US prosecutors recommend Justice Department criminally charge Boeing

https://www.voanews.com/a/us-prosecutors-recommend-justice-department-criminally-charge-boeing-as-deadline-looms/7667194.html

by elsewhen • 2 years ago

486 227 2 years ago

voanews.com

InDubioProRubio2• 2 years ago

Criminal Neglicence Tax - CNT must be paid

lukan6• 2 years ago

"In May, officials determined the company breached a 2021 agreement that had shielded Boeing from a criminal charge of conspiracy to commit fraud arising from two fatal crashes in 2018 and 2019 involving the 737 MAX jet.

Under the 2021 deal, the Justice Department agreed not to prosecute Boeing over allegations it defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration so long as the company overhauled its compliance practices and submitted regular reports. Boeing also agreed to pay $2.5 billion to settle the investigation"

The 2.5 billion sound like a bribe to me, to avoid criminal charges. And Boeing thought that was enough, but it seems they did not assume that the FAA was also serious, that they still need to "overhaul its compliance practices and submitted regular reports".

edit: we are talking about potential manslaughter in hundreds of cases here, because this is what a criminal investigation could lead to, not a fine for violating arbitary regulations

nathancahill• 2 years ago

Indeed. For a very good book on the subject, read "The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives" (2017)

hugh-avherald• 2 years ago

I think it's a stretch to say that a written deal in which a party pays damages is a bribe by that party.

lukan6• 2 years ago

If this payment avoids potential criminal charges about manslaughter, I think it is not.

thelittleone• 2 years ago

Gees I wonder if the federal government would offer Joe Public a second chance if he defrauded them.

yetihehe• 2 years ago

If he paid 2.5 billion then most probably yes.

Arnt2• 2 years ago

That happens all the time. You find a good lawyer, the lawyer goes to the prosecutor and says "this is going to end with a fine of about x, why don't we save ourselves work and my client just pays x straight away?" If the assessment is sound and the prosecutor would rather do something else...

Sakos• 2 years ago

We regularly use fines to punish businesses, usually in combination with conditions for regulatory or legal compliance. I don't recall people calling it a bribe in these cases. This happens in the EU a lot.

onli3• 2 years ago

Fines for murder cases are not that common. Boring killed those passengers, a criminal investigation would have looked into that. Sure looks like a bribe.

szundi• 2 years ago

Criminal charges maybe on the government side too?

sschueller• 2 years ago

If the executives where smart they would have left after getting the deferred prosecution agreement. That way they could claim that it wasn't in their hands anymore and therefore they are not responsible.

Deferred prosecution should be eliminated and if a company is too big to fail then it should be nationalized and the execs should face prosecution.

lupusreal2• 2 years ago

It's not a bribe, or even like a bribe, unless the individuals on the government side of this deal were personally enriched from this settlement (they weren't.) That 2.5 billion was paid to the government, not to the justice department personnel.

lukan6• 2 years ago

It is definitely possible to also bribe organisations.

The individual members will profit and some members even more.

Also note, that I did not claim it is a bribe, but that it sounds to me like this (as a non lawyer).

Because we are talking about potential manslaughter here.

nolok• 2 years ago

The 2.5 billion sound like a bribe to me, to avoid criminal charges. And Boeing thought that was enough, but it seems they did not assume that the FAA was also serious, that they still need to "overhaul its compliance practices and submitted regular reports".

To be honest it might have been just enough, since nothing was done. If they had been serious before, they would have planned some sort of check or control as a follow up to that 2021 decision, but they didn't.

But then doors started falling from the skies and people started to have questions about what kind of shoddy plane building they were allowing.

That's when the FAA started their investigations.

xnorswap• 2 years ago

Doors started falling from US based airlines.

Boeing got unlucky in that sense. Had it been a flight out of Africa or Asia then I suspect regulators would still be turning a blind eye.

briandear• 2 years ago

I don’t want to company charged. I want the actual humans responsible charged. Can’t put a company in jail.

sofixa5• 2 years ago

I want the actual humans responsible charged

And there are a lot of them to charge. Start with the last two CEOs, add in the CEOs/COOs for Boeing Commercial aircraft, the test pilots, the program director(s) for the 737 Max, the engineers who designed MCAS and didn't add in any redundancy, and then move all the way down to the Spirit and Boeing employees cutting deadly corners on the production line.

lyu07282• 2 years ago

It's almost like it's a systemic issue the system can't fix because it's the system that is broken

Mashimo• 2 years ago

What did the test pilot do?

the engineers who designed MCAS and didn't add in any redundancy,

There is, but it's optional :))))

rhetenor• 2 years ago

Let out the engineers and workers. The management always justifies its salaries with their responsibility, then at least when it comes to that, they've got to stand for it. Also it's important that the penalty is no cash fine in any way. They usually got an insurance for the case.

