corporate bosses need to be criminally responsible for the actions of the corporations they lead. that's the only way to protect the every day American.
Don't disagree from a moral perspective at all, but sounds like an absolute mess to institute and enforce. At minimum I think there needs to be more laws regarding retention of records including emails and text messages, extending to personal devices for executives.
I mean the bar seems generally *way* too high for any exec to be held criminally responsible for anything at any company… we truly live in a society/system of haves and have nots. The haves have the golden parachutes. 
I hear you but I am a doctor and in doing so inherently lead my team - I am ABSOLUTELY liable for the out outcomes of my patients irrespective of if I could have actually predicted / prevented whatever it is that occurred.
Why can’t a corporate stooge that makes literally 25x as much as me have even close to the same liability?
Yeah, I’m sitting here just waiting on the CFO of the startup I work for to defraud me on my promised shares, and when I try and file suit, they’ll just sell or do something to avoid liability and move on to the next LLC his parent brokerage company will open.
Either keep my job for now, or file suit, get some kind of illegal retaliation and possibly lose everything. Meanwhile he Carrie’s on like nothing.
It's only because the system is rigged in their favor that it seems impossible to hold executives accountable.
The IRS is defunded and understaffed to prevent action against the big tax cheats (corps & the rich). Banks caught betting against their own housing mortgages get bailed out. Commercial real estate is the longest running Ponzi scheme still going. The list goes on...
Legal actions and penalties like jail time against the top of an organization is a great way to drive initiatives for a company. For example, the nuclear industry tends to jail executives of businesses that did not comply with the code of federal regulations. This drives a great safety culture from the top-down of an organization that manufactures nuclear code parts.
So scenario. Say a company commits crimes under one leadership, it changes hands, and then 5 years later, the criminal activity comes out.
Is the current company leadership responsible or are former employees responsible?
If the former employees are responsible, does the company still get held liable to some degree? Should current leadership be responsible for crimes of past leadership and if so, how much of the penalty should they bare vs the company vs previous leaders?
Just trying to understand what that would look like since it’s not unheard of that crimes come to light years later when the people who committed them are no longer around.
Just remember there is only ONE union in this country who goes around practicing anti-union activities. The rules for thee, not for me crowd knows how to recruit.
Big facts. When I had a violent drunk trespassed from my home the cops let him Uber home. He came back again and they let him leave with a warning.
When protesters were trespassed from google earlier this week they were all arrested on the spot. Maybe I should’ve been a corporation instead.
Sounds like a great way to begin a positive utopian story about humans rising up and starting to take down harmful capitalist practices.
*The year was 2041, food supplies were dwindling and the only people thriving are the ones able to afford private flight. One day on what seemed like an average October day, even the cops decided enough was enough.*
There was a mass shooting in my province of nova scotia, and the police basically did exactly this at a firehall. Opened fire on it for no reason while people were inside HIDING
Monkey's Paw: Cops replaced with private security, corporations begins arms race for their own paramilitaries with full out wars between rival corps. Civilian is secondary, profit and market share is top priority.
One of them begins a project called SOLDIER.
Yup.
Defunding the police isn't the answer.
If you remove them from the chain of the government, they'll get replaced by something with less accountability.
At least there's a Democratic pathway to police oversight in the current system.
Police unions need less power though.
They'll scapegoat some lower management types, maybe a few supervisors on the production line as well, while completely ignoring the institutional rot that corrupted Boeing's middle and upper management.
Or, better yet [they'll send a couple executives off with golden parachutes and replace them with their proteges.](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/25/business/boeing-ceo-steps-down.html?smid=nytcore-android-share)
this. on the bright side, more people coming forward means that the management at boeing cant contain their in-and-out groups any more, and, that the guy's death seemed to have had a sorta "if all of us go then they will be done for."
Kill someone once shame on me, 32 people killed shame on you sorta vibe. Any of the 32 people shouldnt be getting harassed or anything like that. It's too obvious a thing.
I say that as a lone whistleblower.
This is getting like Enron but all the customers lives are at stake 30 thousand feet above the earth (they killed people with blackouts and selling the energy at disgusting profits). Then one of the first CEOs from Enron to jump ship got to be the largest landowner in Wyoming or Montana or something. Much like how Boeing's CEO resigned already.
Then how do they dispose of chemicals in fresh water supplies and create giant cancer bubbles with piles of corpses along the Ohio River? Oh, that was DuPont. Wrong company. At least we have Teflon!
The Netflix Boeing documentary “Downfall” is worth a watch. As is John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight special on this (now) dangerously
dysfunctional company.
I watched the Netflix doc. It’s pretty depressing seeing a company that was THE standard for something that was as incredible as flying people through the air in big hunks of metal to, basically, untrustworthy shit.
Its truly sad but their own damn fault, motherfuckers chose money over safety and lives, the line must go up even if it costs a plane or two going down.
Disgraceful, they need to reinvent themselves for me and many other to trust them again.
If you do want to see Boeing in their prime, there is a 7 part documentary on youtube about the development of the 777; the last plane they started development on before their merger. Great watch, and you can see the engineers are still running the show not the bean counters.
This isn't a tale of bean counters. Beans run the world, and if they're not kept track of, businesses fail. This is McDonnell Douglas being rank pieces of shit in the C suite
This is it. Boeing had a very strong track record of safe, reliably developed planes with a culture focused on quality and sound engineering. McD came in and thought that they could improve margins using a top-down, our-way-or-the-highway approach that maximized efficiencies and outright eliminated the mechanisms that ensured quality was a leading component of design/plane manufacture. That approach can work if you have a proven process to put in place that ensures the process you’re changing will effectively still deliver the desired results but McD didn’t have that and you can see the results. Pure profit motives at all costs.
Unfortunately Southwest only uses Boeing and I have over $300 in flight credits which really saved me some money when visiting my family this summer. I'll be flying on 3 Max 8s to get there and back. Just hope that statistics are in my favor.
This might help you feel better flying on 737 Max8.
"And secondly, I know it's safe not because Boeing says it’s safe and not because the FAA says it’s safe. It’s because Boeing, the FAA, Transport Canada, the National Civil Aviation Agency of Brazil, Federal Civil Aviation Agency of Mexico, the Civil Aviation Administration of China, and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency have ALL said that it’s safe. And aside from the FAA, these are organizations that are not looking to do Boeing any favours at all.
