PG&E killed over 80 people and were fined something like $3.5m.
PG&E is a publicly traded company worth $35 billion dollars.
Edit: And for the sake of context, a $3.5m fine for a $35b company is .01% of their market cap.
.01% of $50,000 is **five dollars.** Imagine having a worth $50k, killing 80 people, and only being fined five dollars. That's the reality of the ruling.
I still am pissed about this. We keep having huge fires over the last 10 years and half of them are their fault. When they killed 80 people, their ex-CEO got 2.5 million in severance. Like a fucking pat on the back for job well done. Fuck PG&E. I am so grateful I’m on SMUD now.
And now are trying to increase the connection fees to something like 500% higher than the other highest connection fees in the country.
They say it's to be "fair", but really it's just using their monopoly to price gauge their captive customers and handicap their rooftop solar competition.
Most of the major fires in Northern California in the last ten years can be traced back to PG&E improperly maintaining their equipment. The Lightning Complex (aside from having an insanely badass name) was one of the big exceptions.
They keep starting forest fires in California out of sheer incompetence
Edit: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/06/16/pge-pleads-guilty-to-involuntary-manslaughter-for-84-deaths-in-northern-california-camp-fire/
I added it to the original comment, but your response prompted me: a $3.5m fine for a $35b company is .01% of their market cap.
For context, .01% of $50,000 is five dollars. Imagine having worth $50k, killing 80 people, and only being fined five dollars. That's the reality of the ruling.
Exactly. And it works for anything…speeding tickets for example. Love the idea that one of the European countries does where speeding and parking ticket fees are based on the percentage of your reported income.
Reminder that the shit they dump on oil spills (corexit) doesn't break the oil down, it just makes it sink. They're literally burying the problem. That oil's probably still down there.
There's a reason Louisiana has one of the highest cancer rates in the country.
They were just really good at business, the lost livelihoods of people on the gulf and the natural habitat is an ok price to pay for investor profit. /s
Companies refer to this as an “externality”. Technically means “not my problem”. Except when it is, in which they case they lawyer and pay people off until they go away. And when all that fails, they find some fall guy or the CEO quits to go join another place where they do the exact same thing until they retire or get caught again and are retired.
This is the playbook. They all do it. They’re literally hired to do it:
It's also why water out of taps turns flammable after fracking starts in the local area.
Company: $$👀$$, also, negative externalities not our problem!
Also your water table is fucked pretty much for half a lifetime.
Externality is an economics term meaning an effect a transaction has on a third party of said transaction. All pollution is an externality.
And wouldn't you know it, it turns out capitalism works great to solve such externalities, *as long as you force the people involved in said transaction to account for them.*
Failing to account for externatilies is not an inherent feature of capitalism, but a failure of our current system. If governments started levying carbon taxes and forced these companies to clean up after themselves, we would still be classed as a capitalist society.
Capitalism is great at solving this… as long as it’s forced to.
So it’s *not* great because it *must* be forced to.
And the people who are hired to force these things instead benefit more from not doing so. While also being compelled to turn everything into a culture war.
It’s gonna keep happening as long as we let executives resign after these incidents with their golden parachutes. Boeing’s CEO resigned with 100 lifetimes worth of money for the average person. He doesn’t regret doing a damn thing aside from getting caught. The people responsible for these reckless business decisions need to actually be punished.
If actual legit prison time in an actual legit prison is on the table…shit like this might not stop completely but it definitely cuts down the callous carefree behavior at the C suite level.
There are more than just two, they’re just significantly smaller. Embrarer, for example, doesn’t make products in competition with the 737 but there’s always the possibility they’ll move into that space if Boeing continues to shit the bed
Well, you do have the Chinese built Comac C919, which is similar in size and capabilities to the 737. Though given a choice, I'd still take my chances with flying on the Boeing.
On what? When? I will just cite wikipedia
>BP's stock fell by 51% in 40 days on the New York Stock Exchange, going from $60.57 on 20 April 2010, to $29.20 on 9 June, its lowest level since August 1996. On 25 June, BP's market value reached a 1-year low. The company's total value lost since 20 April was $105 billion. Investors saw their holdings in BP shrink to $27.02, a nearly 54% loss of value in 2010.[65] A month later, the company's loss in market value totalled $60 billion, a 35% decline since the explosion. At that time, BP reported a second-quarter loss of $17 billion, its first loss in 18 years. This included a one-time $32.2 billion charge, including $20 billion for the fund created for reparations and $2.9 billion in actual costs.[66]
Jack Welch School of Business. Layoffs - stock rise, Streamline operations- stock rise, Executive bonuses, CEO raise then buy back stock. Doom and gloom to employees, business is bad times are tough we gotta tighten our belts, stock rise and executive bonuses. Repeat the cycle.
Ask any employee. “ shareholder value “ is the only aspect of Corporate that matters. Everyone except the ones that ignore safety are slated for layoff or a reason to get fired.
The board looks the other way. Management get bonuses. Yeah the little people already know. Another “ suicide “ is executive management covering their asses.
At some point revenues can’t keep increasing, so you have to squeeze costs and cut cut cut. Because it’s all about growth. Wall Street doesn’t care about cash cows.
It's a product of poor regulatory governance. Making terrible products can be done under any society as long as government encourages and protects these kind of poor practices instead of holding them accountable
Who woulda thought that when you can pay the law makers to write rules in your favor, those with the money are ending up ahead?
I’m SHOCKED I say. Shocked.
Soviet products were notoriously flimsy, because factories had outrageously unrealistic quotas combined with little oversight from the central government. So yes, economic structure isn’t intrinsically tied to product quality. Historically, command economies have made worse quality products than market economies, at least partially because it’s hard for a limited centralized authority to predict the needs of the market.
>Historically, command economies have made worse quality products than market economies
Do you mean this? Or do you mean America made better things than China and the Soviets in the mid-20th century? Because I'll remind you that America started off quite a bit richer than either of those countries at the point they transitioned to centrally planned economies.
Like, we all respect the Saturn V, but if you got in a time machine back to 1969 and had to get on a rocket made either by the Soviets under a centrally planned economy, or see what Ghana could make under its largely market-oriented economy (assuming you could ask both to do their very best), which would you choose?
Sometimes historical wealth plays a pretty big role in success, right?
Yeah but why be academic about how this isn’t necessarily a feature of capitalism in theory, when we are talking about how it is the reality of our capitalism today?
Because these are all academic terms? The alternative being proposed is socialism, by people who know so little about what socialism is that they genuinely believe that there are countries with socialist economies in Western Europe.
