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Comment by intunderflow | Hacker News Reader

The effect on the value of the company and the strategic effect of letting Airbus (a European company) dominate aerospace manufacturing is a pretty big threat

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Boeing will never fail financially or fall out of use because of their importance for US geopolitical status. I don’t think the USA cares much about the issue except insofar as the USA wants Boeing to deliver reliable high quality products.

However, Boeing executives can (and should) get in to trouble. They probably care very much about what comes to light in court.

> Boeing will never fail financially or fall out of use because of their importance for US geopolitical status

If the trial concludes with “Yes boing knew the planes were not safe but let people fly in them” it doesn’t matter how important it is to the US, no passenger will want to fly them.

We already know that is the case and we continue to fly in them because we have no choice but to.

Also humans have startlingly short term memories.

1. Ivestigation/prosecution/Trial of which country? (people can be influenced)

2. As last resort: Us Gov can take over and actually reform Boeing (fixing public perception)

And there is whole continuum between 1 and 2.

(I really doubt that anything shady happened with this pneumonia; but IF something shady was done, US will make effort to preserve/save national aviation giant)

People may not want to fly Boeing but they still want to fly.

Even if all US airlines wanted to switch, it would take Airbus a few decades to deliver replacements, by which time the issue will be forgotten (unless they keep crashing and falling apart midair).

US airlines will probably not be allowed use chineese planes as replacements.

I’m not trying to minimise Boeing’s responsibility, just saying that assuming the company starts to turn things around, nothing that comes out of the trial will affect the future of Boeing the company much, but it might well be catastrophic for the top brass.

And the (hypothetical) effect on the value of a company in the (hypothetical) event they are proven to assassinate critics is . . . what exactly?

Are we talking about cases where someone at the company explicitly asked/ordered a kill, or including *wink* "handlings" of people? For example in 2012 the (EU) ECCHR said Nestle was responsible for the 2005 death of Luciano Romero in 2005. What about when in the case of the Banana Massacre you had Chiquita Banana making payments to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, who caused the deaths?

Looking at Nestle's historic stock performance I see no (significant) change around 2005 or 2012.

[0] - https://www.dw.com/en/nestle-under-fire-over-colombian-murde...

While obviously horrific, there's a large difference between paying a bunch of paramilitary members of a country where out and out murder by government is already an issue, and murdering citizens using arcane secretive methods such as suicide by hanging and magic mrsa infection.

If boeing is SO important to the government that justice doesn't matter, then it's probably a fuckload easier to bribe a judge or two and make sure the court cases never get anywhere than to orchestrate not one, but two, clandestine hits.

Further, why the fuck would you do the hits now? In both cases the information was brought out YEARS ago, and already in court. It hardly matters if they're alive or dead at this point.

I'm not suggesting Boeing was behind the deaths. I was replying to a comment that suggested that if a company took part in killing someone, it would hurt the stock/company significantly. I don't think that is true at all.

In the long term? Not much. Dow is Boeing's future.

I'm sorry, your tinfoil hat is slipping.

well, whoever would make this type of "executive decision" should be prepared to go to jail for a really long time next to really violent bad people. Multinational execs did not show propensity for these types of decisions (the propensity at C-Suite is to pay a fine and move on....) So prior knowledge makes me think these are accidents.

It would be really good to get as much information about these deaths (and closure for the families)

PS. for arguments sake, if another Boeing whistleblower would get a sudden disease I would be more inclined to think that maybe there is some chemical/mechanical exposure in the Boeing / Spirit factories rather then some Michael Clayton-type action...

When is the last time someone from the C suite and had a good relationship to the government/defense sector went to big boy jail? I can’t think of an occasion, even though I can think of many deadly events where it’s very well arguable there should be criminal liability

Generally any white collar criminal does not need to go to "big boy jail," and I'm not sure why that needs to be a thing. Is this like joking about prison rape, where we just assume that the consequences of being incarcerated aren't enough, and we need "Bubba" to add a little "extra" because we're not as civilized as we believe we are?

Either way, rest assured that in the real world, a hypothetical executive who was convicted of ordering a hit would end up being treated the exact same way as a mafioso who did the same.

> Generally any white collar criminal does not need to go to "big boy jail"

Why not? Are they special because they hurt people indirectly instead of directly?

> a hypothetical executive who was convicted of ordering a hit

Well, there's the rub. They would have to be convicted. How often are executives held accountable for anything their company does?

You seem to be reading something into my wording there that I didn’t intend. I meant proper jail, not a fine, not a suspended sentence or one of the cushy prisons financial criminals tend to go to. I mean the same jail as a non-rich murderer, for example. No “ don’t drop the soap” tropes implied. Those piss me off too.

But yeah, white color crime that for example kills people (deadly pollution for example) should absolutely be treated like murder, or manslaughter at the very least. Why the hell not?

> a hypothetical executive who was convicted of ordering a hit would end up being treated the exact same way

Sure, but the point is they'll never be convicted.

I see two different instinctual kneejerks here from HN. One, that this person's death must be a conspiracy, and two, that there is never accountability about any of these things. I understand why that is intuitive, but I think it betrays an understanding of the world that is closer to a movie-plot rather than reality(which is slow and boring and doesn't always result in satisfying "justice" delivered).

By turning out bad product, Boeing has let Airbus dominate commercial aerospace manufacturing all on their own.

But why would any executive organize that and risk life in prison for their 0.3 percent ownership stake? They could just retire rich and leave the problems to the shareholders. Is there criminal liability that the executives may face that could form a motive?

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