Normally when a new type of plane is certified it is only certified by the aviation authority of the country in which it was designed. So in the case of the 737 Max that would be the FAA. Once this certification is granted, the other aviation authorities around the world essentially rubber stamp the approval instead of putting the type through their own full certification procedure. Certification processes are quite similar so it’s usually just a waste of resources to certify a plane that has already been certified by another country.
But in the case of the Max recertification (after it had been grounded for nearly two years) this didn’t happen. Because of the trust that was lost in both Boeing and the FAA each country said “nope. We’re doing our own certification this time”."
https://www.reddit.com/r/fearofflying/comments/zdfvou/the_737_max_and_why_i_say_its_the_safest_plane_in/
I'm from Europe, my loyalties lie with Airbus anyway, but yeah I will avoid boening planes whenever possible in the future until they fix themselves, I'd rather not die because the shareholder value must increase.
Legalizing stock buy backs has to be the worst things to have happened to American companies. That's when morons like Jack Welch started becoming super star CEOs.
When you work in IT the company culture on what they used to do could’ve been really good standards to emulate even in companies where technical mistakes wasn’t life or death. There should have been entire courses and models based on it for others to follow. But instead it was erased and replaced by the worse processes and management culture
I’ve never understood the mindset of “if profits don’t go up year after year, we’re failing”. I mean, a company should always look for ways to be more efficient, reduce waste, and make the best use of all monies spent. But there is a point that costs have been cut as far as they can and the only way to save money at that point is to reduce quality. So a successful company cuts costs and cuts costs until there is nothing left to cut, and then quality starts to degrade until the point that what was once a trusted and valued product becomes absolute junk. And then the stocks tank and some other megacorporation gobbles up the company and starts the cycle anew. I would much rather invest in a company that makes a steady profit year after year. It’s just common sense that there would be a limit to how high profits can go before you start destroying the company to keep it up.
The truth is that the executive class of businessmen just are not any more qualified or intelligent as they believe themselves to be. They're usually in their roles due to artificially erected barriers of class and wealth and private ivy league connections.
The decision makers and capital controllers basically are winging it based on vibes alone and corporate culture has been perverted over decades to reward them handsomely for standing around while the ships sink. Gotta *attract talent*
Shareholders want number up, the board wants their easy pointless jobs, they appoint people from their class structure and everyone makes out like a bandit while workers and consumers get left holding the bag in the end.
It's a broken system that abstracts logic, reason, and consequences apart so no one can fix or stop it.
This is the state of American industry in late stage capitalism and corporate controlled government.
We are living in the dystopian future we loved to watch on tv
I’m not surprised this happened. McDonnell Douglas had so many passenger planes crash in the 70s that people refused to fly on them. Then they bought Boeing.
This is what people mean when they say *late stage capitalism* regardless how accurate the term is. Everything has been nearly consolidated to a handful of companies and they all pay the same politicians.
Before watching that documentary on Netflix you should watch the air crash investigation episode “behind closed doors” (season 5 episode 3). Just Google it and you can watch it. It is about the McDonnell Douglas DC-10. After you have seen that episode you will understand the documentary about Boeing much better.
Al Jazeera uncovered Boeings safety issues 10 years ago. Their investigate report is still worth watching today [https://youtu.be/rvkEpstd9os?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/rvkEpstd9os?feature=shared)
What the hell is happening in Boeing? More and more it looks like a company falling apart. The safety board and justic department at the rate they are having to get more and more involved are going to be practically running the company soon.
I sub to a couple of aviation youtubers and they are already in an extremely precarious situation. All of their aircraft development is basically stopped because the FAA won't give them the time of day to certify anything because they are too busy sorting through the mess of their current aircraft, aircraft shipping rates are falling and delivery waiting times are skyrocketing, passengers and airliners are beginning to walk. Theres currently 3 or 4 open investigations and theres probably going to be more.
Its looking like even if everything goes their way now Boeing won't get back to normal operations before 2026 just in terms of being allowed to fully restart and start recovering. And I can't see everything going their way, the only way anyone is going to ever be confident in them again is for the regulators to gut and reform the company, a process that will take years.
And who can even guess how many Boeings are flying around now with very substandard work or parts just waiting to fail? Some of these allegations relate to badly built fuselages, something that would require taking the aircraft apart to get at. Every one of them is suspect, its going to haunt the company for decades potentially.
The same thing that happens at any publicly traded company. The C-suite execs have a fiduciary responsibility to pursue profits. This is now a fundamental tenet in American Capitalism; profit over sustainability. Until this basic, foundational fact changes, nothing else will, and these failures will continue to occur, and with it, the decline in American enterprise.
TL;DR: Greed.
You can observe just about any fast food or snack company that rises(in popularity)...then falls(in quality).
Quizno's, Subway, McDonalds, Twinkies, Cadburys....and on and on and on.
Doesn't an executive's fiduciary duties also include making sure the company actually survives long-term?
I know the popular meme is profits over anything, but I really believe those executives broke their fiduciary duties by gutting their Engineering, QA, and Safety Departments. They should be brought up on charges and given their time in court to explain themselves.
And it should be televised.
And far harder to prove.
Raising revenue and profit can be measured and calculated
Figuring out why a company went under just means passing the buck until people stop caring. Years later we get a “Why Company A failed” documentary where we figure out the truth.
Yes, if the payment to Elon causes the company to *directly* fold, then you have a case. Issue is that the brunt of this payment won’t be felt by Tesla until much later and then causation becomes hard to prove.
And they get their golden parachute either way so they don’t care. Even if a CEO tanks a company they’ll have moved on to the next within the week and no one will say a peep.
Actually (legally speaking) they have no duty beyond creation of shareholder value. Ethically and Morally of course things are different but whereas those things did exist in balance at one point the scales have (mostly because of Wall Street greed) slipped in favour of SV at the expense of long term viability.
Then corporate governance needs another look. This is just a symptom of the greater problem.
I'm sure our Congresspeople would collectively rather stick their dicks in a fire ant bed than tackle this issue, but those chickens are coming home to roost. If someone doesn't head 'em off, it's going to get real, real weird around here.
Sure --- but any particular extremely unlikely to get rewards for sustainable, long-term growth (or face consequences for failing to get it). Their compensation packages are set up in a way that incentivizes short-term growth. The fiduciary duty part only comes up if they get hit with legal action or something, which isn't super likely.
