Hacker News Reader

Maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's the retro mindset of work as a way of life, maybe it's just "how things used to be"... but I've spoken with a few old, retired Boeing engineers that are acquaintances or family friends (I live in Seattle) and a lot of them really make out the 70's/80's Boeing to be a "family". There is a warmth and camaraderie and a fondness that is hard to describe.

Lot of these old engineers stay in touch, godfathers to each others kids, go on fishing trips, go to church together. Still have Thanksgivings together. At one late family member's remembrance I think more than half the attendees were retired Boeing engineers, or their families. I really do think that, rose-colored-glasses aside, it sounds like a few decades ago it really was the kind of place where aerogeeks ran the show and obsessed together over making great products like the article suggests.

I know two people who work for Boeing today, as well, and I don't think either of them really like it very much.

Never forget Mr. Hands.

> It was (and is) a massive employer that has tactically distributed manufacturing to as many different states as possible (to help with lobbying efforts under the banner of job creation; distributed with a very wide net of employees).

This was specifically out of the MCD playbook. Boeing was pretty consolidated geographically before that.

Right. And I could imagine a few other scenarios that get us here as well:

Boeing's MCD buyout doesn't happen, industry keeps going where it was going, Boeing didn't adapt, their market share and market cap drop, MCD's on the other hand, rises, and MCD buys Boeing, variation of the MAX8 still happens.

Boeng's MCD buyout doesn't happen, industry keeps going where it was going, Boeing adapts, tightens margins, still builds MAX8, same deal, except we still have MCD floating around as another minor player in the market (or MCD just goes out of business).

It's weird to blame it all on MCD's executives taking over Boeing and turning it into a margin-driven company, when that's just where the market was going in the first place, and it's likely that any airplane manufacturer would have to make the same choices in order to stay relevant. Perhaps the root cause was deregulation, or something else.

The 737 MAX was right out of the McDonald Douglas playbook from crudely using the stabilizer to tame poor handling (like the MD-11) to undocumented features causing crashes (like the MD-80).

MCD's on the other hand, rises

That was never in the cards. Pretty much everything past the DC-9 was done on a shoestring budget and it showed. The military side of MD was doing OK but the commercial side was as good as dead by the time MD and Boeing merged.

Boeng's MCD buyout doesn't happen, industry keeps going where it was going, Boeing adapts, tightens margins, still builds MAX8

Without MD management the 737 MAX never would've happened as there would be no 737 NG to base it on.

> That was never in the cards.

Sure, but we're talking hypotheticals here.

> Without MD management the 737 MAX never would've happened as there would be no 737 NG to base it on.

I was referring to a non-MCD Boeing eventually committing a MAX-style failure, not specifically that plane. Obviously if Boeing+MCD had never happened, the timeline since then would look very different.

In a lot of respects, I find modern business tactics skewing ever further towards being more and more harmful to society at large for the sake of business capital owners. Let's not forget the social contract and that we, as a society, allow businesses to operate while they remain beneficial to society.

I'm not saying remove capitalism but some modifications of our current state of capitalism are certainly in order. Perhaps this is tighter or different regulatory constraints, changes to some core principles (e.g. Citizen's United, business rights as "people", etc.). I'm not saying I have the answers or the quick examples mentionrd are the core issues, just that the future doesn't look great if current trends continue. We need to start a productive conversation and elect representatives willing to be a voice in that conversation to explore and try improvement options.

That's exactly it. "Corporations are people, my friend", when they need to pump an insane amount of money into our election process, but when the time comes to pay for blunders and crimes - nah uh, don't touch the innocent corporation, you can't put it on trial, like a ... person.

Is this a genie that can be bottled back up? Lets say you enact these magical regulations. Will the corporations stick around or will they focus on other countries where they have more clout? Similarly, will they use international levers of pressure to "fix" the issues any one country poses?

Mmm. Good question.

Personally, I don't see the rest of the world as willing to indulge in that type of regulation havening. Besides which, where else are you going to find the combination of hypermodern physical infrastructure, relatively stable political/judicial systems, and the fiscal infrastructure to support these types of businesses all bundled together?

It seems to end up being a puck-two sort of thing otherwise, and if they did move out, they'd likely have to instantly write off the American market, as such a drastic measure would not go unnoticed. It starts to reek of nationalistic pride as the insurance policy, but history didn't build itself up without such a thing in the first place; so I see it as foolish to discount the mechanism moving forward.

One can only hope the cost in blood to maintain such security won't have to be repeated however.

> Is this a genie that can be bottled back up? Lets say you enact these magical regulations. Will the corporations stick around or will they focus on other countries where they have more clout? Similarly, will they use international levers of pressure to "fix" the issues any one country poses?

If you try to bottle the genie back up, you'll have to work all those levers simultaneously or you'll have the problems you describe. The new set of regulations would also need to curtail the ability of corporations to move to avoid regulations and limit the kinds of political pressure they can apply, for instance. Otherwise it'll be like closing one barn door while leaving the other wide open.

We've gone so far down the road in one direction that we may have to turn around with a shock. It it's probably too late for some kinds of small, incrementalist course corrections to be effective.

It can be. As bad as it seems today, the Gilded Age had even worse income inequality. The part that's frightening is what it lead to, and I'm afraid to say that the country seems to be going down exactly the same path as certain countries in Europe did around that time (rise of fascism, nationalist leaders lying through their teeth to secure power by any means, erosion of democratic norms and institutions).

I live in a city that conservatives have been claiming for years will drive away all business, real estate development, and wealthy individuals with our progressive taxes and regulations.

Yet every year our economy grows and our quality of life improves.

If businesses leave, they're the type of business you wouldn't want around anyway.

Thank you personally for allowing corporations to exist.