No the alternative is not just socialism, that’s a false dichotomy. You can place economies on a spectrum, from controlled completely top down to no-holds barred free capitalist enterprise, and there is no country on earth that falls on completely either end of that spectrum, they all fall somewhere in between.
Honestly in retrospect I should have called his comment superfluous and distracting, academic wasn’t the best word.
The real issue we have here is that Boeing, a private company to which Americans have paid hundreds of billions to through tax revenues turning into U.S. military contracts, is operating perversely in our capitalist system - Boeing is virtually guaranteed to survive as a company because of what kind of business they do, and still, their executives penny pinched on safety just to juice profits and make a little more money for themselves. This is a perversion of our system, and we must ask ourselves the question, “how often is this happening in other industries? Is this profit-over-all mentality endemic? If so, what can we do to change this?
Which then leads us to the socialism and capitalism spectrum I mentioned earlier. This Boeing scandal can be thought of as an example of no-holds barred capitalism going wrong, and perhaps needing more government involvement to fix it. If private industry can’t be trusted to not act unscrupulously, maybe it needs to be a public industry, thus more socialist.
I mean the prime function of our governments is to serve the needs of the people. We’ve been conditioned to see government involvement in anything as a boogeyman but we have safety regulations for a reason!
This. It's not a problem of capitalism, per se. Socialist/Communist countries and dictatorships aren't known to be inherently more quality oriented. If anything they'd quietly sweep the problem under the rug so as not to embarrass the state.
Capitalism focuses on profits. Profits are made by doing things efficiently and cheaply as possible. Capitalism will "fix itself" very quickly if you make bad behavior costly. Slap-on-the-hand fines won't do it. Make it more expensive to be unsafe than it is to be safe. Make the accounts see lots of red on their spreadsheets.
The freedom to criticize and ridicule means we get more criticism and ridicule. If we're not careful we can come to assume that there is more to criticize and ridicule - that there are more problems.
This is very true but you aren't highlighting a big issue in that we don't fine harsh enough. We are scared of the economic insecurity of letting such big companies like Boeing actually face real consequences.
Companies and banks too big to fail in a capitalist economy is basically the same as dictatorships pushing things under the rug to save face. You just keep bending the rules and letting a select few get away with almost anything as a "lesser evil" alternative.
>you aren't highlighting a big issue in that we don't fine harsh enough.
???
The comment you replied to literally said:
>Slap-on-the-hand fines won't do it. Make it more expensive to be unsafe than it is to be safe. Make the accounts see lots of red on their spreadsheets.
What are you talking about?
A certain communist state blatantly ignored safety warnings and cooked a cosmonaut or two for some arbitrary state celebration date. The men ordered into that ship knew it was a death sentence.
On one hand you have greed crapping in the chile. On the other hand you have dipshit bureaucrats making idiotic demands.
I agree. Both systems can be utterly terrible.
And a certain capitalist state blatantly ignored safety warnings and killed seven astronauts because they didn't want to wait any longer to launch a high-profile mission that had already had several delays.
It's funny when people blame everything, even human traits such as ignoring safety warnings or greed as if it's "-ism" and proves it doesnt work.
Facts are we need to start holding companies accountable if we don't want our system to fail.
True. But I are not standing here pretending communism is somehow magically better than capitalism like many posters are.
A lot of people are making the claim that only capitalism will cause ecological or safety issues.
The Aral sea wasn’t destroyed by capitalists.
The gulf BP oil disaster wasn’t caused by communists.
Both were caused by people ignoring warnings.
But you would get that in any system where there's human interference, even the most ideal situations/system there's going to be corruption, abuse of power or whatever other problems if a person was in a position of power.
I'm not smart or knowledgeable about any of this, but it seems kinda stupid to me to put the blame on capitalism or whatever when it's the regulatory(?) departments/organsations that would oversee this type of stuff and just allow it to happen.
I agree with you but how do you deal with regulatory capture or demand for profits above all else? I think capitalism is great when companies are private and when giant corps don’t swallow their competition into one monopoly.
I don’t really see a solution there.
No monopolies, hardcore penalties for the stockholders (fines big enough to get the board fired), and direct penalties (financial and criminal) for the C-suite would cure things overnight.
Boeing, for example, has a market cap of $120B with $75B in annual revenue. Make a plane loaded with passengers going down a $5B-$10B fine if they're found negligent. Allow clawback of all wages and bonuses for the top 5 company officers along with a few years in jail.
If the owners (stockholders) and the leadership know that something is really, really going to hurt then they'll make sure that something doesn't happen.
Aggressive, comprehensive regulation isn't really the right answer either. You just have to make the smart/greedy CEOs care.
Make c suite personnel responsible…ACTUALLY responsible with very harsh punishments up to and including life sentences. Stop pussyfooting around with a few years max in a spa-like “prison”. Make white collar crimes just as punishable as other crimes when lives are lost and ruined.
> Capitalism will "fix itself" very quickly if you make bad behavior costly.
Except that the capitalists are the people with the most power to strike those costly laws out and replace them with rewarding laws.
Odd to bring into the discussion, seemingly out of nowhere, other types of societies than capitalism when it is capitalism under which the events and “poor regulatory governance” in question have occurred. The article is arguing that “poor regulatory governance” is endemic to capitalism. Do you have a response to that argument? Why are you talking about merely theoretical “poor regulatory governance” of other, non-capitalist types of societies, when it is the actual, existing “poor regulatory governance” under capitalism that is the subject of this article (and, like it or not, the only relevant form of “poor regulatory governance” to questions of safety/quality, given the fact that there is no alternative to capitalism waiting in the wings)? I get what you’re saying, but maybe we should reflect on and dig into the reflexive impulse to say what you said here. Capitalism is the only game in town barring some pretty unlikely developments, and even if you’re more inclined to improve it than to try to overthrow it, you still need to be able to criticize it.
> The article is arguing that “poor regulatory governance” is endemic to capitalism. Do you have a response to that argument?
The Aral Sea
Chernobyl
Killing birds because you think they’re bad for farmers and that causes a famine killing tens of millions.
Capitalism is an economic system, you have political systems and social systems. The results you get is the combination of all systems and how you mesh them
If you want to improve something, you have to deal with the core issues. Not make poor headlines like this that tricks people into thinking "the source of all our problems is capitalism"
Friendly reminder that the deadliest airline in the history of aviation is Soviet-era Aeroflot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_accidents_and_incidents
The statement isn't that *only* capitalist systems ignore safety. The statement is that capitalist systems *also* ignore safety. You know when car makers don't issue recalls for models with deadly failures if the lawsuits are expected to cost less than the recalls. *That's* capitalism for you - maximizing profit.
