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Boeing is becoming a national embarrassment. We discuss this ad nauseam every time a post about them makes it to the front page. I think this is a sign that t

by hx8 2y ago

Boeing is becoming a national embarrassment. We discuss this ad nauseam every time a post about them makes it to the front page. I think this is a sign that their reputation is beginning to be worth less, and more people in the system are going to be more critical. This one case won't penalize Boeing enough that they return to a more quality focused culture. Maybe there aren't enough legal penalties to do so. I wish I could see a feasible path to Boeing redemption.

hinkley 2y ago
Make them move their headquarters back to Washington or North Carolina, so the team has to be around the engineering staff instead of insulated from them. After the MD merger everyone knew it was bullshit they were moving to Chicago. The move to the DC area is equally bullshit.
inamberclad 2y ago
Boeing should be put under financial oversight by the US government, the same way GM was in 2008. It's apparent that the FAA's oversight powers are not strong enough to to overcome the financial pressures of management on their own. For what it's worth, I work for a smaller aircraft manufacturer right now. Aerospace will always be a day late and a dollar short when profit is the focus instead of safety and sound design.
- mmooss 2y ago
  Was GM under financial oversight? I thought the US government financed and oversaw what was essentially a bankruptcy proceeding, with the loss-making and highly leveraged assets spun off and the rest consolidated in a 'new' GM. (or something like that)
- nradov 2y ago
  How would that work exactly? GM was in bankruptcy proceedings but Boeing is still a going concern. The federal government generally doesn't have statutory authority to impose financial oversight on companies.
  - Nathanba 2y ago
    The judges could give them such large fines to force them into bankrupcy. Alex Jones was fined 1.1 billion dollars. How much should Boeing be fined for causing actual deaths?
  - damiankennedy 2y ago
    How much can the US federal government fine a company like Boeing? 30 trillion would be nice. Or perhaps a federal level registration fee that covers safety/quality checks and costs 50 million per plane?
    - nradov 2y ago
      Under which law could Boeing be fined $30T (an amount which greatly exceeds their enterprise value)? Please to provide a specific US Code citation.
- duxup 2y ago
  Most of the times the US is "involved" (by varying degrees) has involved serious financial issues / bankruptcy / some government agency's legitimate and legal involvement. I don't know of any situation where "Boeing you're still solvent but we think you're being stupids." would be legal, or even desirable.
dylan604 2y ago
> beginning to be worth less the transition from worth less to worthless isn't very far. even in monospace fonts.
lenerdenator 2y ago
Here's the path: 1. Imprison executives who made the decisions that led to the result. Preferably in a way that makes them spend their fortunes on legal costs so that when they get out in 20-30 years, they're dependent on social safety nets for the rest of their natural lives. People are dead because they thought that possibility of profit was worth the risk of hundreds of deaths. That's negligent homicide. 2. There is no 2.
- dboreham 2y ago
  Responsibility will turn out to be so diffuse that no individuals will be found to be liable. This is a superpower of large organizations and permeates our daily lives. Also one of the main reasons government regulation is always required. And why capatilist bros are constantly wittering about removing regulation.
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    > Responsibility will turn out to be so diffuse that no individuals will be found to be liable. Au contraire. Most executives will justify their pay packages by saying they shoulder all of the risk. Well, what risk? Losing their jobs? When you make in a year what most people make in an entire career, that's not a risk. Losing their wealth? See the prior statement, but take into account that they have money managers who are paid to do nothing but diversify holdings and manage risk. They can't be held liable in a civil suit as individuals; that's the entire point of incorporation. Either they have risk to justify their compensation or they don't. They don't. So we need to find some risk. When you look for another way to assign risk to increase the quality of the decisions made by c-suites, Leavenworth starts to look like a fairly attractive option. And it would be for the convicted, when you consider that the crimes actually happened in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
    - thmsths 2y ago
      I fully agree. We need to adopt the same mindset they have in maritime tradition: the buck stops at the captain. If you're in charge you're responsible for the misdeeds of the people working for you. It does not matter that you did not explicitly order the bad thing or that someone took an initiative without your knowledge. At that level of pay/power/responsibility, "It was not me"/"I did not know" are NOT acceptable defenses. As the CEO you're in a unique position to ask for more controls, more safety, more audit. So unless you went above and beyond and things were truly out of your control, then yes, you should be held responsible when disaster strikes. If you think this is too much risk, then you're free to walk from the job (and the 8 figures pay package).
BurningFrog 2y ago
If Boeing doesn't go through a convincing change, I doubt they'll sell a lot of planes. And that's fine. Bad companies get replaced by good ones. Life goes on.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
  For the people who are still alive, at least. There's at least three problems with this laissez-faire ideal: 1) For some reason that is hard to understand, the prospect of Boeing's long-term decline does not necessarily translate into incentives for the people at the helm to steer it right. They can reap unfathomable rewards while guiding it to its doom. That's not only perverse and unjust, it's also bad for incentivizing success. This is not necessarily something specific to Boeing; any company is vulnerable to this disease. 2) It may be a contagious condition. When executives who ruined Boeing leave the company, they may take up influential positions at other companies, and have similar destructive effects. It's hard to understand how this can happen, but it's the sort of thing that does happen; that is a major problem that deserves to be solved. 3) A Darwinian process of creative destruction is fine if Boeing were sinking because it was improving but too slowly, and Airbus had improved even more and faster and surpassed it. If Canon replaces Kodak, life goes on and we get nice cameras. But in a case where Boeing dies not by being outgrown but by regressing, because 2024-Boeing has worse quality standards than 1994-Boeing, there's nothing fine about that; that's something that should concern anybody who cares about the production of high-quality airplanes. It's worth examining how we got here, and if an incentive disconnect at the executive level is responsible then there could be very valuable lessons to learn about corporate governance going forward.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- tomcar288 2y ago
  i'm no expert on this but i thought the military buys a bunch of stuff from them because there's no other choice, right? and all those airlines, their only other choice is airbus. the industry simply doesnt compete enough, no?
joe_the_user 2y ago
Boeing's decisions were ultimately not a matter of the dubious leaders or the MD acquisition. They were a matter of the preferences of the owners, which is to say they expressed the preferences of Wall Street investors and the preferences are "provide a steady stream of revenues by cutting costs and gutting the company if necessary (subcontract nearly everything out, make the workforce disposable, etc)". You can see this in the decision of California's PG&E to give the money needed to maintain lines to their shareholder as a dividend. Overall, the process dispossesses the employees and mortgages the future of the enterprise. To change this, you'd have to have a different source of funding for these enterprises at the least.
- adamc 2y ago
  Perhaps we need to rethink protecting shareholders from liability. I'm sure that would be unpopular, but having companies create harm for profit is a problem.
  - hx8 2y ago
    Criminal liabilities? Something tells me that would cause a massive flight of capital from US stock exchanges.
    - izacus 2y ago
      What's that "something"? The same shareholders which would be held accountable? Are those whispering to you? :)

