Murder charges. Jail time.
This must happen.
This must happen.
But is it the solution? Is it what should be done?
Because if people are going to jail, then who? There are probably hundreds of people who have some responsibility. There are the higher ups who encourage such behavior, those who are a bit too liberal with the rubber stamp, the liars, the ones who trust the liars even if it is their job not to, the ones who failed to report, the one who didn't listen for the reports, the engineers who designed the solution, and of course, the pilots, the flight instructors,... There are enough people for an entire prison city here.
This is not a case we can solve by pointing fingers. There is a systemic problem that needs to be solved. And just throwing a few people in prison will just result in Boeing hiring new scapegoats.
Try again - more like criminal negligence at a minimum.
> But is it the solution? Is it what should be done?
Yes - there needs to be some serious consequences, not the usual typical 'Company shuts down, execs get huge severance while whistleblowers and investors get shafted' type thing.
Also, some heads at the FAA need to roll. Utter failure of an agency that's supposed to protect the public.
And I also hope the victims' families also sue for pain and suffering, because they're victims of this too.
And I am not against the idea of serious consequences, the problem is about whose heads are going to roll?
It is easy to blame the executives, they are high profile, they are rich, they are the kind of people we like to hate. But are they really at fault, execs are just employees serving the shareholders, and if you have Boeing stocks in your portfolio, then you are a shareholder, so maybe you should go to jail.
And what will happen if the CEO goes to jail? The board of directors will name a new scapegoat CEO, there are many people who are ready to risk jail time in exchange for being the CEO at Boeing...
Same thing about the FAA, except that's more about the politicians you elected than about the shares you bought...
Putting a few high profile people in prison will certainly appease some vindictive minds, but I don't want vengeance, I just want safer airplanes. And as someone mentioned, they are already impressively safe despite all these shenanigans.
As for the victims' families, of course they should be compensated. But I don't think putting random people in jail is the best way to do it.
I am not saying that no one should go to jail. Some people most likely committed real jailable offenses, like corruption, and they should get punished. But making some heads roll for the sake of it isn't a good solution in my book.
Personally, I'm not opposed to that type of thing happening - I always thought a company being "public" is an oxymoron, since they only serve the shareholders (just look how Facebook prefers to serve its shareholders/execs over democracy... but I digress). If you can't fund terrorist organizations without consequences, then I think there should be equal consequences when your demands for your share values compromise the safety of society. Also, might cause people to keep the companies 'in check' if their own butts were on the line too... But that'd be another whole discussion for another time...
The whole point of consequences is to discourage future bad behaviour: "Wow, that guy's and his family's life is ruined now! Shit, I don't want the same thing to happen to me, I'd better be more careful than he was!". But if all anyone gets is a slap on the wrist, or find a scapegoat, then really what's the point of laws (especially when a nobody gets years in jail for a minor crime, but some high-profile execs can charm/buy their way out with little consequences).
More and more of this reveals that there was very little "involuntary" things happening - they were quite deliberate in what they did, and knew what they were doing wasn't on the "up and up" and compromised safety (with even someone saying "I wouldn't fly on one of those!").
That way the government (society) gets something, and shareholders in general would be more cautious of the crap they invest into.
Yes. One of the things about being at such a high level is having responsibility. Responsibility means you are ultimately at fault for things that go wrong.
Boeing's board has no meaningful aerospace expertise at all on it, going back to the McDonald Douglas merger. Shareholders have been rewarded for this successfully executed, multi-decade, and anti-competitive plan, so they keep re-electing the same board members who in turn ensure the shareholders aren't punished for objectively unethical decisions.
But capitalism doesn't require any ethics, it's completely amoral. Corporate charters don't require morality, ethics, or for companies to be a benefit to society or disallow them from being a negative to society (except insofar as they aren't breaking laws). And none of what Boeing has done has broken any laws, such as they are.
No one is going to prison. They're all protected by an explicitly designed system. The Commerce Department, overseeing the FAA, has had their select panel of industry experts and insiders say in a report this week, that everything at Boeing and the FAA is perfect. It's completely, totally, unquestionably perfect. And Congress would be risking this perfection by changing even one single thing about the existing arrangement.
Commerce won't change without a significant leadership change. Congress has cut FAA funding for decades, relative to the growth of commercial aviation, meaning there aren't enough regulators to move even a little bit away from manufacturer "self-certification".
What we have is what the industry wants, the politicians want, the average American consumer wants, and the American citizen wants -> profits for shareholders, kickbacks for politicians, cheap airfares, and please stop talking policy so I can get back to my consumerism.
It's not unreasonable to think that compromising safety (which they knew they were doing) could bring harm to people (including death).
Obviously jurisdiction matters. This is a matter of legal doctrine, not linguistics or ethics.
Specifically what I’m getting at is that they’d have a hard time claiming that they reasonably didn’t think any harm could happen given the context of what was said and done/not done.