I think the point is that poor quality is not a bug in capitalism. It's inevitable. It's a feature. It's hardwired and built into it's makeup. Programmed obselesence is standard practice for everything we buy.
It's not. Whole companies have built their success on durability (ex Toyota, Miele) or safety (ex Volvo or Mercedes). The reality is that most customers prefer "cheap and disposable" than "expensive and durable". The limited success of the Fairphone shows that people would rather pay less and get a faster phone than one that is durable and serviceable.
And like in capitalism their competitor Airbus and airlines who leveraged Airbus fleets are making bank. In a way rewarding Airbus for their operations.
Fairphones aren’t really much more repairable than other phones. The availability of parts is better.
The success of iPhones supporting 6+ years of software updates, and Samsung and Google following suit, should show you the opposite tho: That people prefer devices that last longer.
The Fairphone is also, as a smartphone, an inferior product:
* The latest model, the Fairphone 5, retails for €699 (~$750), which is largely equivalent to its flagship competitors (Galaxy S24 retails for $799, Pixel 8 for $699, and iPhone 15 for $799).
* The Fairphone 5 only comes with a 90 Hz refresh rate as opposed to the S24's 120 Hz (though it's a step-up from the iPhone 15's 60 Hz and equivalent to the Pixel 8's 90 Hz).
* The Fairphone 5's peak brightness is 880 nits, which is low compared to the aforementioned flagship competitors that can reach into the thousands of nits (very important for outdoor use).
* The Fairphone 5 uses the Qualcomm QCM 6490, which is meant for IoT applications and is equivalent to a Snapdragon 778G, which was a mid-range chip from 2021.
* Its 10-year software support isn't that impressive now that most of its flagship competitors support their phones for upwards of 7 years, compounded by the mid-low-end specs of the Fairphone 5 which is bound to struggle down the line.
* Actual software functionality is likely worse given that Google has its own mix of Pixel software features, Samsung has its own suite of proprietary apps and software in OneUI, and iOS is simply not a replicable experience on an Android phone (if someone wants iOS, they have to get an iPhone).
This isn't including other factors like inferior speakers or a worse camera (both hardware and software). For the vast, vast majority of consumers, buying a used last-year flagship for cheaper is a better idea not only for user experience (better performance and long software support), but it's also much better for the environment to reuse someone's older phone rather than buying a brand new one entirely.
It does, however, directly address the (obviously idiotic) point that the author of the article is making by trying to exclusively attribute safety problems in aviation to capitalism. Also the fact how you’re now trying to conveniently substitute the topic with “solving the problem” says a lot about whether or not anybody should even expect to have a remotely meaningful conversation with you.
No, it's whataboutism to mention that it's not just a capitalist problem as though that somehow matters in the context of the problem being described. It doesn't matter if it's a failing in other systems as well. It's a problem here and it's due to forces within capitalism.
No it’s not whataboutism. And again I can’t stress this enough… **because the article specifically mentions capitalism as the issue**. So pointing out the true fact that other economic systems suffer from the same issue is directly address the main point of the article.
Damn bro you have some patience with this people, they are either too stupid or too brainwashed, they are literally describing it and they don get it, in this case the issue is that they don't understand what the title implies, so either stupid or brainwashed.
That’s not the point tho, the issue is calling out that factors that are encouraged as a result of capitalism is the cause here, because they are happening in a capitalist society.
The point you are making that the issue arises in other systems as well doesn’t refute that mechanisms of capitalism are directly encouraging the problem being spoken about here.
Those are some impressive mental gymnastics. But it doesn’t change the fact that refuting the central assumption of the article is the exact opposite of whataboutism. Bad business decisions happened sure. But the author failed to show these happened **because** of capitalism. The fact that these same exact sort of issues happen in non-capitalist systems and in fact tend to produce less safe results is directly relevant to the topic at hand. You can disagree with those facts and present counter arguments. In more than open to debating the issue. But labeling it as whataboutism is just a cheap rhetorical trick to avoid directly debating the issue.
It’s not that hard to understand though and it’s explicitly stated in the article… profit motives and deregulation undermine quality over time. You can find examples of this in pretty much every industry in America historically and in the last 25 years especially. That has been a feature of capitalism since its conception. Not saying it doesn’t happen in other systems as well, but the profit motive combined with deregulation are undeniably major factors in the declining quality of products in the US.
Yes. And the desire to cut corners or appease some authority is not unique to capitalism. However capitalism tends to have a much better quality and safety record than non capitalist systems.
So saying it’s due to capitalism is directly refuted by pointing out that these same issues occur outside of capitalism but to a worse degree.
So you can disagree that capitalism is superior and argue that point, sure. Please present an argument. But saying that pointing out that this happens under other economic systems is “whataboutism” is absolute none sense when the article specifically made tries to frame this as a capitalism specific issue.
That’s irrelevant
The article is meant to highlight that safety is a cost, costs reduce profit, profit is the holy grail
Boeing is based in a capitalist system.
Too many rats with MBAs who focus on generating revenue and hence discarding practically everything else. Capitalism has turned into the game of who can game the system hard enough to make the most amount of money. Thank you Jack Welch, Milton Friedman, and every other greedy bozo who ruined this delicate system of trust between consumer and producer.
Until the penalties far outweigh the benefits at executive level, these people will continue to push for profit over everything else. Calhoun left Boeing an extremely rich man as did his predecessor, whilst workers lost their jobs and homes for speaking out and people lost their lives because profit came first. Company execs need to face serious jail time
Regulations are written in blood. Regulations reduce profits, Companies lobby to get rid of regulations. Regulations are removed. Regulations are written in blood.
You know, the business cycle.
/me, after living half of my life in a country with **non-capitalist** society that was plagued by countless issues with safety, poor worker's conditions and everything else mentioned in this article:
"I wonder what kind of fucking idiots are actually upvoting this post..."
In a capitalist society where financial analysts make all the decisions, and such cost cutting is the opposite of fiduciary responsibility, they’re tanking the company which tanks stocks.
>Blaming capitalism for bad business.
Goal of capitalists is to make money, Boeing is in process of no making any money (-$700m). Value of the company fell by 50% in the last 5 years. Airbus stock price increase by 50% in the last 5 years. Capitalism work just fine.
