From the article: “When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm,” [Harry Stonecipher, the new CEO from McDonnell-Douglas] told the Chicago Tribune in 2004. “It is a great engineering firm, but people invest in a company because they want to make money.”

I lay the blame at the feet of each person at the company who acted selfishly.

Selfishness gets an easy pass here on Hacker News --- well, just about everywhere these days, I guess. Take this recent thread, where the submitter confesses that he has been slacking off for 6 years at work. A lot of people egged him on. I remember one comment that advised him to double down and go Full Sociopath (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21964204).

I could not think of a good rebuttal. I mean, I work hard even when no one is watching, because I am religious, but I did not imagine it going well if I just laid out the idea of a transcendental world. But the only solution I see is reformation of the individual, one by one, not revolution of the social structure --- change from the inside out, instead of the outside in.

The enemy is not the rich or the poor, the executive or the engineer. Any of these people can be dangerous, if their philosophy is maximum selfishness. Furthermore, no set of laws is clever enough to keep the peace if the majority of citizens are sociopaths. They will always find the legal loopholes. On the other hand, a country with the dumbest regulatory set-up would still run fine if peopled by saints, people who are the opposite of selfish, who are always asking, am I treating others how I wish to be treated?