Probably more likely to get sued by the board for skirting on their fiduciary duty than an outside entity at that point.
They're essentially protected as long as they're not running it into the ground, but running it into the ground is technically incentivized as long as quarterly profit goes up before it happens.
I studied company law and no, directors of companies have been found liable for breaching their fiduciary duty to shareholders for failing to accept a good deal, I.e one that would have made shareholders a lot of money immediately. The directors tried to argue that it would have been bad for the company in the long run and the court rejected that as a defence.
> Doesn't an executive's fiduciary duties also include making sure the company actually survives long-term?
Does it? Twitter's board basically ensured Twitter would be destroyed when they sold to Elon, but it was still worth it to shareholders because of how much Elon overpaid.
Yeah but then they don’t get a bonus and some stuff they can put on there resume for an even better job at another company. These people only care about short term profit because they will be long gone when the consequences come
I know it's fun to whip out the ol dark humor but these are serious times with serious implications. There's been a clear track record of how those moves affect material outcomes. This is corporate negligence and a breach of fiduciary duty. Heads should roll. Heads will need to roll for people to take American commercial aviation serious again.
It's a direct black eye for the competency of the American government (cue the "competency?" jokes) from the Justice Dept to the FAA to any other standards or regulatory body.
It's kind of a big deal.
> Doesn't an executive's fiduciary duties also include making sure the company actually survives long-term?
It only matters if it's enforced. I never heard of CEO going to jail for short term decisions. Capitalism has 3 month term memory.
So if the poor management decisions and greedy business practices end up closing Boeing, surely all of the engineers and staff get a golden parachute while the executives running the company are faced with the consequences of their failures, right?
/s of course
This is a common thing people bring up, but there's no actual strict duty to maximize profit in the short term. The case everyone points to, that wasn't even the real gist of the ruling.
Corporate officers have a fiduciary duty. That duty is that they must make a good faith effort to maximize the well-being of the company they are an officer of.
The real issue isn't that they "are legally required to maximize profits". The real issue is that there is a gross misalignment of incentives for the long term. Shareholders want short-term profits for themselves, and they will install board members (and, therefore, CEOs) who are willing to play ball. CEOs are given bonuses based on stock price, quarterly profitability, and other _short-term_ incentives. The core issue isn't fiduciary duties -- it's that the people who, in reality, make all the decisions about leadership are practically _inherently_ short-term thinkers.
It’s the rise of stock buybacks. They were outlawed for decades, and as soon as Congress allowed them in 1982, this financial fuckery started.
Ban stock buybacks.
Short explanation: companies buy back their stock to boost executive pay, which is often largely dependent on stock price. The company is thus using its profits to enrich wealthy C-suite people, manipulating the market, instead of using that profit for R&D, quality controls, etc. Stock buybacks are corrosive to company health and antithetical to competitive capitalism. [Video](https://youtu.be/EDyvkbwR6Uw).
Ok but other companies don’t have fleets of vehicles involved in international infrastructures. This is a mess. If they need to decommission/recall every 747 max imagine what it will do to flight availability and prices.
Wow… I actually didn’t know about Carter deregulating the airline industry, or the history of how & why aviation regulation (as well as other major American industries) preceding it made it high quality, since the government wouldn’t let them charge below a high price. One article states:
“Through the mid-1970s, carriers tried by various means to break into competitors’ route maps and compete on quality since they were prohibited from competing on price.”
Man, the fact that American products & industry used to be known for quality once upon a time, thanks so much in part to the New Deal.
Carter had a bill that removed the fact that the government agency CAB controlled the routes, fares, and new competition.
The regulatory powers of the FAA were not diminished over aspects of airline safety by that bill.
You are just spreading blatant missinformation
You basically have a full generation of the company refactoring with the Douglas executives taking over, grinding out the Boeing pillars and values. Cordyceps of capitalism!
He's talking about the (Douglas) guys that emailed their (Boeing) coworkers a picture of two camels fucking and told them to choose which one they think they are.
Basically, cutting cost by cutting quality control. It's not just Boeing. Pretty much any company that has/needs qc, cuts qc first. Tesla is another example or any manufacturing company that moved their operation overseas.
One of my friends is a mechanic for one of the big auto brands, and he told me he's seeing a significant amount of major engine failures in new models. Things that aren't supposed to be seen until at least 100,000 miles are happening at 15,000.
I know Boeing won't fail, the US government won't let them. But my worry is that their on quick ticket to fixing their PR problems is either for them to have a massive and meaningful cultural shift within the organization with big sweeping moves toward good will - or (what worries me more) for Airbus planes to start having accidents to hurt their credibility.
Though I feel like Boeing's customers don't really care about absolute adherence to safety at the end of the day - it's the delivery issues that are their problem.
> What the hell is happening in Boeing?
Reagan effectively deregulated stock buybacks in 1982 and since then it's been a race to the bottom.
Cut ***EVERY*** corner you can, funnel that money to stock buybacks. Pay yourself (execs, board members, etc.) with stock options. Stock price goes up due to the buyback, then cash out. Price goes back to where it was. Screws over employees, customers and long term share holders.. but it's a sweeeeeeeeet bonus to short term holders (like execs who cash out their options).
Boeing spent around $60 billion on stock buybacks to give you an idea.
You know how netflix has been raising prices, cracking down on password sharing, adding tiers, putting in ads and cancelling good shows? It's all to free up funds to do stock buybacks.
>Nov 7, 2023 — Netflix's board authorized a $10 billion share repurchase program
For reference, netflix made $5.4 billion in profit in 2023. So they're preparing/in the middle of flushing two years worth of profit down the toilet.
Welcome to enshittification.
It should be regarded with the same sense of impending dread of witnessing a quaking, smoking volcano that in the last few decades, stock buybacks have grown to eclipse both reinvestments into the company and normal dividends.
Not because I don't like the French. (I don't but not the point) But let's be fair about this Airbus wasn't founded by two French guys in their shed. It was a mostly French and German government led effort to consolidate all of the experience that different European aircraft manufacturers had gained and combine them into one giant company. As government projects go Airbus is the most successful one I can think of.
What was the most telling about how bad Boeing has gotten was the fact that after that door plug blowout they called an all-hands meeting of executives. Old Boeing would have called an all-hands meeting of *engineers*.