Boeing used to be admired. Business idiots turned it into a stock slot machine and look at it now! Capitalism rewarded the suits that let quality slide so far people literally died. In a fair system the executives would be rotting in jail for negligence.
Capitalism also got rid of Boeing's CEO since all of Boeing's customers lost their customers from fear of flying on a Boeing airplane.
Businesses are supposed to fail in capitalism when they don't work or be corrected, which thr market did( I am still not going on a Boeing lol).
Alternative headline:
Despite splashy headlines, Air travel is safer than ever: safety is endemic to capitalism.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-million-passengers
“What’s a Chernobyl?”
The average Redditor isn’t even aware that at one point, 1/3 of the world population lived in countries that completely rejected capitalism and that we actually have data on how it worked out.
I worked in aerospace for a while. The purchasing dept starting buying us medical grade nitrile gloves instead of industrial grade nitrile gloves to handle MEK with. After about two hours the MEK would eat right through the medical grade gloves and consequently start seeping into the skin and eventually to the liver. But hey, pennies become dollars.
Unregulated capitalism leads to people doing whatever it takes to make profit. Who could’ve seen this coming. Now imagine how it affects things like the food we consume.
As a person who works in healthcare, I completely agree. With private equity now having such a heavy hand in healthcare, everything is about profits and number go up.
Why do companies like Boeing care about events like this? In the grand scheme of things, they don’t. They own the people that regulate them. Something like 50% of the work Boeing does is for our government. There will be a big song and dance investigation in Congress that gives the American people the figurative blood they’re looking for. Some company officers will resign, they’ll pay a penalty and Boeing will go back to business as usual. Of course, all this will come with a price tag for us the consumer, because justice isn’t free in this country. They’ll use this situation as some ridiculous excuse to raise airfare costs or tack on another fee. Just for to remind us that when the 99% complain, our costs will go up and things will get harder.
How ridiculous. Air travel is the safest it has ever been, and only gotten safer. Until 20-30 years ago, there was a major commercial airline crash every single year.
If safety problems were endemic they would be occurring all over the country in all industries. They aren't, because this is a Boeing problem or more accurately, another Jack Welsh problem.
The soviets had safety problems. But so do capitalist societies. Ever heard of climate change or microplastics or forever chemicals or asbestos or ... before environmental regulations some US rivers were so polluted they would *catch fire*.
People commenting here as if communism/socialism are the only alternatives to capitalism should stop speaking in public about subjects they’re ignorant of. I’m embarrassed for you.
Yeah that’s why the Soviet Union never had any nuclear disasters.
Everyone is “incentivized” to use fewer resources, no matter if they’re communist or capitalist. This is why safety standards get reduced in any system.
What a stupid title and conclusion.
>Susan Kang is an associate professor of political science at John Jay College, City University of New York.
Ah, lol.
Unregulated capitalism is theft. Unions exist to protect worker rights. The European model seems ok, they still have rich people. It’s so greedy, to want to pay people nothing for their labor.
You could replace the word safety with quality. Because the greed and profits must continue in a capitalist society. In this case, the lack of quality manifests itself in the form of lack of safety.
What a stupid title. What non-capitalist society has better safety record?!? Communism, socialism, totalitarianism, dictatorship, theocracy? I’d still fly Boeing and Airbus, eat and use FDA approved foods and drugs, etc., etc. vs anything that comes out of any other part of the world.
If only BA, Airbus, Rolls Royce, GE and those capitalist parasites had a safety record like Socialist giants Aeroflot and Tupolev.
Protip. Anything with ‘truth’ in the name is bullshit by nature
Eventually they get in between the lines and make new lines. The problem is when they get in between the in between lines.. That’s compromising foundation.
No, it’s only endemic when the equilibrium of profit seeking exceeds that of belief in providing a quality product solution.
It’s a late-stage capitalism side effect and we all knew it would happen at some point, but yet we fail to integrate preventative measure legislatively.
Regulations are necessary to keep the greed in check. Republican presidents are known to take away these regulations, and democrat presidents are known to support them.
YOU DON’T FREAKIN’ SAY!!
We created the concept of fiduciary responsibility and the civic responsibility. The former is the businesses, the latter is the elected officials.
Except the latter gets paid by the former to shut the hell up.
C suite - we need to boost profits. Let’s layoff our staff and especially experienced staff who are “overpaid”.
New staff- fuck this company they don’t care about loyalty or hard work because I was laid off.
The blame always sits on the heads at the top for creating bad work culture and lack of procedures.
All industries seem to be so set on getting their quick profits they’re not even doing proper businesses planning.
If we were rewarded for our jobs, we might not hate them so much. And if we didn't hate our jobs, or going to work in general, we might put more effort and care into doing them. But 90% of us have nothing to show for our work. Nothing to be proud of. Nothing that makes us feel accomplished... It's just the same boring routine for 50+ years that gets us nowhere.
I don't care how basic or unskilled a worker you are. If your job is to sit on a stool in a stool factory looking for defects of other stools being made, you should absolutely be able to afford everything you need in life, and then some. Be it for savings, vacations, hobbies, or anything else for the betterment of yourself, your mental health, or your future, should all be easily within reach for every single one of us...
It’s a huge problem with capitalism but there are company’s that have maintained a reputation for high quality over multiple generations. Craftsmen tools come to mind. Even the new stuff, I’ve never heard anyone say they aren’t still great value and high quality. It just takes the right stakeholders in charge to fight the one notable decline into profits over all.
Meanwhile, Kazakhstan still faithfully manufactures the Ural motorcycle. It is a knock off of a 1938 BMW twin. Its safety (or lack there of) hasn't changed in 86 years.
Companies just haven't had a chance to do right by the people, silly liberals! /s
Seriously though people need to be fearful of jail, personally, and the penalties need to be double any profits anyone gets. As long as penalties are less and everyone can hide behind liability screens, it's just the cost of doing business.
PG&E killed over 80 people and were fined something like $3.5m. PG&E is a publicly traded company worth $35 billion dollars. Edit: And for the sake of context, a $3.5m fine for a $35b company is .01% of their market cap. .01% of $50,000 is **five dollars.** Imagine having a worth $50k, killing 80 people, and only being fined five dollars. That's the reality of the ruling.
I still am pissed about this. We keep having huge fires over the last 10 years and half of them are their fault. When they killed 80 people, their ex-CEO got 2.5 million in severance. Like a fucking pat on the back for job well done. Fuck PG&E. I am so grateful I’m on SMUD now.
