[Retric]

Boing recently face real financial consequences from the 737 Max defect.

Holding companies to the same standards as members of the general public runs into an issue of how large an impact they have. A Surgeon is going to make mistakes that kill people, but just because people are imperfect doesn’t mean effectively banning surgery via sending every surgeon to prison after their first mistake is appropriate. Roll up to a single hospital and mistakes are inevitably common, roll up to a hospital network and serious mistakes happen every day. The only way organizations at that scale can operate is with quite a bit of slack.

[Swenrekcah]

The financial consequences are nothing for the company, even less for those responsible. For accountability there need to be personal consequences for cases of extreme and wilful negligence for cases like Boeings.

I’m not advocating for life in prison for the top brass, but some prison time surely.

Unless we just start issuing fines and warnings to the regular people to deal with manslaughter of criminal negligence.

[Retric]

Prison for the top brass 1:1 with negligent death essentially removes the possibility of any large company existing even down to hospitals simply can’t exist in such an environment.

The paradox here is that aviation for example is filled with cases of negligence causing large numbers of fatalities, while at the same time the industry has become extremely safe. It’s not that negligence has become more common it’s simply rolling the dice more frequently. By comparison having someone install solar panels on your roof is stupid dangerous at scale, but individual homeowners don’t notice that risk. Should we send every homeowner that had solar installed into their homes to prison? If not why should it apply at a larger company.

It’s not that these companies get a special expedition, it’s that everyone gets that same exception. Killing a pedestrian for example rarely results in prison time. People are often punished more for a DUI without an accident than a sober fatality caused by simple negligence.

[Swenrekcah]

I understand your point, and note I didn’t say 1:1 time.

I don’t think you understand though how bad Boeings case was and that we will never be rid of that kind of risk taking when the trade off for the risk takers is piles of money if it goes right but essentially a slap on the wrist if it goes wrong.

[Retric]

That’s fair, I think most agree that some threshold for punishment is a good idea. Deciding where and when that is if it’s not 1:1 gets politically and ideologically messy.