Yes, this might be driven from a punishment thought of justice but it is important that there is an educational correction in the business to no longer calculate human life in terms of money which one may balance against.

ClumsyPilot5• 2 years ago

the test pilots

Test pilots have warned about this issue, we have emails proving it. Specific people have decided to release a dangerous plane, and those are people with decision making power higher up the food chain.

beAbU2• 2 years ago

Imagine a world where a company /can/ be put in jail.

Companies like to be treated like natural people when it suits them, but then when it comes to liability and accountability things conveniently don't apply.

Need to figure out how to do that without punishing the (presumably) innocent employees.

MathMonkeyMan2• 2 years ago

Putting a real person in jail prevents them from going to work, so jailing a company might be sanctioning it.

The thing is, companies are composed of people, and those people can just go to another company. Real people are composed of organs, but those organs can't just move to other bodies and commit the same crimes.

So, companies are just not people and the whole idea is stupid.

brcmthrowaway• 2 years ago

This is a huge self-own. Would this ever happen to a Chinese manufacturer?

scarmig2• 2 years ago

China is not what I'd call... Lax when it comes to corporate malfeasance. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/nov/24/china-executes...

DiogenesKynikos• 2 years ago

With the Boeing 737 MAX, it was actually the Chinese Civil Aviation Administration that first decided to ground the plane. The American FAA was reluctant to ground the plane, and only did so after most of the rest of the world had done so.

This is a case of American regulators putting an American company's business interests above safety. If it had been a foreign aircraft manufacturer, I doubt the FAA would have waited to ground the planes.

dralley• 2 years ago

How lax they are is more a function of closeness to the powerful factions of the CCP than the scale of malfeasance.

badcppdev• 2 years ago

Do you know what happens to Chinese citizens who displease the government/party?

https://www.si.com/tennis/2023/03/29/peng-shuai-wta-principl...

https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/chinas-sacked-fo...

AdamN• 2 years ago

If the US does not get Boeing under control, trust in all US companies will go down further. It makes a ton of sense, just from a self interested financial point of view, for the US to fix Boeing with compulsion - even if it means breaking it up and putting executives in prison.

stoperaticless• 2 years ago

While my sense of justice would be tickled by executives in prison, it is probably not a required condition to improve Boring situation.

ClumsyPilot5• 2 years ago

I regularly see this kind of logic, that in order to face off China we should let our leaders/corporations exploit workers, pollute, commit crimes and behave even worse than China.

I don’t know what is the name for this faulty programming but it is very disturbing. I guess this is some kind of default behaviour of nationalism?

dotancohen2• 2 years ago

It's called leveling the playing field. Done by either raising the low parts, or shaving the high parts. Not everybody agrees about the "fairness" of either approach, especially when the goal is to make the playing field "fair".

anal_reactor• 2 years ago

It's a manipulation technique. Not for US citizens, but citizens of other corrupt countries.

Imagine that you live in a country where everyone is corrupt and everyone lies. If you don't lie you're an idiot.

Then you read news about horrible US government failures. If the problems are so large that they cannot possibly keep lying and they openly admit to their failures, then what fucked up things still are there that they don't admit to doing? China at least manages to keep it shush. Therefore, whatever they do, shit at least doesn't hit the fan.

It's very difficult to imagine that a different society might have different standards regarding things such as transparency.

xcv1233• 2 years ago

In China the CEO would be executed by firing squad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanlu_Group

"On 22 January 2009, Tian was sentenced to life imprisonment, while other Sanlu executives received sentences of five to fifteen years. Two other men were sentenced to death"

Changsheng Biotech Vaccine Scandal (2018): The chairwoman of Changsheng Biotech, Gao Junfang, was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Kanghui Pharmaceutical Case (2007): The general manager, Ni Chunlin, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Qiqihar No. 2 Pharmaceutical Case (2006): The factory director received a 7-year prison sentence.