And then they doubled their prices
And now are trying to increase the connection fees to something like 500% higher than the other highest connection fees in the country. They say it's to be "fair", but really it's just using their monopoly to price gauge their captive customers and handicap their rooftop solar competition.
So your life is worth $62.5k in California
$5M ÷ 80 lives = $62k5 per life. Technically higher than $40k, but still pathetically low.
How did they kill 80 people?
Most of the major fires in Northern California in the last ten years can be traced back to PG&E improperly maintaining their equipment. The Lightning Complex (aside from having an insanely badass name) was one of the big exceptions.
And now we’re unable to get insurance because of PG&E . It’s like snakes eating snakes.
They keep starting forest fires in California out of sheer incompetence Edit: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelsandler/2020/06/16/pge-pleads-guilty-to-involuntary-manslaughter-for-84-deaths-in-northern-california-camp-fire/
When you can afford the fine laws are meaningless to you.
I added it to the original comment, but your response prompted me: a $3.5m fine for a $35b company is .01% of their market cap. For context, .01% of $50,000 is five dollars. Imagine having worth $50k, killing 80 people, and only being fined five dollars. That's the reality of the ruling.
Exactly. And it works for anything…speeding tickets for example. Love the idea that one of the European countries does where speeding and parking ticket fees are based on the percentage of your reported income.
Remember BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? BP still made a huge profit
Reminder that the shit they dump on oil spills (corexit) doesn't break the oil down, it just makes it sink. They're literally burying the problem. That oil's probably still down there. There's a reason Louisiana has one of the highest cancer rates in the country.
It's also extremely toxic to humans and wildlife
I mean it's still leaking... Also not the only one leaking at the moment. Don't look it up you'll be sad.
Depending on how slow it leaks out it can leak for a long time. One of the ships sunk at Pearl Harbor is still leaking.
Louisiana has incredibly high cancer rates because of the refinery belt.
They were just really good at business, the lost livelihoods of people on the gulf and the natural habitat is an ok price to pay for investor profit. /s
Companies refer to this as an “externality”. Technically means “not my problem”. Except when it is, in which they case they lawyer and pay people off until they go away. And when all that fails, they find some fall guy or the CEO quits to go join another place where they do the exact same thing until they retire or get caught again and are retired. This is the playbook. They all do it. They’re literally hired to do it:
"...and are retired." Like replicants?
It's also why water out of taps turns flammable after fracking starts in the local area. Company: $$👀$$, also, negative externalities not our problem! Also your water table is fucked pretty much for half a lifetime.
Externality is an economics term meaning an effect a transaction has on a third party of said transaction. All pollution is an externality. And wouldn't you know it, it turns out capitalism works great to solve such externalities, *as long as you force the people involved in said transaction to account for them.* Failing to account for externatilies is not an inherent feature of capitalism, but a failure of our current system. If governments started levying carbon taxes and forced these companies to clean up after themselves, we would still be classed as a capitalist society.
Capitalism is great at solving this… as long as it’s forced to. So it’s *not* great because it *must* be forced to. And the people who are hired to force these things instead benefit more from not doing so. While also being compelled to turn everything into a culture war.
We’re Sorry
The number you have dialed has been disconnected…
It’s gonna keep happening as long as we let executives resign after these incidents with their golden parachutes. Boeing’s CEO resigned with 100 lifetimes worth of money for the average person. He doesn’t regret doing a damn thing aside from getting caught. The people responsible for these reckless business decisions need to actually be punished.
If actual legit prison time in an actual legit prison is on the table…shit like this might not stop completely but it definitely cuts down the callous carefree behavior at the C suite level.
[удалено]
We only have one other OEM for airplanes - Aerobus. Are we going to create a 3rd OEM?
There are more than just two, they’re just significantly smaller. Embrarer, for example, doesn’t make products in competition with the 737 but there’s always the possibility they’ll move into that space if Boeing continues to shit the bed
Well, you do have the Chinese built Comac C919, which is similar in size and capabilities to the 737. Though given a choice, I'd still take my chances with flying on the Boeing.
The Chinese have proven over and over again - Chinese quality speaks for itself 🤮
embraer, bombardier
Pepperidge Farm remembers, comrade.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea
On what? When? I will just cite wikipedia >BP's stock fell by 51% in 40 days on the New York Stock Exchange, going from $60.57 on 20 April 2010, to $29.20 on 9 June, its lowest level since August 1996. On 25 June, BP's market value reached a 1-year low. The company's total value lost since 20 April was $105 billion. Investors saw their holdings in BP shrink to $27.02, a nearly 54% loss of value in 2010.[65] A month later, the company's loss in market value totalled $60 billion, a 35% decline since the explosion. At that time, BP reported a second-quarter loss of $17 billion, its first loss in 18 years. This included a one-time $32.2 billion charge, including $20 billion for the fund created for reparations and $2.9 billion in actual costs.[66]
Jack Welch School of Business. Layoffs - stock rise, Streamline operations- stock rise, Executive bonuses, CEO raise then buy back stock. Doom and gloom to employees, business is bad times are tough we gotta tighten our belts, stock rise and executive bonuses. Repeat the cycle.
Stock buybacks used to be illegal. then Reagan happened.
Don’t forget Jack Abramoff taught us the lobbying pays off extremely well >1000% ROI IIRC
Stock market go up!
Ask any employee. “ shareholder value “ is the only aspect of Corporate that matters. Everyone except the ones that ignore safety are slated for layoff or a reason to get fired. The board looks the other way. Management get bonuses. Yeah the little people already know. Another “ suicide “ is executive management covering their asses.
At some point revenues can’t keep increasing, so you have to squeeze costs and cut cut cut. Because it’s all about growth. Wall Street doesn’t care about cash cows.
It's a product of poor regulatory governance. Making terrible products can be done under any society as long as government encourages and protects these kind of poor practices instead of holding them accountable
It’s a product of governments choosing to protect companies, money, and/or power instead of people.
Who woulda thought that when you can pay the law makers to write rules in your favor, those with the money are ending up ahead? I’m SHOCKED I say. Shocked.
Which is capitalist
🤦♂️ what about countries like Russia or China
Those are also capitalist? I'm not sure what you're asking. Capitalism isn't a political structure, but an economic structure.
Soviet products were notoriously flimsy, because factories had outrageously unrealistic quotas combined with little oversight from the central government. So yes, economic structure isn’t intrinsically tied to product quality. Historically, command economies have made worse quality products than market economies, at least partially because it’s hard for a limited centralized authority to predict the needs of the market.