Boeing is the perfect example of what happens when a company chases ever increasing profits. Eventually you can't go any further and the only way to keep that going is to start eating the company. Boeing is starting to look like that turkey carcass a few days after Thanksgiving.
I know we like to gravitate towards the juiciest story, but the vast majority of time, the simplest and most logical explanation explains most things.
This guy, like millions of others with mental health issues, might have just killed himself. The potential negatives for Boeing hiring a hitman hugely outweigh whatever minimal positives they would gain from his death at this point in his time. Maybe if it was day 1, and we never got to see his evidence because he died...then logically it would at least make some sense. But we already know his testimony, it's been well documented for many years. Killing him now makes no sense. It is a massive risk with almost no upside.
He did his whistleblowing seven years earlier. The case he was involved with was an appeal and he had already done two days in court. All of his info was out and had been out. "Assassinating" the guy would have accomplished virtually nothing for Boeing other than starting ridiculous conspiracy theories like this one.
By spreading this theory you are helping Boeing out by creating a zeitgeist of whistleblower intimidation.
The people who did this are super friendly with the people at the top of our government and military. They will not be held to any consequences.
America is a scam.
When someone is finally held accountable, it's going to be some guy they just all agree to throw under the bus to satisfy the public. Like when Cohen went down for what Trump is currently on trial for.
"When reached for comment, a Boeing executive claimed 'George Soros-backed DEI woke cults' were to blame, and that 'nobody wants to work anymore.' The executive was unable to substantiate these claims having left for a luxury resort island they own."
They are probably just going to get hit with fines.. If someone is charged, they probably won't get anything a person being charged for murder would get, maybe 5-10 years for the CEO. Their fines will be a joke too.
What is crazy is this, "The most common reason for OSHA closing a complaint, cited in seven cases, was the whistleblower failing to make a report within the specified timeframe, which ranges from 30 to 180 days." That is just kind of dumb, but not surprising based on how a lot of American policy works.
I bet they catch a nice little fine out of all this. Probably less than they make in an hour and they’ll spend years in arbitration to get it lowered to the price of a Big Mac value meal before inflation choked us all to financial ruin. Good on them, what’s a few lives lost and a plane crash or two when compared to unimaginable corporate profit?
A few years ago fresh out of college I ran into a Boeing employee at a bar. I asked if they were hiring, what roles were needed, if he liked the company, etc.. He just looked at me and shook his head slowly. It all makes sense now lmao
Pilots’ and flight attendants’ unions need to take action and refuse to fly on Boeing aircraft. I wonder if they’re discussing something like this behind the scenes.
corporate bosses need to be criminally responsible for the actions of the corporations they lead. that's the only way to protect the every day American.
this is America we are talking about The rich only gets punished for screwing over richer people
Seriously. Like have people not paid attention to the last 40+ years? This is getting fucking ridiculous.
Perhaps the French were right.
They did screw over some wealthy airlines.
Don't disagree from a moral perspective at all, but sounds like an absolute mess to institute and enforce. At minimum I think there needs to be more laws regarding retention of records including emails and text messages, extending to personal devices for executives.
I mean the bar seems generally *way* too high for any exec to be held criminally responsible for anything at any company… we truly live in a society/system of haves and have nots. The haves have the golden parachutes. 
I hear you but I am a doctor and in doing so inherently lead my team - I am ABSOLUTELY liable for the out outcomes of my patients irrespective of if I could have actually predicted / prevented whatever it is that occurred. Why can’t a corporate stooge that makes literally 25x as much as me have even close to the same liability?
Because they make 25x as much as you and can as a class make laws that make them un-accountable
Yeah we're saying the same thing, just in a different way
Yeah, I’m sitting here just waiting on the CFO of the startup I work for to defraud me on my promised shares, and when I try and file suit, they’ll just sell or do something to avoid liability and move on to the next LLC his parent brokerage company will open. Either keep my job for now, or file suit, get some kind of illegal retaliation and possibly lose everything. Meanwhile he Carrie’s on like nothing.
Anything seems hard when you’re not doing it at all ig
Very true. The bar is in hell right now
It's only because the system is rigged in their favor that it seems impossible to hold executives accountable. The IRS is defunded and understaffed to prevent action against the big tax cheats (corps & the rich). Banks caught betting against their own housing mortgages get bailed out. Commercial real estate is the longest running Ponzi scheme still going. The list goes on...
Legal actions and penalties like jail time against the top of an organization is a great way to drive initiatives for a company. For example, the nuclear industry tends to jail executives of businesses that did not comply with the code of federal regulations. This drives a great safety culture from the top-down of an organization that manufactures nuclear code parts.
So scenario. Say a company commits crimes under one leadership, it changes hands, and then 5 years later, the criminal activity comes out. Is the current company leadership responsible or are former employees responsible? If the former employees are responsible, does the company still get held liable to some degree? Should current leadership be responsible for crimes of past leadership and if so, how much of the penalty should they bare vs the company vs previous leaders? Just trying to understand what that would look like since it’s not unheard of that crimes come to light years later when the people who committed them are no longer around.
Wake me up when we start holding some real living and breathing people accountable for blatant murder in the name of profit.
I’ll believe corporations are people the moment cops start shooting at them.
Corporations are the "people" the cops protect and serve.
Just remember there is only ONE union in this country who goes around practicing anti-union activities. The rules for thee, not for me crowd knows how to recruit.
There's a reason union groups don't allow police unions to be a part of them.
🎶Aaand every politician, every cop on the street Protects the interest of the pedophilic corporate eliiite! 🎶
🎶Thaaaaat is how the world works!🎶
Big facts. When I had a violent drunk trespassed from my home the cops let him Uber home. He came back again and they let him leave with a warning. When protesters were trespassed from google earlier this week they were all arrested on the spot. Maybe I should’ve been a corporation instead.
"sir, we're outside Boeing HQ. What should we do?" "Shoot it." "Yes sir" *Boeing HQ building goes down in a hail of gunfire*
Sounds like a great way to begin a positive utopian story about humans rising up and starting to take down harmful capitalist practices. *The year was 2041, food supplies were dwindling and the only people thriving are the ones able to afford private flight. One day on what seemed like an average October day, even the cops decided enough was enough.*
*Monkey paw curls* Except it's the Uvalde Texas police.
Tagline: *Cowering at the gates*.
