491
US prosecutors want Boeing to face criminal charges
(www.bbc.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
491 points (99.2% liked)
News
23267 readers
3983 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I agree with all except number 3. The aerospace manufacturing industry is not competitive at all. It is a market cornered by Boeing and Airbus, with a very few small players feeding specific components to the Big 2.
This is a huge point. My wife made an off-hand comment about Boeing looking like a good take-over target for Airbus, and my response was, "never. Then there would be only one airline maker in the world."
There are exactly two manufacturers of large passenger jet liners. It's not even a question of too big to fail; it's far worse than that.
Personally, I think they're going about this the wrong way. You could prosecute executives for past decisions, but they were just doing the job they were hired for: maximize profits over every other consideration. The ones that didn't, got replaced by ones that did.
For companies like Boeing, we need a different model of capitalism. One where engineers can be in charge, and the metrics for success are dominated by something other than sheer profitability. I don't know; it seems as if we used to know how to do capitalism better. We had a functioning, funded, effective NASA, which operated almost entirely outside of The Market and which was a national pride; now it's overshadowed by SpaceX. Boeing made good planes.
I don't have a solution, but I can tell that we've gotten lost somewhere along the way.
The only way to make it not profits driven is probably government control. But if it really is one of two companies that make aircraft I don't think that's a good idea.
Maybe break it up into different companies that focus on certain sectors of aviation? Force them to compete if they won't do it naturally.
Yeah. There are lots of areas I think government control is better than private sector, but they're mostly infrastructure/monopoly areas. Power, internet, roads, etc. Normally I wouldn't put Boeing in this category, but you may be right. Thinking about NASA, and what we achieved as a country, maybe there are some endeavors that are simply so expensive and important (as in, safety) that they shouldn't be private.
I don't know if breaking things up would help, though. Boeing re-uses liners for both cargo and passengers; and there are other companies making smaller planes for other sectors: military, private jets, etc. It's just those big airliners where the cost of operating is so enormous, and the cost of entry so high, and the market so constrained, that I really can't see any room for more competition. Do you?
For the breaking up thing I was thinking civilian, space, and military aircraft. SpaceX proves private companies can make changes. Given enough time they'll probably become Boeing though.
If internet is going to be infrastructure then I'm of the frame of mind that aerospace is too. It's tough though. I absolutely hate privatization of government branches (USPS for example), but if it's purely government will there be that legendary "competition"? Strict regulations vs possible taking chances.
I don't know. I have no answers. I hope anything I've said even makes any sense.
I think we're of like mind on this. It's possible to realize something is broken without knowing how to fix it.
I'm not sure why Boeing is in space, except for the "me too" factor when they noticed the successes SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin were having. I wasn't aware they had a military division - what do they make? I mean, outside of repurposed commercial cargo jets. I don't think spinning off a division that's simply modifying an existing design for a specific market makes much sense; most of the work is in the original design and manufacture, right?
Thank you. I appreciate that, and I agree 100%.
Boeing already has divisions for different types of aerospace.
Boeing Commercial Airplanes builds the planes civvies fly on, and sometimes holds the doors shut on.
Boeing Defense, Space & Security (BDS) builds military airplanes, rotorcraft, and missiles, as well as space systems for both commercial and military customers, including satellites, spacecraft, and rockets.
Then they have another division that is focused on aftermarket stuff.
They've been in space for a long time via satellites mainly. Admittedly I'm just skimming their records, I'm not an expert of them in the slightest. But they've been a government contractor longer than my old ass has been alive, starting 1916 with seaplanes and then changing ownership a large number of times.
I'm pretty sure Asianometry has done a video on them if you're interested in watching a YouTube essay on them.
Edit. I can't find a video from him on Boeing specifically, he tends to web in and weave everyone involved with tech advancements so that's not really surprising. He might throw in the complete history of a company while describing something like a door hinge haha.
So I'm going to do something I hate to do, and leave the channel link for you to get lost in. My apologies. It's worth getting lost in though.
https://m.youtube.com/@Asianometry