Shanghai Hualian Pharmaceutical Case (2007): Two executives were sentenced to death (later commuted to life imprisonment).

impossiblefork2• 2 years ago

Those are much more serious cases though.

They aren't death sentences due to messing up airplanes due to mismanagement or cost cutting, but actually poisoning people on a mass scale or knowingly making bad drugs.

It's not comparable. Those things are more like the Sackler opioid case.

malermeister• 2 years ago

Ask Jack Ma what happens when Chinese CEOs fuck around.

lukan6• 2 years ago

Even though in this case "fucking around" meant not potential manslaughter, but not being 100% under control of the party.

orwin• 2 years ago

Expropriate the company, at least 51%, take control and let public officials (knowing the US way, it will be some army general) set up checks and controls where necessary, then sell the shares (maybe keep an 'oversight' part, like 10% to keep a state official on the board).

Current stock owners will loose half their value (which is a good enough punishment for this lack of oversight), the state will have access to privileged company information which will allow the prosecution of human responsibles, top executives will be sacked (and their comp reduced by half since their comp is in stocks) and maybe the company will start on good base again.

bitcharmer• 2 years ago

That sounds like the right thing to do. And that's why it's never going to happen

wrren• 2 years ago

I don’t think millionaires losing some money is sufficient punishment for hundreds of lives lost. What’s so crazy about prosecuting individuals?

dspillett4• 2 years ago

Why not both? Punish those making the decisions with prison time, and those turning a blind eye because it was profitable with at least some of that profit.

hibikir• 2 years ago

It's not crazy, but many company divisions are set up in such a way to dilute guilt, and make people feel helpless about fixing issues near them. It will often be difficult to follow a paper trail and find that yes, X Y and Z were the people that decided on a criminally negligent tradeoff.

Just like the unread targets in Wells Fargo, nobody asks for the fraudulent behavior by name, but the incentives often make it inevitable.

ben_w• 2 years ago

Likewise.

In olden times, the monarch's wealth was the state's wealth, and vice-versa.

CEOs being shareholders has a similar problem, in that the only monetary punishment possible against the collective necessarily also harms those with no power to prevent the actions which were punished because it's not a democracy.

(One dollar one vote != one person one vote; also the workforce generally, not sure about Boeing in particular, have minimal to zero shares/votes).

For this reason, I favour a degree of personal responsibility for management all the way from line managers to the board… and for government officials all the way from parking inspectors to presidents.

The details of such a system to make it fair and balanced are an entire constitution, not something I'd be qualified to write, and definitely to big to fit into this comment.

michaelt3• 2 years ago

Current stock owners will loose half their value (which is a good enough punishment for this lack of oversight)

I'm not opposed to this. But I think our corporations should be regulated by the government, not by shareholder oversight.

After all, shareholders are essentially powerless in the current system. Each individual shareholder's power is far too dilute, many people owning shares through pension funds don't even know they're shareholders, the minority shareholders have no way to contact each other to coordinate, and it's completely normal for the likes of Apple to spend billions on secret projects and the shareholders to only find out after the fact.

Hell, Google even has three classes of shares - one with no voting rights, one with 1x voting rights, and a special class with 10x voting rights for Larry and Sergei ensuring they have a majority of the votes even without majority ownership.

If we think shareholders are supposed to be providing oversight to companies, they need vastly more power to do so.

black_puppydog• 2 years ago

The way I read GP's argument, the (yes, very diluted, but real) "oversight" would come from the fact that every shareholder would have to base their bidding price for e.g. Boeing shares on, among other things, the probability of this company being devalued by 51% following a scandal like this.

If (and I understand this is a huge "if") this kind of action was more common, you might think twice before investing into any companies that run a serious risk of direct government interaction to protect the public.

bell-cot2• 2 years ago

After all, shareholders are essentially powerless in the current system...

Not exactly true. And both the institutional shareholders and ultra-rich shareholders have the experience, resources, and connections to police corporate behavior far more tightly than they usually do...

But why should they bother policing behavior, when the maximum penalty for malfeasance has been wrist-slaps? (And similar for the banks and bond markets which large corporations rely upon.)

Vs. if the major investors knew that major corporate malfeasance could and likely would cost them $billions - they might very quickly grow more active and assertive, the Boards which they elected would not be passive rubber-stampers, and corporate executives would face regular hard scrutiny.