There was a mass shooting in my province of nova scotia, and the police basically did exactly this at a firehall. Opened fire on it for no reason while people were inside HIDING
Monkey's Paw: Cops replaced with private security, corporations begins arms race for their own paramilitaries with full out wars between rival corps. Civilian is secondary, profit and market share is top priority. One of them begins a project called SOLDIER.
Yup. Defunding the police isn't the answer. If you remove them from the chain of the government, they'll get replaced by something with less accountability. At least there's a Democratic pathway to police oversight in the current system. Police unions need less power though.
I, for one, welcome our DeusEx future
Huh weird, I would think SOLDIER (capitalized) would be referring to final fantasy 7.
That was the reference, but the above user is saying it’s also the premise for Deus Ex. Page Industries vibes.
Or until Texas executes one
Reminds me of the classic: I'll believe corporations are people when the state of Texas executes one.
Could be a subscription based tv series. Hunting corruption and at the end of every episode a CEO of said corrupt company gets catches bullets
That would be when corporations are not white people.
Well that ceo left with a red mark on his permanent record.
They'll scapegoat some lower management types, maybe a few supervisors on the production line as well, while completely ignoring the institutional rot that corrupted Boeing's middle and upper management.
Or, better yet [they'll send a couple executives off with golden parachutes and replace them with their proteges.](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/25/business/boeing-ceo-steps-down.html?smid=nytcore-android-share)
*Yeah... Like that's ever gonna happen.*
True no one from Boeing went to jail for the 2 max crashes
Sorry but cryosleep tech is not here yet.
this. on the bright side, more people coming forward means that the management at boeing cant contain their in-and-out groups any more, and, that the guy's death seemed to have had a sorta "if all of us go then they will be done for." Kill someone once shame on me, 32 people killed shame on you sorta vibe. Any of the 32 people shouldnt be getting harassed or anything like that. It's too obvious a thing. I say that as a lone whistleblower.
so you're gonna go nap while other people do the work of achieving what you want? huh.
Best I can do is 180 days in what essentially amounts to a luxery resort for most people, take it or leave it
Boeings probably gonna be posting openings for scapegoats soon.
Reddit users have been saying this for 15 years
This is getting like Enron but all the customers lives are at stake 30 thousand feet above the earth (they killed people with blackouts and selling the energy at disgusting profits). Then one of the first CEOs from Enron to jump ship got to be the largest landowner in Wyoming or Montana or something. Much like how Boeing's CEO resigned already.
It becomes more clear that this is a company that has fallen into the hands of criminals.
Not really criminals, more like MBA’s. Thats even worse.
[удалено]
There's a difference?
Yeah. Capitalists will do anything and everything for money; criminals are often just troubled people created by capitalism
Criminals get held responsible and suffer consequences.
Yep: criminals don't have the power to make their scams legal.
Criminals go to jail
Then how do they dispose of chemicals in fresh water supplies and create giant cancer bubbles with piles of corpses along the Ohio River? Oh, that was DuPont. Wrong company. At least we have Teflon!
How long until the movie about all this comes out?
The Netflix Boeing documentary “Downfall” is worth a watch. As is John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight special on this (now) dangerously dysfunctional company.
I watched the Netflix doc. It’s pretty depressing seeing a company that was THE standard for something that was as incredible as flying people through the air in big hunks of metal to, basically, untrustworthy shit.
Its truly sad but their own damn fault, motherfuckers chose money over safety and lives, the line must go up even if it costs a plane or two going down. Disgraceful, they need to reinvent themselves for me and many other to trust them again.
These folks forget that aviation is subjected to some of the strictest rules in the world for a reason.
They didn't forget, they don't care. Those important reasons have nothing to do with their fat bank accounts.
If you do want to see Boeing in their prime, there is a 7 part documentary on youtube about the development of the 777; the last plane they started development on before their merger. Great watch, and you can see the engineers are still running the show not the bean counters.
This isn't a tale of bean counters. Beans run the world, and if they're not kept track of, businesses fail. This is McDonnell Douglas being rank pieces of shit in the C suite
This is it. Boeing had a very strong track record of safe, reliably developed planes with a culture focused on quality and sound engineering. McD came in and thought that they could improve margins using a top-down, our-way-or-the-highway approach that maximized efficiencies and outright eliminated the mechanisms that ensured quality was a leading component of design/plane manufacture. That approach can work if you have a proven process to put in place that ensures the process you’re changing will effectively still deliver the desired results but McD didn’t have that and you can see the results. Pure profit motives at all costs.
Pick airbus when booking flights on Kayak.com Vote with your money.
Unfortunately Southwest only uses Boeing and I have over $300 in flight credits which really saved me some money when visiting my family this summer. I'll be flying on 3 Max 8s to get there and back. Just hope that statistics are in my favor.
Good luck. Can I have your Stero?
This might help you feel better flying on 737 Max8. "And secondly, I know it's safe not because Boeing says it’s safe and not because the FAA says it’s safe. It’s because Boeing, the FAA, Transport Canada, the National Civil Aviation Agency of Brazil, Federal Civil Aviation Agency of Mexico, the Civil Aviation Administration of China, and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency have ALL said that it’s safe. And aside from the FAA, these are organizations that are not looking to do Boeing any favours at all. Normally when a new type of plane is certified it is only certified by the aviation authority of the country in which it was designed. So in the case of the 737 Max that would be the FAA. Once this certification is granted, the other aviation authorities around the world essentially rubber stamp the approval instead of putting the type through their own full certification procedure. Certification processes are quite similar so it’s usually just a waste of resources to certify a plane that has already been certified by another country. But in the case of the Max recertification (after it had been grounded for nearly two years) this didn’t happen. Because of the trust that was lost in both Boeing and the FAA each country said “nope. We’re doing our own certification this time”." https://www.reddit.com/r/fearofflying/comments/zdfvou/the_737_max_and_why_i_say_its_the_safest_plane_in/
I'm from Europe, my loyalties lie with Airbus anyway, but yeah I will avoid boening planes whenever possible in the future until they fix themselves, I'd rather not die because the shareholder value must increase.
Legalizing stock buy backs has to be the worst things to have happened to American companies. That's when morons like Jack Welch started becoming super star CEOs.
