> No one wanted people to die, it is not murder, at worst it is involuntary manslaughter
>
Try again - more like criminal negligence at a minimum.
> But is it the solution? Is it what should be done?
Yes - there needs to be some serious consequences, not the usual typical 'Company shuts down, execs get huge severance while whistleblowers and investors get shafted' type thing.
Also, some heads at the FAA need to roll. Utter failure of an agency that's supposed to protect the public.
And I also hope the victims' families also sue for pain and suffering, because they're victims of this too.
Involuntary manslaughter implies criminal negligence or some other crime being committed. Otherwise it is just an accident.
And I am not against the idea of serious consequences, the problem is about whose heads are going to roll?
It is easy to blame the executives, they are high profile, they are rich, they are the kind of people we like to hate. But are they really at fault, execs are just employees serving the shareholders, and if you have Boeing stocks in your portfolio, then you are a shareholder, so maybe you should go to jail.
And what will happen if the CEO goes to jail? The board of directors will name a new scapegoat CEO, there are many people who are ready to risk jail time in exchange for being the CEO at Boeing...
Same thing about the FAA, except that's more about the politicians you elected than about the shares you bought...
Putting a few high profile people in prison will certainly appease some vindictive minds, but I don't want vengeance, I just want safer airplanes. And as someone mentioned, they are already impressively safe despite all these shenanigans.
As for the victims' families, of course they should be compensated. But I don't think putting random people in jail is the best way to do it.
I am not saying that no one should go to jail. Some people most likely committed real jailable offenses, like corruption, and they should get punished. But making some heads roll for the sake of it isn't a good solution in my book.
> and if you have Boeing stocks in your portfolio, then you are a shareholder, so maybe you should go to jail.
Personally, I'm not opposed to that type of thing happening - I always thought a company being "public" is an oxymoron, since they only serve the shareholders (just look how Facebook prefers to serve its shareholders/execs over democracy... but I digress). If you can't fund terrorist organizations without consequences, then I think there should be equal consequences when your demands for your share values compromise the safety of society. Also, might cause people to keep the companies 'in check' if their own butts were on the line too... But that'd be another whole discussion for another time...
The whole point of consequences is to discourage future bad behaviour: "Wow, that guy's and his family's life is ruined now! Shit, I don't want the same thing to happen to me, I'd better be more careful than he was!". But if all anyone gets is a slap on the wrist, or find a scapegoat, then really what's the point of laws (especially when a nobody gets years in jail for a minor crime, but some high-profile execs can charm/buy their way out with little consequences).
More and more of this reveals that there was very little "involuntary" things happening - they were quite deliberate in what they did, and knew what they were doing wasn't on the "up and up" and compromised safety (with even someone saying "I wouldn't fly on one of those!").
> It is easy to blame the executives, they are high profile, they are rich, they are the kind of people we like to hate. But are they really at fault
Yes. One of the things about being at such a high level is having responsibility. Responsibility means you are ultimately at fault for things that go wrong.
Going to jail isn’t one of the main risks of being a CEO of a company like Boeing. It certainly shouldn’t be a likely one if things are being done correctly.
The debacle, and the dilemma of who to blame, exposes a pretty big flaw in capitalism theory: the idea that the market will choose to punish the shareholders. The reality is, the shareholders have been insulated from the negatives and rewarded with the gains.
Boeing's board has no meaningful aerospace expertise at all on it, going back to the McDonald Douglas merger. Shareholders have been rewarded for this successfully executed, multi-decade, and anti-competitive plan, so they keep re-electing the same board members who in turn ensure the shareholders aren't punished for objectively unethical decisions.
But capitalism doesn't require any ethics, it's completely amoral. Corporate charters don't require morality, ethics, or for companies to be a benefit to society or disallow them from being a negative to society (except insofar as they aren't breaking laws). And none of what Boeing has done has broken any laws, such as they are.
No one is going to prison. They're all protected by an explicitly designed system. The Commerce Department, overseeing the FAA, has had their select panel of industry experts and insiders say in a report this week, that everything at Boeing and the FAA is perfect. It's completely, totally, unquestionably perfect. And Congress would be risking this perfection by changing even one single thing about the existing arrangement.
Commerce won't change without a significant leadership change. Congress has cut FAA funding for decades, relative to the growth of commercial aviation, meaning there aren't enough regulators to move even a little bit away from manufacturer "self-certification".
What we have is what the industry wants, the politicians want, the average American consumer wants, and the American citizen wants -> profits for shareholders, kickbacks for politicians, cheap airfares, and please stop talking policy so I can get back to my consumerism.
Try again - more like criminal negligence at a minimum.
> But is it the solution? Is it what should be done?
Yes - there needs to be some serious consequences, not the usual typical 'Company shuts down, execs get huge severance while whistleblowers and investors get shafted' type thing.
Also, some heads at the FAA need to roll. Utter failure of an agency that's supposed to protect the public.
And I also hope the victims' families also sue for pain and suffering, because they're victims of this too.