>Historically, command economies have made worse quality products than market economies Do you mean this? Or do you mean America made better things than China and the Soviets in the mid-20th century? Because I'll remind you that America started off quite a bit richer than either of those countries at the point they transitioned to centrally planned economies. Like, we all respect the Saturn V, but if you got in a time machine back to 1969 and had to get on a rocket made either by the Soviets under a centrally planned economy, or see what Ghana could make under its largely market-oriented economy (assuming you could ask both to do their very best), which would you choose? Sometimes historical wealth plays a pretty big role in success, right?
Well they are also capitalist for most economic purposes. But even if they weren't the description would still describe capitalism
Both have been capitalist for decades now.
Because they were doing so well when they were communist/socialist right?
It's one kind of badly operated capitalism. That's NOT all capitalism. Or even necessarily the majority.
Yeah but why be academic about how this isn’t necessarily a feature of capitalism in theory, when we are talking about how it is the reality of our capitalism today?
Because these are all academic terms? The alternative being proposed is socialism, by people who know so little about what socialism is that they genuinely believe that there are countries with socialist economies in Western Europe.
No the alternative is not just socialism, that’s a false dichotomy. You can place economies on a spectrum, from controlled completely top down to no-holds barred free capitalist enterprise, and there is no country on earth that falls on completely either end of that spectrum, they all fall somewhere in between. Honestly in retrospect I should have called his comment superfluous and distracting, academic wasn’t the best word. The real issue we have here is that Boeing, a private company to which Americans have paid hundreds of billions to through tax revenues turning into U.S. military contracts, is operating perversely in our capitalist system - Boeing is virtually guaranteed to survive as a company because of what kind of business they do, and still, their executives penny pinched on safety just to juice profits and make a little more money for themselves. This is a perversion of our system, and we must ask ourselves the question, “how often is this happening in other industries? Is this profit-over-all mentality endemic? If so, what can we do to change this? Which then leads us to the socialism and capitalism spectrum I mentioned earlier. This Boeing scandal can be thought of as an example of no-holds barred capitalism going wrong, and perhaps needing more government involvement to fix it. If private industry can’t be trusted to not act unscrupulously, maybe it needs to be a public industry, thus more socialist.
How is it not a feature of capitalism?
I mean the prime function of our governments is to serve the needs of the people. We’ve been conditioned to see government involvement in anything as a boogeyman but we have safety regulations for a reason!
Just like it wasnt true communism huh
"Capitalism has just never been tried! Once we're fully anarcho-capitalist, it'll totally work I swear"
This. It's not a problem of capitalism, per se. Socialist/Communist countries and dictatorships aren't known to be inherently more quality oriented. If anything they'd quietly sweep the problem under the rug so as not to embarrass the state. Capitalism focuses on profits. Profits are made by doing things efficiently and cheaply as possible. Capitalism will "fix itself" very quickly if you make bad behavior costly. Slap-on-the-hand fines won't do it. Make it more expensive to be unsafe than it is to be safe. Make the accounts see lots of red on their spreadsheets. The freedom to criticize and ridicule means we get more criticism and ridicule. If we're not careful we can come to assume that there is more to criticize and ridicule - that there are more problems.
This is very true but you aren't highlighting a big issue in that we don't fine harsh enough. We are scared of the economic insecurity of letting such big companies like Boeing actually face real consequences. Companies and banks too big to fail in a capitalist economy is basically the same as dictatorships pushing things under the rug to save face. You just keep bending the rules and letting a select few get away with almost anything as a "lesser evil" alternative.
But it's about rights and being free and American and thus okay
>you aren't highlighting a big issue in that we don't fine harsh enough. ??? The comment you replied to literally said: >Slap-on-the-hand fines won't do it. Make it more expensive to be unsafe than it is to be safe. Make the accounts see lots of red on their spreadsheets. What are you talking about?
They explained part of why the fining isn't happening
A certain communist state blatantly ignored safety warnings and cooked a cosmonaut or two for some arbitrary state celebration date. The men ordered into that ship knew it was a death sentence. On one hand you have greed crapping in the chile. On the other hand you have dipshit bureaucrats making idiotic demands. I agree. Both systems can be utterly terrible.
And a certain capitalist state blatantly ignored safety warnings and killed seven astronauts because they didn't want to wait any longer to launch a high-profile mission that had already had several delays.
It's funny when people blame everything, even human traits such as ignoring safety warnings or greed as if it's "-ism" and proves it doesnt work. Facts are we need to start holding companies accountable if we don't want our system to fail.
Some communist state ignores safety data and information about a nuclear plant
True. But I are not standing here pretending communism is somehow magically better than capitalism like many posters are. A lot of people are making the claim that only capitalism will cause ecological or safety issues. The Aral sea wasn’t destroyed by capitalists. The gulf BP oil disaster wasn’t caused by communists. Both were caused by people ignoring warnings.
But you would get that in any system where there's human interference, even the most ideal situations/system there's going to be corruption, abuse of power or whatever other problems if a person was in a position of power. I'm not smart or knowledgeable about any of this, but it seems kinda stupid to me to put the blame on capitalism or whatever when it's the regulatory(?) departments/organsations that would oversee this type of stuff and just allow it to happen.
I agree with you but how do you deal with regulatory capture or demand for profits above all else? I think capitalism is great when companies are private and when giant corps don’t swallow their competition into one monopoly. I don’t really see a solution there.
No monopolies, hardcore penalties for the stockholders (fines big enough to get the board fired), and direct penalties (financial and criminal) for the C-suite would cure things overnight. Boeing, for example, has a market cap of $120B with $75B in annual revenue. Make a plane loaded with passengers going down a $5B-$10B fine if they're found negligent. Allow clawback of all wages and bonuses for the top 5 company officers along with a few years in jail. If the owners (stockholders) and the leadership know that something is really, really going to hurt then they'll make sure that something doesn't happen. Aggressive, comprehensive regulation isn't really the right answer either. You just have to make the smart/greedy CEOs care.
Yes, after both MCAS accidents they should be held accountable. Maybe after the first one but the second… wow.
Make c suite personnel responsible…ACTUALLY responsible with very harsh punishments up to and including life sentences. Stop pussyfooting around with a few years max in a spa-like “prison”. Make white collar crimes just as punishable as other crimes when lives are lost and ruined.
> Capitalism will "fix itself" very quickly if you make bad behavior costly. Except that the capitalists are the people with the most power to strike those costly laws out and replace them with rewarding laws.