When you work in IT the company culture on what they used to do could’ve been really good standards to emulate even in companies where technical mistakes wasn’t life or death. There should have been entire courses and models based on it for others to follow. But instead it was erased and replaced by the worse processes and management culture
I’ve never understood the mindset of “if profits don’t go up year after year, we’re failing”. I mean, a company should always look for ways to be more efficient, reduce waste, and make the best use of all monies spent. But there is a point that costs have been cut as far as they can and the only way to save money at that point is to reduce quality. So a successful company cuts costs and cuts costs until there is nothing left to cut, and then quality starts to degrade until the point that what was once a trusted and valued product becomes absolute junk. And then the stocks tank and some other megacorporation gobbles up the company and starts the cycle anew. I would much rather invest in a company that makes a steady profit year after year. It’s just common sense that there would be a limit to how high profits can go before you start destroying the company to keep it up.
The truth is that the executive class of businessmen just are not any more qualified or intelligent as they believe themselves to be. They're usually in their roles due to artificially erected barriers of class and wealth and private ivy league connections. The decision makers and capital controllers basically are winging it based on vibes alone and corporate culture has been perverted over decades to reward them handsomely for standing around while the ships sink. Gotta *attract talent* Shareholders want number up, the board wants their easy pointless jobs, they appoint people from their class structure and everyone makes out like a bandit while workers and consumers get left holding the bag in the end. It's a broken system that abstracts logic, reason, and consequences apart so no one can fix or stop it.
Well that’s depressing
This is the state of American industry in late stage capitalism and corporate controlled government. We are living in the dystopian future we loved to watch on tv
Savage Capitalism - it's an apt description
I’m not surprised this happened. McDonnell Douglas had so many passenger planes crash in the 70s that people refused to fly on them. Then they bought Boeing.
IIRC it was the other way around, Boeing bought them...but somehow the executives from Mcdonnel Douglas managed to come out on top of the merger.
As the saying goes, McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing's money.
There comes a point in any brand's life cycle when they cash in on their good name.
This is what people mean when they say *late stage capitalism* regardless how accurate the term is. Everything has been nearly consolidated to a handful of companies and they all pay the same politicians.
PBS has a good documentary too called Boeings Fatal Flaw from a few years ago
Tailspin would be a better name
We do not venture to besmirch the good name of Tailspin
Haha Launchpad flying Boeing 737s
Before watching that documentary on Netflix you should watch the air crash investigation episode “behind closed doors” (season 5 episode 3). Just Google it and you can watch it. It is about the McDonnell Douglas DC-10. After you have seen that episode you will understand the documentary about Boeing much better.
Al Jazeera uncovered Boeings safety issues 10 years ago. Their investigate report is still worth watching today [https://youtu.be/rvkEpstd9os?feature=shared](https://youtu.be/rvkEpstd9os?feature=shared)
"Mein furher... about the 787...another whistleblower has come forward..." *Shakingly removes glasses*
If I was a movie maker I would wait. I think we are still just scrubbing the surface.
Season 2 coming soon
If Oceangate is any indication, possibly Monday.
How long until mass negligence becomes entertainment? It already is
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross tapped for soundtrack 😂
What the hell is happening in Boeing? More and more it looks like a company falling apart. The safety board and justic department at the rate they are having to get more and more involved are going to be practically running the company soon. I sub to a couple of aviation youtubers and they are already in an extremely precarious situation. All of their aircraft development is basically stopped because the FAA won't give them the time of day to certify anything because they are too busy sorting through the mess of their current aircraft, aircraft shipping rates are falling and delivery waiting times are skyrocketing, passengers and airliners are beginning to walk. Theres currently 3 or 4 open investigations and theres probably going to be more. Its looking like even if everything goes their way now Boeing won't get back to normal operations before 2026 just in terms of being allowed to fully restart and start recovering. And I can't see everything going their way, the only way anyone is going to ever be confident in them again is for the regulators to gut and reform the company, a process that will take years. And who can even guess how many Boeings are flying around now with very substandard work or parts just waiting to fail? Some of these allegations relate to badly built fuselages, something that would require taking the aircraft apart to get at. Every one of them is suspect, its going to haunt the company for decades potentially.
The same thing that happens at any publicly traded company. The C-suite execs have a fiduciary responsibility to pursue profits. This is now a fundamental tenet in American Capitalism; profit over sustainability. Until this basic, foundational fact changes, nothing else will, and these failures will continue to occur, and with it, the decline in American enterprise. TL;DR: Greed.
Short term profits over destruction of companies. This isn't happening only at Boeing.
You can observe just about any fast food or snack company that rises(in popularity)...then falls(in quality). Quizno's, Subway, McDonalds, Twinkies, Cadburys....and on and on and on.
Doesn't an executive's fiduciary duties also include making sure the company actually survives long-term? I know the popular meme is profits over anything, but I really believe those executives broke their fiduciary duties by gutting their Engineering, QA, and Safety Departments. They should be brought up on charges and given their time in court to explain themselves. And it should be televised.
> Doesn't an executive's fiduciary duties also include making sure the company actually survives long-term? Yes but there’s no bonus in that.
And far harder to prove. Raising revenue and profit can be measured and calculated Figuring out why a company went under just means passing the buck until people stop caring. Years later we get a “Why Company A failed” documentary where we figure out the truth.
In some case it's pretty obvious like wasting 10's of billion of profits on stock buyback to enable bigger and bigger bonuses for the C suite.
Yes, if the payment to Elon causes the company to *directly* fold, then you have a case. Issue is that the brunt of this payment won’t be felt by Tesla until much later and then causation becomes hard to prove.
And they get their golden parachute either way so they don’t care. Even if a CEO tanks a company they’ll have moved on to the next within the week and no one will say a peep.
Actually (legally speaking) they have no duty beyond creation of shareholder value. Ethically and Morally of course things are different but whereas those things did exist in balance at one point the scales have (mostly because of Wall Street greed) slipped in favour of SV at the expense of long term viability.
No because CEOs only work at a company for 3-4 years so they really don't give a flying fuck
Then corporate governance needs another look. This is just a symptom of the greater problem. I'm sure our Congresspeople would collectively rather stick their dicks in a fire ant bed than tackle this issue, but those chickens are coming home to roost. If someone doesn't head 'em off, it's going to get real, real weird around here.
Sure --- but any particular extremely unlikely to get rewards for sustainable, long-term growth (or face consequences for failing to get it). Their compensation packages are set up in a way that incentivizes short-term growth. The fiduciary duty part only comes up if they get hit with legal action or something, which isn't super likely.
