, the company is now doing just fine. No one was individually prosecuted. If you have a corporate charter and billions of dollars, you have a license to kill.
- jdright 2y agoThis is just malicious. Boing is the exemplar capitalist enterprise, traded, where the sole objective is profit above everything else, including safety and following regulations obligations, something that they can do because they bought politicians (lobby aka legal corruption).
- MOARDONGZPLZ 2y agoTheir stock is down 55% in the last five years. How is that an exemplar of profit making capitalism?
- ryandrake 2y ago> How is that an exemplar of profit making capitalism? They still exist and are regularly pumping out millionaires from their executive suites. It's helpful to think about corporate America as a gigantic factory, but instead of a factory that makes gadgets or appliances, it's a factory that makes millionaires. On one end of the factory, the raw materials come in: Able-bodied workers, money from customers, and capital from investors. On the other end of the factory, the finished product--millionaire executives--fly out on golden parachutes into retirement. In the back, the waste from the manufacturing process gets discarded: The broken lives and bodies of all the rank-and-file workers, and all the negative societal and environmental externalities that were also destroyed in the process. Profit for shareholders and [temporary, conditional] employment for workers are mere side effects of the process, and they'd do away with the second one if they had the technology to.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoWhy would the shareholders choose to be shareholders in such an organization?
- Larrikin 2y ago[flagged]
- ramon156 2y agoThat's not reality though. Sure, you could argue that this is how a government should work, but everything is always about improving the economy first
- foobarboo 2y agoThe government is allowed to care about the economy as a means to improve peoples lifes.
- godzillabrennus 2y agoIf you think government agencies exist to solely help the American people then how do you explain the DMV experience?
- weard_beard 2y agoOr the unemployment office
- Larrikin 2y agoGo to a DMV or a post office in a country that isn't the US. It can actually be a pleasant experience.
- linguae 2y agoIt depends on the country, though. I love Japan, where I lived for eight months and where I frequently travel to, but dealing with government services there can be stressful. Granted, the clerks are professional and cordial, but be prepared to deal with long waits and perplexing bureaucracy. The United States is not unique when it comes to the stereotypical “DMV experience.”
- 2y ago