But all that would be real work. Vs. hiring lobbyists and schmoozing politicians, to make sure the maximum penalty is "wrist slap", is far easier.

skizm• 2 years ago

Shareholders have the power to not buy the stock.

ajsnigrutin• 2 years ago

Or like slap them on the wrist, fine them a few million and act as if nothing has happened, like every time before.

Considering how tight boeing is with the government, which scenario is more realistic? :)

monksy• 2 years ago

This and criminal proceedings is really the only way corruption and malicious behavior can be stopped.

Even though it will harm shareholders, they still have a responsibility in attempting to limit the behavior. (Although from the boards perspective they'll claim they can do anything as long as they're there)

JumpCrisscross3• 2 years ago

Expropriate the company, at least 51%, take control and let public officials (knowing the US way, it will be some army general) set up checks and controls where necessary

Why? Just criminally charge and fine them into bankruptcy. This wipes out shareholders and lets the creditors—the government would be a big one, on account of the fine—reorganise the company and review all the books and records in a legally precedents venue.

Everyone keeps trying to invent new mechanisms for what fines and bankruptcy already do.

tonetegeatinst• 2 years ago

It looks like you misspelled the word fines. Its spelled the following way: "acceptable cost of operations"

See the tiny fine the government handed the cellular providers for selling user data

__MatrixMan__• 2 years ago

Current stock owners will loose half their value (which is a good enough punishment for this lack of oversight)

Generally speaking, I don't think it is. If you own a significant stake, you should be worried about jailtime. It's no different than if your dog bites someone.

pjc502• 2 years ago

Expropriate

Fifth Amendment says no. I'm not even an American and I know that will never fly. The US is not China, which very much can and does do this.

It's not actually necessary either! There's plenty of scope for fines and compliance orders. Heck, the US government could even ban them as a supplier, putting them out of business .. if there was another plane company in the US.

The whole fiasco is the fault of wrongly approving the creation of a US plane monopoly in the merger with McDonnell-Douglas.

danaris7• 2 years ago

...Fifth? (right to non-self-incrimination) Are you sure you don't mean Fourth? (right to security from unlawful search and seizure)

DebtDeflation2• 2 years ago

The problem for Boeing is that this wasn't a one time thing. Two weeks ago it came out that they were using counterfeit titanium, then a few days later the CEO testifies that they had in fact retaliated against whistleblowers, then a few days later it comes out that they actually hid faulty parts from FAA regulators and then lost them. Every apple that gets pulled from the bushel is rotten and there are a lot of apples left.

Havoc2• 2 years ago

To be fair the titanium thing isn’t just Boeing. Airbus used the same supplier

cyanydeez2• 2 years ago

Ok, but usually, as we've seen, *gestures around*, the problem with the American justice system is if _theres a lot of crooks_, it absolutely just tries to normalize what the crooks are doing.

There's obviously no scape goat in Boeing. IT's systemically corrupt, which means Americans will happily try to make it look like that's normal and reasonable and "the best we can do". If not outright find the most dull, corrupt white guy and hold him up as a paragon of the perfect saint.

FpUser• 2 years ago

"if _theres a lot of crooks_, it absolutely just tries to normalize what the crooks are doing."

Correction - a lot of rich and powerful crooks,

DebtDeflation2• 2 years ago

Right, but everyone from the individual prosecutor to the bureaucrats at the DOJ to the regulators at the FAA to members of Congress HAVE to be thinking "what if the next fuckup involves a plane falling out of the air and 200+ deaths, then it's my ass on the line" at this point.

yard2010• 2 years ago

I don't think the problem is crooks in the justice system, but crooks throughout the system, which is a monster that feeds itself - with money you buy power with power you can make more money.

This is what you get in a society in which money is the only thing that matters. This is a stupid idea to even write here let alone build a society upon.

dkarl2• 2 years ago

This is why people love to hate Elon Musk. Having a despicable character at the head of Tesla is the only thing that makes it possible for people to care about anything that Tesla or his other companies does.

Boeing would be huge news, and would be in much worse trouble, if there was a flamboyant bad guy to hold people's attention. Being dull is an important quality for corporate leadership for exactly this reason.