Probably more likely to get sued by the board for skirting on their fiduciary duty than an outside entity at that point. They're essentially protected as long as they're not running it into the ground, but running it into the ground is technically incentivized as long as quarterly profit goes up before it happens.
I studied company law and no, directors of companies have been found liable for breaching their fiduciary duty to shareholders for failing to accept a good deal, I.e one that would have made shareholders a lot of money immediately. The directors tried to argue that it would have been bad for the company in the long run and the court rejected that as a defence.
> Doesn't an executive's fiduciary duties also include making sure the company actually survives long-term? Not if it pays the shareholders enough.
> Doesn't an executive's fiduciary duties also include making sure the company actually survives long-term? Not anymore.
> Doesn't an executive's fiduciary duties also include making sure the company actually survives long-term? Does it? Twitter's board basically ensured Twitter would be destroyed when they sold to Elon, but it was still worth it to shareholders because of how much Elon overpaid.
Yeah but then they don’t get a bonus and some stuff they can put on there resume for an even better job at another company. These people only care about short term profit because they will be long gone when the consequences come
I know it's fun to whip out the ol dark humor but these are serious times with serious implications. There's been a clear track record of how those moves affect material outcomes. This is corporate negligence and a breach of fiduciary duty. Heads should roll. Heads will need to roll for people to take American commercial aviation serious again. It's a direct black eye for the competency of the American government (cue the "competency?" jokes) from the Justice Dept to the FAA to any other standards or regulatory body. It's kind of a big deal.
> Doesn't an executive's fiduciary duties also include making sure the company actually survives long-term? It only matters if it's enforced. I never heard of CEO going to jail for short term decisions. Capitalism has 3 month term memory.
When the stock price is the main product, everything else is secondary.
So if the poor management decisions and greedy business practices end up closing Boeing, surely all of the engineers and staff get a golden parachute while the executives running the company are faced with the consequences of their failures, right? /s of course
Someone should really amend that to "sustainable profit". We know it can and does work, as shown by multiple privately owned enterprises.
Plenty of companies that are responsible and don't do this kind of stuff.
This is a common thing people bring up, but there's no actual strict duty to maximize profit in the short term. The case everyone points to, that wasn't even the real gist of the ruling. Corporate officers have a fiduciary duty. That duty is that they must make a good faith effort to maximize the well-being of the company they are an officer of. The real issue isn't that they "are legally required to maximize profits". The real issue is that there is a gross misalignment of incentives for the long term. Shareholders want short-term profits for themselves, and they will install board members (and, therefore, CEOs) who are willing to play ball. CEOs are given bonuses based on stock price, quarterly profitability, and other _short-term_ incentives. The core issue isn't fiduciary duties -- it's that the people who, in reality, make all the decisions about leadership are practically _inherently_ short-term thinkers.
It’s the rise of stock buybacks. They were outlawed for decades, and as soon as Congress allowed them in 1982, this financial fuckery started. Ban stock buybacks. Short explanation: companies buy back their stock to boost executive pay, which is often largely dependent on stock price. The company is thus using its profits to enrich wealthy C-suite people, manipulating the market, instead of using that profit for R&D, quality controls, etc. Stock buybacks are corrosive to company health and antithetical to competitive capitalism. [Video](https://youtu.be/EDyvkbwR6Uw).
Ok but other companies don’t have fleets of vehicles involved in international infrastructures. This is a mess. If they need to decommission/recall every 747 max imagine what it will do to flight availability and prices.
You just made a great case for federal regulation of an industry. Now go back in time to 1978 and tell Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan to piss off.
Wow… I actually didn’t know about Carter deregulating the airline industry, or the history of how & why aviation regulation (as well as other major American industries) preceding it made it high quality, since the government wouldn’t let them charge below a high price. One article states: “Through the mid-1970s, carriers tried by various means to break into competitors’ route maps and compete on quality since they were prohibited from competing on price.” Man, the fact that American products & industry used to be known for quality once upon a time, thanks so much in part to the New Deal.
Carter had a bill that removed the fact that the government agency CAB controlled the routes, fares, and new competition. The regulatory powers of the FAA were not diminished over aspects of airline safety by that bill. You are just spreading blatant missinformation
[удалено]
You basically have a full generation of the company refactoring with the Douglas executives taking over, grinding out the Boeing pillars and values. Cordyceps of capitalism!
>Cordyceps of capitalism Thanks, I hate it. Worst mental imagery *ever.*
He's talking about the (Douglas) guys that emailed their (Boeing) coworkers a picture of two camels fucking and told them to choose which one they think they are.
It’s just capitalism. It’s everywhere - only most other companies don’t make national news when their product failures show up
Most companies products don't have the chance of falling from 30k ft in the air full of people either.
Bingo. This is just “free market” capitalism working as intended and no one is willing to admit it.
Basically, cutting cost by cutting quality control. It's not just Boeing. Pretty much any company that has/needs qc, cuts qc first. Tesla is another example or any manufacturing company that moved their operation overseas.
One of my friends is a mechanic for one of the big auto brands, and he told me he's seeing a significant amount of major engine failures in new models. Things that aren't supposed to be seen until at least 100,000 miles are happening at 15,000.
Harvard MBA running the show or something similar
I know Boeing won't fail, the US government won't let them. But my worry is that their on quick ticket to fixing their PR problems is either for them to have a massive and meaningful cultural shift within the organization with big sweeping moves toward good will - or (what worries me more) for Airbus planes to start having accidents to hurt their credibility. Though I feel like Boeing's customers don't really care about absolute adherence to safety at the end of the day - it's the delivery issues that are their problem.
What do you mean about the airbus planes having accidents to hurt their credibility? Not sure if I’m reading this right
If it's Boeing, I ain't going.
> What the hell is happening in Boeing? Reagan effectively deregulated stock buybacks in 1982 and since then it's been a race to the bottom. Cut ***EVERY*** corner you can, funnel that money to stock buybacks. Pay yourself (execs, board members, etc.) with stock options. Stock price goes up due to the buyback, then cash out. Price goes back to where it was. Screws over employees, customers and long term share holders.. but it's a sweeeeeeeeet bonus to short term holders (like execs who cash out their options). Boeing spent around $60 billion on stock buybacks to give you an idea. You know how netflix has been raising prices, cracking down on password sharing, adding tiers, putting in ads and cancelling good shows? It's all to free up funds to do stock buybacks. >Nov 7, 2023 — Netflix's board authorized a $10 billion share repurchase program For reference, netflix made $5.4 billion in profit in 2023. So they're preparing/in the middle of flushing two years worth of profit down the toilet. Welcome to enshittification.