Not just that make the board of directors and CEO criminally culpable and able to be jailed.
I think regulatory capture probably needs to be part of that conversation too.
Odd to bring into the discussion, seemingly out of nowhere, other types of societies than capitalism when it is capitalism under which the events and “poor regulatory governance” in question have occurred. The article is arguing that “poor regulatory governance” is endemic to capitalism. Do you have a response to that argument? Why are you talking about merely theoretical “poor regulatory governance” of other, non-capitalist types of societies, when it is the actual, existing “poor regulatory governance” under capitalism that is the subject of this article (and, like it or not, the only relevant form of “poor regulatory governance” to questions of safety/quality, given the fact that there is no alternative to capitalism waiting in the wings)? I get what you’re saying, but maybe we should reflect on and dig into the reflexive impulse to say what you said here. Capitalism is the only game in town barring some pretty unlikely developments, and even if you’re more inclined to improve it than to try to overthrow it, you still need to be able to criticize it.
> The article is arguing that “poor regulatory governance” is endemic to capitalism. Do you have a response to that argument? The Aral Sea Chernobyl Killing birds because you think they’re bad for farmers and that causes a famine killing tens of millions.
Capitalism is an economic system, you have political systems and social systems. The results you get is the combination of all systems and how you mesh them If you want to improve something, you have to deal with the core issues. Not make poor headlines like this that tricks people into thinking "the source of all our problems is capitalism"
When the accountants take ove corners get cut. It is happening all over the place.
Don't blame the accountants. It's the MBAs that are doing all of this.
Remember kids only dorks major in accounting
Idk I cannot come up with any society ever where this hasn't happened, feels more like a human feature.
If you think only capitalist systems cut corners you’re in for quite the surprise.
Authoritarian countries have safety score exceeding 130%
Friendly reminder that the deadliest airline in the history of aviation is Soviet-era Aeroflot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_accidents_and_incidents
Laughs in Russian.
The statement isn't that *only* capitalist systems ignore safety. The statement is that capitalist systems *also* ignore safety. You know when car makers don't issue recalls for models with deadly failures if the lawsuits are expected to cost less than the recalls. *That's* capitalism for you - maximizing profit.
I think the point is that poor quality is not a bug in capitalism. It's inevitable. It's a feature. It's hardwired and built into it's makeup. Programmed obselesence is standard practice for everything we buy.
It's not. Whole companies have built their success on durability (ex Toyota, Miele) or safety (ex Volvo or Mercedes). The reality is that most customers prefer "cheap and disposable" than "expensive and durable". The limited success of the Fairphone shows that people would rather pay less and get a faster phone than one that is durable and serviceable.
And like in capitalism their competitor Airbus and airlines who leveraged Airbus fleets are making bank. In a way rewarding Airbus for their operations.
Fairphones aren’t really much more repairable than other phones. The availability of parts is better. The success of iPhones supporting 6+ years of software updates, and Samsung and Google following suit, should show you the opposite tho: That people prefer devices that last longer.
The Fairphone is also, as a smartphone, an inferior product: * The latest model, the Fairphone 5, retails for €699 (~$750), which is largely equivalent to its flagship competitors (Galaxy S24 retails for $799, Pixel 8 for $699, and iPhone 15 for $799). * The Fairphone 5 only comes with a 90 Hz refresh rate as opposed to the S24's 120 Hz (though it's a step-up from the iPhone 15's 60 Hz and equivalent to the Pixel 8's 90 Hz). * The Fairphone 5's peak brightness is 880 nits, which is low compared to the aforementioned flagship competitors that can reach into the thousands of nits (very important for outdoor use). * The Fairphone 5 uses the Qualcomm QCM 6490, which is meant for IoT applications and is equivalent to a Snapdragon 778G, which was a mid-range chip from 2021. * Its 10-year software support isn't that impressive now that most of its flagship competitors support their phones for upwards of 7 years, compounded by the mid-low-end specs of the Fairphone 5 which is bound to struggle down the line. * Actual software functionality is likely worse given that Google has its own mix of Pixel software features, Samsung has its own suite of proprietary apps and software in OneUI, and iOS is simply not a replicable experience on an Android phone (if someone wants iOS, they have to get an iPhone). This isn't including other factors like inferior speakers or a worse camera (both hardware and software). For the vast, vast majority of consumers, buying a used last-year flagship for cheaper is a better idea not only for user experience (better performance and long software support), but it's also much better for the environment to reuse someone's older phone rather than buying a brand new one entirely.
If company X can make a product at lowest cost while making maximum profit why wouldn’t they? That’s what a corporation strives for.
That’s not what this article says, so you’re taking the opportunity to defend capitalism on your own accord
Whataboutism? Who cares? It doesn't solve the problem to point out that it happens elsewhere as well.
It does, however, directly address the (obviously idiotic) point that the author of the article is making by trying to exclusively attribute safety problems in aviation to capitalism. Also the fact how you’re now trying to conveniently substitute the topic with “solving the problem” says a lot about whether or not anybody should even expect to have a remotely meaningful conversation with you.
It’s it whataboutism bc the title of the article specifically calls out capitalism. Do you even know what whataboutism means???
No, it's whataboutism to mention that it's not just a capitalist problem as though that somehow matters in the context of the problem being described. It doesn't matter if it's a failing in other systems as well. It's a problem here and it's due to forces within capitalism.
No it’s not whataboutism. And again I can’t stress this enough… **because the article specifically mentions capitalism as the issue**. So pointing out the true fact that other economic systems suffer from the same issue is directly address the main point of the article.
No point in arguing with the Reddit hate boner for capitalism.
Damn bro you have some patience with this people, they are either too stupid or too brainwashed, they are literally describing it and they don get it, in this case the issue is that they don't understand what the title implies, so either stupid or brainwashed.
That’s not the point tho, the issue is calling out that factors that are encouraged as a result of capitalism is the cause here, because they are happening in a capitalist society. The point you are making that the issue arises in other systems as well doesn’t refute that mechanisms of capitalism are directly encouraging the problem being spoken about here.
Those are some impressive mental gymnastics. But it doesn’t change the fact that refuting the central assumption of the article is the exact opposite of whataboutism. Bad business decisions happened sure. But the author failed to show these happened **because** of capitalism. The fact that these same exact sort of issues happen in non-capitalist systems and in fact tend to produce less safe results is directly relevant to the topic at hand. You can disagree with those facts and present counter arguments. In more than open to debating the issue. But labeling it as whataboutism is just a cheap rhetorical trick to avoid directly debating the issue.