by hx8 2y ago

hinkley 2y ago

Make them move their headquarters back to Washington or North Carolina, so the team has to be around the engineering staff instead of insulated from them. After the MD merger everyone knew it was bullshit they were moving to Chicago. The move to the DC area is equally bullshit.

inamberclad 2y ago

Boeing should be put under financial oversight by the US government, the same way GM was in 2008. It's apparent that the FAA's oversight powers are not strong enough to to overcome the financial pressures of management on their own. For what it's worth, I work for a smaller aircraft manufacturer right now. Aerospace will always be a day late and a dollar short when profit is the focus instead of safety and sound design.

mmooss 2y ago
Was GM under financial oversight? I thought the US government financed and oversaw what was essentially a bankruptcy proceeding, with the loss-making and highly leveraged assets spun off and the rest consolidated in a 'new' GM. (or something like that)
nradov 2y ago
How would that work exactly? GM was in bankruptcy proceedings but Boeing is still a going concern. The federal government generally doesn't have statutory authority to impose financial oversight on companies.
- Nathanba 2y ago
  The judges could give them such large fines to force them into bankrupcy. Alex Jones was fined 1.1 billion dollars. How much should Boeing be fined for causing actual deaths?
- damiankennedy 2y ago
  How much can the US federal government fine a company like Boeing? 30 trillion would be nice. Or perhaps a federal level registration fee that covers safety/quality checks and costs 50 million per plane?
  - nradov 2y ago
    Under which law could Boeing be fined $30T (an amount which greatly exceeds their enterprise value)? Please to provide a specific US Code citation.
duxup 2y ago
Most of the times the US is "involved" (by varying degrees) has involved serious financial issues / bankruptcy / some government agency's legitimate and legal involvement. I don't know of any situation where "Boeing you're still solvent but we think you're being stupids." would be legal, or even desirable.

dylan604 2y ago

> beginning to be worth less the transition from worth less to worthless isn't very far. even in monospace fonts.