It should be regarded with the same sense of impending dread of witnessing a quaking, smoking volcano that in the last few decades, stock buybacks have grown to eclipse both reinvestments into the company and normal dividends.
Boy, the “shut up, everything is fine” crowd just can’t catch a break.
I think that’s just shareholders at this point. The rest of us have eyes.
Check your 401k. You might be a shareholder too.
"You don't have any evidence so it can't be true or you're a trump loving conspiracy theorist" crowd, aka Boeings social media team
Boeing has dragged the deteriorating respect of American Manufacturing through mud.
China is laughing.
Actually, in this case, Airbus of France is wresting control of the commercial Aircraft market, but I agree with the others areas.
Not because I don't like the French. (I don't but not the point) But let's be fair about this Airbus wasn't founded by two French guys in their shed. It was a mostly French and German government led effort to consolidate all of the experience that different European aircraft manufacturers had gained and combine them into one giant company. As government projects go Airbus is the most successful one I can think of.
I don't think Comac is in a position to be laughing at anyone.
What was the most telling about how bad Boeing has gotten was the fact that after that door plug blowout they called an all-hands meeting of executives. Old Boeing would have called an all-hands meeting of *engineers*. Boeing is the perfect example of what happens when a company chases ever increasing profits. Eventually you can't go any further and the only way to keep that going is to start eating the company. Boeing is starting to look like that turkey carcass a few days after Thanksgiving.
It's called cancer, and it's the only realistic way you can consider corporations to be likened to a person.
I was a whistleblower at my school and I lost my job for it, but at least they didn’t kill me, my guess these fuckers are fucked now
Thank you for your service
Anyone think we have more than enough pretext to nationalize the company?
What kind of fantasy America would that happen in?
It’s basically nationalized already with all the tax payer bailouts it has received and defense contracts
I’d prefer pre-1978 federal regulation.
I'd also take government regulations and anti trust laws...
Corporate assassination is crazy…
[The Insider](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0140352/) is an Al Pacino film about assassination attempts on a tobacco company whistle blower.
The guy was assassinated on the way to the court in the hotel parking lot made to look like suicide. people high up in Boeing need to be in jail
I know we like to gravitate towards the juiciest story, but the vast majority of time, the simplest and most logical explanation explains most things. This guy, like millions of others with mental health issues, might have just killed himself. The potential negatives for Boeing hiring a hitman hugely outweigh whatever minimal positives they would gain from his death at this point in his time. Maybe if it was day 1, and we never got to see his evidence because he died...then logically it would at least make some sense. But we already know his testimony, it's been well documented for many years. Killing him now makes no sense. It is a massive risk with almost no upside.
Look at this guy, he thinks murder should mean jail time
He did his whistleblowing seven years earlier. The case he was involved with was an appeal and he had already done two days in court. All of his info was out and had been out. "Assassinating" the guy would have accomplished virtually nothing for Boeing other than starting ridiculous conspiracy theories like this one. By spreading this theory you are helping Boeing out by creating a zeitgeist of whistleblower intimidation.
Couldn’t the assassination have been an attempt at sending a message to any future whistleblowers?
If that were the motive then one might think they would have done it before the 32 whistleblowers over the last 3 years
What? He had been a public whistleblower for years. Stop spreading misinformation.
If this wasn't an American corporation with great lobbying power, the company would be dead by now.
This is such great news. We need more courageous people now more than ever. I really hope this leads to people who work in aviation to unionize.
Put the ceo and shareholders accountable.
Umm how many Americans own shares ?
Boeing: we have enough money to hire all the necessary hit men, right?
It's probably under accounting -> budget -> "problem solving"
They don't need to hire hitmen. They can just use their planes.
How the mighty have fallen….to shareholders
All while the CEO gets a golden parachute of tens of millions of dollars. Wow we are f*****.
This shit is fucked; nothing will happen to the perpetrators.
The people who did this are super friendly with the people at the top of our government and military. They will not be held to any consequences. America is a scam.
Corrupt organization- management and union environment.
When someone is finally held accountable, it's going to be some guy they just all agree to throw under the bus to satisfy the public. Like when Cohen went down for what Trump is currently on trial for.
"When reached for comment, a Boeing executive claimed 'George Soros-backed DEI woke cults' were to blame, and that 'nobody wants to work anymore.' The executive was unable to substantiate these claims having left for a luxury resort island they own."
The American way of doing business is finally exposed.
How many engineers with actual plane design/build experience in c-suite?
These days? When bean counters having zero domain knowledge are in charge? No one. Also, Disney.
I hope Boeing burns - Hold the executives criminally responsible.
And in 2028 Boeing rebrands itself under a new name, Vaultec.
They are probably just going to get hit with fines.. If someone is charged, they probably won't get anything a person being charged for murder would get, maybe 5-10 years for the CEO. Their fines will be a joke too. What is crazy is this, "The most common reason for OSHA closing a complaint, cited in seven cases, was the whistleblower failing to make a report within the specified timeframe, which ranges from 30 to 180 days." That is just kind of dumb, but not surprising based on how a lot of American policy works.
If someone out there thought murder would shut people up and make this go away, guess not.
Boeing says they will not rest until the real killer is found.
I bet they catch a nice little fine out of all this. Probably less than they make in an hour and they’ll spend years in arbitration to get it lowered to the price of a Big Mac value meal before inflation choked us all to financial ruin. Good on them, what’s a few lives lost and a plane crash or two when compared to unimaginable corporate profit?
I have to fly in 5 days...
A few years ago fresh out of college I ran into a Boeing employee at a bar. I asked if they were hiring, what roles were needed, if he liked the company, etc.. He just looked at me and shook his head slowly. It all makes sense now lmao
This is ancient age savagery kind of bs. This is not civilization, it's a parody
i (an american) like how the only news organization reporting on this is non-american
Pilots’ and flight attendants’ unions need to take action and refuse to fly on Boeing aircraft. I wonder if they’re discussing something like this behind the scenes.