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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

Because Boeing is so important to national security, everyone involved in leading this from the CEO to the board of directors should be treated as traitors and have all their assets seized and spend the rest of their life in a maximum security federal prison.

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If it's really that important it should be government-owned, like Airbus. You can't give random people free reign and then punish them if you retroactively didn't like it.

(Airbus is only ~25% government-owned)

but unlike the kamikaze-americana free market attitude on display by characters competing for attention on social media, this state ownership ensures that ultimately it benefits the state's interest not the executives.

This is the invisible boundaries that map the most resilient economies. Even Canada does this to a large degree but stood no chance against American Greed.

Airbus was created by European governments, but sold off to force it into market competition.

This is what happens when monopolies are allowed to exist. In a competitive market if the CEO gives away market share to rivals due to reckless indifference to safety and becomes a liability, they will be fired or the company gets spun off to fend for themselves. When we as a society allow a monopoly to exist, then government assumes responsibility for whatever that monopoly does with its power. Government intervention ought to be a last resort, not the first. The only reason anyone's calling for government action here is because we allowed Boeing to become a monopoly to begin with, so now we have no other choice but to accept what Boeing has become or else break it up. All monopolies will eventually do something to harm the public in exchange for personal wealth. It is an inevitability.

Airplane manufacturing sounds like a natural monopoly.

It wasn’t for a long time. It sort of is now.

The question is if, with new tech, we might be able to undo that?

What's your complaint? asteroid impacts are natural events too. I would like the government to try to avert those.

Natural monopoly is a technical term, it doesn't mean naturally occurring in the sense you're implying.

I'm sorry but you're exactly wrong. Natural monopoly means monopoly which is a direct consequence of nature, rather than through collusion and anticompetitive practice. Ie a "natural" monopoly. My analogy holds just fine.

But it isn't a monopoly? It is just an extremely capital intensive business. At least if you are building large passenger jets, everything else has quite a bit of competition.

I'm looking forward to Chinese competition in the aviation industry. This would benefit all players.

Incompetence is obviously not treason. It also sets up a ridiculously bad precedent.

It wasn’t incompetence. It was a deliberate decision to enrich oneself at the expense of everyone else.

You believe it's so traitorous to try to cut costs that it should result in life in prison for all members of the board and CEO? And why maximum security, do you believe they are going to be tunneling out with spoons?

> And why maximum security, do you believe they are going to be tunneling out with spoons?

Boeing makes military hardware that plenty of people would (literally) kill to get their hands on even just the plans for.

Traitorous does seem strong. But gross negligence that can result in hundreds of deaths per mistake? Mistakes that may not happen if share prices weren't the number one priority? Yah something heavy should happen.

Careful you don't hurt yourself with reactions like those.

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