[bbor]

Does anyone else share my wish that the result of this investigation was “poof no more Boeing”? I don’t understand why corporations can be fundamentally flawed and keep going, where a person in that situation would be prosecuted as a criminal. If Boeing has a bad safety culture because they keep investing unbelievable sums of money into stock buybacks and dividends, so much so that they don’t even have reporting culture… I don’t think they deserve a second chance, and frankly I think the shareholders deserve jail time so I really don’t care if they lose some money.

Yes, I know some pension fund somewhere is invested in Boeing. No, I don’t care. Will we ever solve corruption and climate change if we refuse to actually change our ways?

[falserum]

No, we can not solve corruption, because people are greedyand organization needs hierarchy.

Regarding climate change I have hope, but again, same greed, kind of would dictate that at best we will slow it down.

Whatever you will decide to do with boeing, you will have to make employees, shareholders and numerous clients (incl. Us military) content.

Btw. I own a share of a fund which has shares of boeing. Should I go to jail?

[bbor]

  people are greedy

I think that people are far more culturally and historically specific than they appreciate, so I take claims like this (i.e. non-specific ones about human nature and virtue therein) with a massive grain of salt. I agree in the general sense of the word, of course!

  Whatever you will decide to do with Boeing, you will have to make employees, shareholders and numerous clients (incl. Us military) content.

I totally agree with many of your points re:climate change and hierarchies, but I don't see how that responds to my initial charge: that specific companies that are found systematically guilty of some sort of crime should be forcibly disbanded.

What if many of the smart, motivated Boeing engineers would be more productive in a dynamic marketplace of smaller firms? What if there's a warp drive concept lurking in the mind of an underutilized systems analyst deep in the basements of their valley? Investing all these resources, especially public fiscal ones, into a company that has proven again and again to prioritize suicidally negligent, short term, excessively selfish thinking... well, it seems criminally unjust.

TL;DR_1: I don't need him, he needs me!

  I own a share of a fund which has shares of boeing. Should I go to jail? 

I would separate laborers who have shares as some form of retirement from capitalists who deploy unimaginable sums of money. I know the 1% discourse is tired but the general sentiment is extremely valid: a relatively small group of powerful people pressured the Boeing board to make these decisions. In the paraphrased words of AOC: "..and it's, like, twelve people."

Yes, I think the people who lobbied for cost cutting and dividend/buyback programs within the company deserve to be criminally investigated. I am so far from a lawyer and doubt our exact current laws and policies (esp. SEC) would be enough, so the most specific I can get is "charges related to negligence and greed" TBH.

But no, I was being unclear when I said "owners" -- not all owners of any amount of the stock are complicit, other than in a broad ethical-consumerism sense. You're on Hacker News, so I have no doubt at all that you're living your life in good faith.

TL;DR_2: capitalists != investors

[falserum]

Most people are only mildly greedy, but that accumulates as a silt in a river, and eventually gives opportunity for more serious greed to manifest in full glory. Corporations, while are not democratic in nature, still get nudged in various direction by all the people around it, not only execs, but (even if differently weighted) also employees, customers, voters. As it is the environment where corporation operates in. Btw. I know it’s a bit of a stretch, but I would call turning a blind eye to minor infractions done by others as manifestation of minor greed. (acting would cost my time/energy without benefit to me)

> that specific companies that are found systematically guilty of some sort of crime should be forcibly disbanded.

There are limitations what can be actually done to boeing, even if a lot of people agree that boeing is faulty.

It is not feasible to just nuke it from the orbit. (As in, “there was boeing a minute ago, and now there is vacuum”) For example, somehow supply/services to Us military MUST be kept. Maybe restructuring, maybe some execs investigated, maybe penalty, but military must be supplied. (Not disagreeing with the sentiment regarding accountability per se, but implementation must be compatible with current reality)

> You're on Hacker News, so I have no doubt at all that you're living your life in good faith.

Thanks for that, but I would caution you to adjust this heuristic. As I see it, HN is a good filter for tech curiuosity, but it is orthogonal to a lots of things. I’ve read that suicide bombers frequently were engineers.

[mlrtime]

As soon as you quote AOC "Eat The Rich" you lost all credibility in your comment section.

She is the least knowledgeable person to be anywhere close to a Boeing strategy of change.

And, just like "Eat The Rich" is rhetoric, so is "..and it's, like, twelve people." It's not 12, it's anyone making more than $X00,000, wherever X makes her more popular with her base.

[bbor]

All text is rhetoric :)

I lost all credibility by quoting a politician I like in a relevant way? Seems like an awfully fragile conception of credibility.

Re:it’s not literally 12 people, thanks, I know. It’s not 1% either. I don’t hate the rich, I hate capitalists; I’ve never had any capital and maintain no empathy for the monsters who do. They do things like defund safety programs so much that planes literally disintegrate in mid air.