AtlasBarfed• 2 years ago

By retaliated you mean probably murdered?

sandworm1012• 2 years ago

> Every apple that gets pulled from the bushel is rotten and there are a lot of apples left.

This is part of a larger degradation of rules-based order. Companies do not fear regulators and certainly have no moral or ethical qualms about violating established rules. Ignoring rules is now an expected part of business. It is rewarded. We champion "disrupter" leaders who openly defy authorities and tear apart established norms of behavior. That needs to change. Shareholders need to stop rewarding such activity.

danaris7• 2 years ago

Shareholders need to stop rewarding such activity.

And how, exactly, do you expect that to work? Shareholders are going to pay attention to what's profitable, and basically nothing else.

No; the government needs to stop turning a blind eye to such activity. We need the relevant enforcement departments to be better funded, the policies to be in favor of cracking down on violations of all types, and a mandate from the highest levels not to be shy about seeking the heaviest penalties even from the biggest, most lobbyist-endowed offenders.

nerdponx8• 2 years ago

There was never a rules-based order on the whole. Something like that has existed for various brief moments in time in various industries throughout the 20th century, but it has never been the norm. We as human society are fighting the same fight that we have been fighting since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Progress is measured on the scale of decades at best.

I agree with what you think needs to change, but I don't think anyone should be confused about corporations in the past somehow being more ethical than they are today.

bryanlarsen2• 2 years ago

Every apple that gets pulled from the bushel is rotten and there are a lot of apples left.

Yes, that's what happens. If you leave a couple of bad apples in a barrel they off gas ethylene and spoil every apple in the barrel. You have to regularly get rid of bad apples before they spoil the bunch.

It's such a great metaphor, it's too bad it's so widely misused and misunderstood.

nerdponx8• 2 years ago

And importantly, when viewed with this understanding of "organizational ethylene", it's obvious that anyone who resists, obstruct, or disagrees with routine removal of bad apples is probably themselves a bad apple.

slowmovintarget3• 2 years ago

McDonnell-Douglas culture, which was crashing and burning before Boeing bought them, somehow took over Boeing and ruined it.

Havoc2• 2 years ago

I must admit I have very little faith in US gov executing on this.

Keep in mind the whole “certify your own stuff” that contributed towards the Boeing mess is a US gov plan

skywhopper• 2 years ago

Okay, sure, prosecute the company. Better yet, zero out the investors and nationalize it. But more importantly, prosecute the executives who made these decisions.

EasyMark4• 2 years ago

Nationalizing Boeing will never happen in today’s federal courts. Temporary oversight like with the banking disaster? Probably. I think court will require a clean sweep of the board and new executives who “promise” put quality back as a goal for the company. Boeing was fine before it can happen again. I don’t know why this the end of western civilization for so many on HN.

PedroBatista• 2 years ago

Good but I have a feeling this is yet one more of those maneuvers where everyone says their line in the movie but in the end nothing is actually done other than some slap on the wrist for show. Too many powerful people and interests for Justice to work.

And no, unfortunately this is not a tinfoil hat view. There is a long history of Boeing getting away with murder already.

nerdponx8• 2 years ago

Very possibly literal murder in this case.

tjpnz• 2 years ago

CEOs often justify their large pay packets by the massive responsibility they shoulder. I wonder if this would extend to going to prison.

alistairSH2• 2 years ago

Of course not. That "massive responsibility" is just baloney. Short of very obvious and egregious fraud (and even then, only if you piss off the wrong prosecutor or Congressperson), there's no penalty for being a criminally negligent CEO beyond losing the job (which usually comes with some sort of buy-out, so boo-fucking-hoo).

YetAnotherNick2• 2 years ago

There are lot of CEOs who went to jail. Here[1] is the list of like a dozen of them.

[1] https://blog.cheapism.com/business-crime/

Garvi• 2 years ago

The real info in this thread is in the flagged and dead comments that were removed by moderation "for your safety". To see those you need to be both logged in and have showdead set to "yes" in your settings.

oblio• 2 years ago

Let me guess, conspiracy theories?

JumpCrisscross3• 2 years ago

conspiracy theories?

Not even fun ones.

boffinAudio3• 2 years ago

Boeing is the worlds leading supplier of bombs to states that use them to annihilate innocent people. For decades. Every twenty minutes.

There is more to the rot in this company than just domestic customers falling out of the sky.

