How the American fervor for deregulation contributed to the 737 Max crashes
slate.com
slate.com
Boeing hid the new system so that they could avoid the regulatory process that makes it very difficult to introduce anything new. Hiding the new system was the problem that cause unsafe situation.
Another problem of same regulatory process: most private airplanes manufactured today use leaded gas combined with 80 year old engines designed in the 1950's. These engines have carburetors that are quite finicky.
Other aspects of this problem:
Most of us speed about 6 miles above the speed limit on the freeway - if you travel exactly at the speed limit you'll have a new set of problems.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but I think it's necessary to suspect that regulations that are over-burdensome can introduce odd behavior and counter intuitively make the very problem they're trying to address (in this case safety) worse.
Yet, it looks like this time the details Boeing hid from regulators were incredibly relevant and regulations were right in placing a high evidence burden on their safety.
It is a really big leap to conclude that this system would not have failed 4 YEARS after inspection if the FAA had done the inspection itself. This conclusion assumes that both:
1. FAA certifiers would have found something that the Boeing engineers did not.
2. The system was not modified for four years.
#1 is debatable and hard to prove. And I doubt #2 is how things work in the real world.