lenerdenator 2y ago

Here's the path: 1. Imprison executives who made the decisions that led to the result. Preferably in a way that makes them spend their fortunes on legal costs so that when they get out in 20-30 years, they're dependent on social safety nets for the rest of their natural lives. People are dead because they thought that possibility of profit was worth the risk of hundreds of deaths. That's negligent homicide. 2. There is no 2.

dboreham 2y ago
Responsibility will turn out to be so diffuse that no individuals will be found to be liable. This is a superpower of large organizations and permeates our daily lives. Also one of the main reasons government regulation is always required. And why capatilist bros are constantly wittering about removing regulation.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  > Responsibility will turn out to be so diffuse that no individuals will be found to be liable. Au contraire. Most executives will justify their pay packages by saying they shoulder all of the risk. Well, what risk? Losing their jobs? When you make in a year what most people make in an entire career, that's not a risk. Losing their wealth? See the prior statement, but take into account that they have money managers who are paid to do nothing but diversify holdings and manage risk. They can't be held liable in a civil suit as individuals; that's the entire point of incorporation. Either they have risk to justify their compensation or they don't. They don't. So we need to find some risk. When you look for another way to assign risk to increase the quality of the decisions made by c-suites, Leavenworth starts to look like a fairly attractive option. And it would be for the convicted, when you consider that the crimes actually happened in Indonesia and Ethiopia.
  - thmsths 2y ago
    I fully agree. We need to adopt the same mindset they have in maritime tradition: the buck stops at the captain. If you're in charge you're responsible for the misdeeds of the people working for you. It does not matter that you did not explicitly order the bad thing or that someone took an initiative without your knowledge. At that level of pay/power/responsibility, "It was not me"/"I did not know" are NOT acceptable defenses. As the CEO you're in a unique position to ask for more controls, more safety, more audit. So unless you went above and beyond and things were truly out of your control, then yes, you should be held responsible when disaster strikes. If you think this is too much risk, then you're free to walk from the job (and the 8 figures pay package).

BurningFrog 2y ago

If Boeing doesn't go through a convincing change, I doubt they'll sell a lot of planes. And that's fine. Bad companies get replaced by good ones. Life goes on.

mitthrowaway2 2y ago
For the people who are still alive, at least. There's at least three problems with this laissez-faire ideal: 1) For some reason that is hard to understand, the prospect of Boeing's long-term decline does not necessarily translate into incentives for the people at the helm to steer it right. They can reap unfathomable rewards while guiding it to its doom. That's not only perverse and unjust, it's also bad for incentivizing success. This is not necessarily something specific to Boeing; any company is vulnerable to this disease. 2) It may be a contagious condition. When executives who ruined Boeing leave the company, they may take up influential positions at other companies, and have similar destructive effects. It's hard to understand how this can happen, but it's the sort of thing that does happen; that is a major problem that deserves to be solved. 3) A Darwinian process of creative destruction is fine if Boeing were sinking because it was improving but too slowly, and Airbus had improved even more and faster and surpassed it. If Canon replaces Kodak, life goes on and we get nice cameras. But in a case where Boeing dies not by being outgrown but by regressing, because 2024-Boeing has worse quality standards than 1994-Boeing, there's nothing fine about that; that's something that should concern anybody who cares about the production of high-quality airplanes. It's worth examining how we got here, and if an incentive disconnect at the executive level is responsible then there could be very valuable lessons to learn about corporate governance going forward.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
tomcar288 2y ago
i'm no expert on this but i thought the military buys a bunch of stuff from them because there's no other choice, right? and all those airlines, their only other choice is airbus. the industry simply doesnt compete enough, no?

joe_the_user 2y ago

Boeing's decisions were ultimately not a matter of the dubious leaders or the MD acquisition. They were a matter of the preferences of the owners, which is to say they expressed the preferences of Wall Street investors and the preferences are "provide a steady stream of revenues by cutting costs and gutting the company if necessary (subcontract nearly everything out, make the workforce disposable, etc)". You can see this in the decision of California's PG&E to give the money needed to maintain lines to their shareholder as a dividend. Overall, the process dispossesses the employees and mortgages the future of the enterprise. To change this, you'd have to have a different source of funding for these enterprises at the least.

adamc 2y ago
Perhaps we need to rethink protecting shareholders from liability. I'm sure that would be unpopular, but having companies create harm for profit is a problem.
- hx8 2y ago
  Criminal liabilities? Something tells me that would cause a massive flight of capital from US stock exchanges.
  - izacus 2y ago
    What's that "something"? The same shareholders which would be held accountable? Are those whispering to you? :)