I would wager that there is a great deal of actual, very real misanthropy throughout the executive structure.

alkonaut• 2 years ago

Which states are that?

boffinAudio3• 2 years ago

https://airwars.org/

EasyMark4• 2 years ago

No they aren’t

r00fus• 2 years ago

https://www.boeing.com/defense/weapons

boffinAudio3• 2 years ago

Yes, they really are.

https://airwars.org/

RobotToaster• 2 years ago

If corporations are people we should be able to give them the death penalty.

tacocataco2• 2 years ago

Revoke their charter permanently?

Sounds good, but what's to stop those responsible spinning up another company?

EasyMark4• 2 years ago

I can certainly happen, but it’s highly unlikely with Boeing. They are “too big to fail”, government taking over for a while isn’t out of the question though if this gets much worse. A court appointed CEO whose primary goal is to get QA and QC back into the corporate structure rather than as being looked as only an unnecessary expense.

FredPret4• 2 years ago

I’d feel better if they start by grounding everything with a Boeing logo first, and then went through whatever years-long legal process this will certainly be.

chaostheory• 2 years ago

I might have missed something, but the issue is that Airbus can’t meet demand, and the other alternatives don’t seem to be better than Boeing.

alistairSH2• 2 years ago

The problem is that a few crashed Boeings could lead to massive distrust of airline travel across the globe. Is that a larger long-term economic drain than grounding Boeings for a year? I'm not even sure how you'd begin to model that. Heck, I'm not sure we collectively know how to evaluate the risk of any given Boeing falling apart mid-air. It's probably still very, very low, but it might not take much to put people off flying completely.

FredPret4• 2 years ago

I’d rather not fly, or have to pay more for a ticket on a fully reliable plane, than fly in a Boeing.

If non-Boeing tickets were an optional upgrade when booking, I’d take it.

stainablesteel• 2 years ago

what do you even do at this point?

so much of US flight infrastructure is based around boeing and they're literally falling apart in the sky

nasa wanted competition with spacex so badly that they've pushed boeing to strand two of their astronauts in space

companies that fail due to inherent internal structural and corruption issues need to be broken down and sold off, but we can't even do that because the US is somehow reliant on it

why must we write out our own downfall through corruption with failing companies? i bet there's thousands of upstarts that would take 1/1000th the funding given to boeing for a lot of their important projects that would come up with genuinely innovative solutions to problems we never knew we had if there were actual competition in aerospace

dmix• 2 years ago

This is what happens when you eliminate consequences for bad behaviour in any industry private or public You can only kick the can down the road for so long.

It’s only going to get worse and in 10yrs we’ll be wondering why it’s even worse than it is in 2024 while people will still defend how necessary it is to national security to prop up a half useless megacorporation, when it’s actually harming it

Let them face risk, let the good/important parts be sold to better leaders, there’s plenty of money floating around to dump into the market to let competition take over the second there’s an opportunity for a new lively major business sector.

nerdponx8• 2 years ago

It would be less of a problem if the industry had not consolidated into literally two major companies in the entire world.

You want incentives for a corporations to follow rules? Ensure that there is more than one or two of them.

lenerdenator• 2 years ago

"Show me the incentives, and I'll show you the results." - Charlie Munger

It used to be that companies existed to transfer value to shareholders by doing something. In the case of Boeing it was making airplanes. They build you an airplane, you pay them for it, they had a list of rules to play by in order to reduce the costs of making that plane in order to make a profit.

Boeing's incentives are to transfer as much value as humanly possible to its shareholders. They've made sure that large parts of their C-Suite, managers, executives, etc. are in on this by giving them shares.

Those people have decided they don't want to play by the rules anymore. There's little incentive for them not to. If the Biden administration gets voted out in November, most of these regulatory and law enforcement pushes you've seen here of late (Adobe, TicketMaster, etc.) are going to go away because the people in charge at companies like Boeing have participated in regulatory capture. Thus, there are no more rules.

You have to start throwing those people in prison (or worse) for the rest of their lives and make compensation in unrealized gains illegal if you want this to stop.

dkarl2• 2 years ago

I agree, but I think we need to distinguish between the people and the corporation, and stop thinking that the way we treat people (such as the Boeing executives) will solve the system problem. We absolutely need to stop treating corporations like people -- and I'm not talking about taxation. I'm talking about the way we think and talk about corporations the same way we talk about people.

