[roenxi]

Someone has to make the final call on how much money to spend on making planes safe. The spend can't be $infinite and will be more than $1.

We can quibble with the amount that got picked. It turns out in this case the amount spent was too low. But it is unreasonable to talk about "... deliberately makes choices that prioritise revenue and stock prices over safety ...". At some point the call has to be made that the planes being built are safe enough, and that from there start to focus on profits. These companies have to produce more value than they consume (which is what "profits" represents at the macro level) otherwise there isn't any point producing.

In this case the call was made poorly, but the call had to be made. Holding the call maker personally responsible isn't the path to more successful outcomes in the future. The path that has been working quite well for around 2 centuries is to hold the company responsible for what the company did. If we start penalising CEOs for trying to build planes profitably, then it is possible that the industry will collapse. There is no justification here to hold people personally liable. It is enough to hit Boeing with an appropriate fine.

[Hikikomori]

Maybe it should be okay to punish the decision makers when they decide to go against the recommendation of engineers for profit and it leads to hundreds of dead people. If not prison maybe they should be stripped of all their wealth rather than get a golden parachute as that's the worst outcome they have today.

[bostik]

When you consistently make decisions that knowingly prioritise profit over product safety[0], you have crossed the line between financial prudence and corporate manslaughter.

0: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/BA/boeing/gross-pr...

[FredPret]

Executives set cultural standards as well as budgets

[laserlight]

> But it is unreasonable to talk about "... deliberately makes choices that prioritise revenue and stock prices over safety ..."

I can't see how that is unreasonable. Nobody here is arguing that Boeing officials should be held criminally liable because they didn't invest enough money into safety. The liability is because they are blatantly disregarding safety. They invented MCAS and didn't let pilots know about it. One plane crashes and they don't care. Second plane crashes and they don't care. For years, stupid things keep happening and they still don't care.

By your logic, a psychopath CEO may deliberately undermine safety culture to earn more profits and still won't be held responsible, because it's “limited liability”. Limited liability means that financial liability is limited, not criminal one.

[roenxi]

> By your logic, a psychopath CEO may deliberately undermine safety culture to earn more profits and still won't be held responsible, because it's “limited liability”.

Yep. This is how it is generally done. Shareholder's in Boeing are literally responsible for installing "a psycopath CEO" who undermined safety and they aren't liable. I see little difference between that and extending the protection to the CEO as well. It gets better results because we don't chase risk-averse people out of the CEO position. In this situation, we WANT the most risk-averse people we can find in the CEO seat of the airline manufacturers. They won't take it if the response to a crisis is making the position more risky.

There is an argument that the CEO should be liable if it leads to more productive results. But I don't see why that would be true - it is more effective to adjust the profitability of the company when things go wrong and let the incentives do the rest. The default position is that doing your job poorly is not criminal.

Also; most CEOs are psycopaths. You don't need to include it as an adjective. It is built in to the title.