When we domesticated animals, we had to be very cognizant that they were not people. For example, bulls are extremely aggressive and extremely physically powerful. You can allow a person into a room with a baby in a crib. There are exceptions, and they are treated as exceptions. With bulls, you do not allow them into a room with a baby in a crib, by default or by exception. It would be considered criminally irresponsible for a person to say, this bull is an exception, I've had it for five years, it's a great friend, and based on its past behavior I'm going to keep it in the same room with my infant child. You just wouldn't do that.

We have enough experience with corporations to know that we need to start treating them less like humans and more like a species of partly domesticated but still extremely dangerous animal. Based on long experience with them, we should expect corporations to predictably lie, steal, and destroy whenever it is in their financial interest. We don't need to get rid of them (we don't have any good replacement for their role in the economy) but should structure the way we treat corporations around our knowledge of their destructive tendencies.

Our long experience with cattle has taught us ways to protect humans from their destructive tendencies while still extracting what we want from them. We keep cattle out of our residences, we castrate most of the males, and we manage intact bulls in a way that ensures human safety while allowing them to serve their necessary functions. We design fences and other management technology with their aggression and power in mind.

It is long past time to treat corporations the same way. In many small ways we have done this, but always held back by the human metaphor. Corporations are in a sense made of humans, and we feel a sense of respect towards fellow humans that we then unconsciously, and with horrible consequences, extend to the corporations they are part of. We need to consciously and decisively put that behind us. You don't have to be cynical about humans to accept that corporations are greedy and untrustworthy. That is their nature. How you square that with the nature of the humans who run them is irrelevant, as irrelevant as bovine neuroscience is to knowing that we should keep bulls out of our nurseries. We don't have to agree about humans to agree about corporations and stop giving them free reign to wreak havoc in society.

newsclues4• 2 years ago

The US military needs to absorb the military side of the business as a state owned enterprise

tacocataco2• 2 years ago

Trillions spent on defense, and there isn't a factory just sitting around waiting to spin up and crank out artillery shells for ukraine?

newsclues4• 2 years ago

Carriers, subs, and planes are expensive.

Owning the primary arms contractors would make it easier to shift production into shells, rather than negotiating long term deals before breaking ground to expand production capacity

nerdponx8• 2 years ago

That sounds like a good idea until you realize that the military does is state owned anyway. The private sector supplies everything. But it's not like the military makes any of its own stuff. They buy all their trucks, guns, body armor, ammunition, radios, helicopters, boats, etc. etc. from private companies.

newsclues4• 2 years ago

Yeah, and so does Boeing so own the contractor and cut out a big cost.

Lots of countries own state arms manufacturers. Doesn’t mean the state would takeover the entire supply chain.

bparsons• 2 years ago

If you are on a stranded Boeing spaceship right now, this is not news that will bring you comfort.

EasyMark4• 2 years ago

It’s not stranded, they are running tests. Please don’t exaggerate the situation. They just want to be safe. Stranded implies completely broken.

calpal• 2 years ago

Honestly, we should be at least considering nationalizing Boeing. There's a strategic need for us to build planes, and the corporate leadership continues to show they will not emphasize engineering and safety.

hn_throwaway_99• 2 years ago

I wish there were more details. Does anyone know of any reporting that gives more information? That is, the article says this:

Under the 2021 deal, the Justice Department agreed not to prosecute Boeing over allegations it defrauded the Federal Aviation Administration so long as the company overhauled its compliance practices and submitted regular reports.

So, if they want to prosecute, I'm assuming it's because Boeing didn't adequately overhaul its compliance practices or that it didn't submit regular (or truthful) reports. But what are the specifics of how they failed?

I also get frustrated reading these comments here, which are basically "Boeing bad, they only care about execs and shareholders, they ruined their engineering culture." I agree with all of that , but when the government wants to criminally charge someone or a company, they need some specifics (i.e. fraud). It's not enough to just say they had a lax culture or valued profits over safety. Again, to emphasize, not saying that's the case here, I just don't understand how folks can form an opinion on criminal prosecution without even knowing what specific charges are being proposed.

MilStdJunkie• 2 years ago

Watch the bond rating. They're at the very verge of junk right now, and if they slip into BB territory that might trigger a whole bunch of stuff to happen very quickly.

US prosecutors recommend Justice Department criminally charge Boeing

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