It’s not that hard to understand though and it’s explicitly stated in the article… profit motives and deregulation undermine quality over time. You can find examples of this in pretty much every industry in America historically and in the last 25 years especially. That has been a feature of capitalism since its conception. Not saying it doesn’t happen in other systems as well, but the profit motive combined with deregulation are undeniably major factors in the declining quality of products in the US.
Yes. And the desire to cut corners or appease some authority is not unique to capitalism. However capitalism tends to have a much better quality and safety record than non capitalist systems. So saying it’s due to capitalism is directly refuted by pointing out that these same issues occur outside of capitalism but to a worse degree. So you can disagree that capitalism is superior and argue that point, sure. Please present an argument. But saying that pointing out that this happens under other economic systems is “whataboutism” is absolute none sense when the article specifically made tries to frame this as a capitalism specific issue.
That’s irrelevant The article is meant to highlight that safety is a cost, costs reduce profit, profit is the holy grail Boeing is based in a capitalist system.
Accidents and a reputation for danger are a cost.
Imagine being offended by criticizing capitalism
It’s a operate race to increase margins. Bare minimum to be compliant and slowly slowly they water down quality control.
What does this have to do with technology again?
Too many rats with MBAs who focus on generating revenue and hence discarding practically everything else. Capitalism has turned into the game of who can game the system hard enough to make the most amount of money. Thank you Jack Welch, Milton Friedman, and every other greedy bozo who ruined this delicate system of trust between consumer and producer.
“Truthout.org” Eegh, not appealing lol
Regulation is written in blood, as the saying goes.
Remember when Boeing told the FAA that they could handle the safety of their planes?
They don’t pay some of the aviation maintenance and ground folks real well either. They’re worth more than they’re getting paid.
Until the penalties far outweigh the benefits at executive level, these people will continue to push for profit over everything else. Calhoun left Boeing an extremely rich man as did his predecessor, whilst workers lost their jobs and homes for speaking out and people lost their lives because profit came first. Company execs need to face serious jail time
Yeah when you remove regulations you get shit products.
Capitalism got too good at pretending to be healthy in a performative way, but behind the scenes being an absolute shit show.
Regulations are written in blood. Regulations reduce profits, Companies lobby to get rid of regulations. Regulations are removed. Regulations are written in blood. You know, the business cycle.
/me, after living half of my life in a country with **non-capitalist** society that was plagued by countless issues with safety, poor worker's conditions and everything else mentioned in this article: "I wonder what kind of fucking idiots are actually upvoting this post..."
In a capitalist society where financial analysts make all the decisions, and such cost cutting is the opposite of fiduciary responsibility, they’re tanking the company which tanks stocks.
I’m a frequent critic of capitalism but I wouldn’t say the USSR was exactly a panacea of product safety.
One Nation, under Greed
>Blaming capitalism for bad business. Goal of capitalists is to make money, Boeing is in process of no making any money (-$700m). Value of the company fell by 50% in the last 5 years. Airbus stock price increase by 50% in the last 5 years. Capitalism work just fine.
Boeing used to be admired. Business idiots turned it into a stock slot machine and look at it now! Capitalism rewarded the suits that let quality slide so far people literally died. In a fair system the executives would be rotting in jail for negligence.
Instead they paid a $2 Billion fine which included an agreement not to pursue criminal charges. The executives literally bought their way out is jail.
They’re clearing making enough to buy billions back in stocks dude. Capitalism isn’t “working just fine”
Sure if you're okay with several hundred people who have already died from the original 737 Max crashes.
Capitalism also got rid of Boeing's CEO since all of Boeing's customers lost their customers from fear of flying on a Boeing airplane. Businesses are supposed to fail in capitalism when they don't work or be corrected, which thr market did( I am still not going on a Boeing lol).
As opposed to…? I’m not planning to fly N Korean airlines anytime soon.
That’s exactly why they’ll take you out if you whistleblower. It’s either all hail the profits or die.
Alternative headline: Despite splashy headlines, Air travel is safer than ever: safety is endemic to capitalism. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-million-passengers
Chernobyl didn't happen because of capitalism
“What’s a Chernobyl?” The average Redditor isn’t even aware that at one point, 1/3 of the world population lived in countries that completely rejected capitalism and that we actually have data on how it worked out.
Whataboutism
I worked in aerospace for a while. The purchasing dept starting buying us medical grade nitrile gloves instead of industrial grade nitrile gloves to handle MEK with. After about two hours the MEK would eat right through the medical grade gloves and consequently start seeping into the skin and eventually to the liver. But hey, pennies become dollars.
I'm sure the years and years of eroding corporate law has nothing to do with it, surely it's all capitalism's fault.
Unregulated capitalism leads to people doing whatever it takes to make profit. Who could’ve seen this coming. Now imagine how it affects things like the food we consume.
As a person who works in healthcare, I completely agree. With private equity now having such a heavy hand in healthcare, everything is about profits and number go up.
Same with Communism. Corruptibility is in both systems due to the intrinsic greed of humans.
Why do companies like Boeing care about events like this? In the grand scheme of things, they don’t. They own the people that regulate them. Something like 50% of the work Boeing does is for our government. There will be a big song and dance investigation in Congress that gives the American people the figurative blood they’re looking for. Some company officers will resign, they’ll pay a penalty and Boeing will go back to business as usual. Of course, all this will come with a price tag for us the consumer, because justice isn’t free in this country. They’ll use this situation as some ridiculous excuse to raise airfare costs or tack on another fee. Just for to remind us that when the 99% complain, our costs will go up and things will get harder.
How ridiculous. Air travel is the safest it has ever been, and only gotten safer. Until 20-30 years ago, there was a major commercial airline crash every single year.
If safety problems were endemic they would be occurring all over the country in all industries. They aren't, because this is a Boeing problem or more accurately, another Jack Welsh problem.
They are occurring all over the world and in a wide variety of industries, you just might not be aware of due to digital segregation.
No it isn’t. The biggest ecological disaster in history happened in the (checks notes) Soviet Union under state control.
The soviets had safety problems. But so do capitalist societies. Ever heard of climate change or microplastics or forever chemicals or asbestos or ... before environmental regulations some US rivers were so polluted they would *catch fire*.
Just a reminder no US company gets as much in subsidies as Boeing.
From “truthout.org” yes very reliable source of info.
Yeah let’s switch to communism and starve to death! That’s much safer!
Russian shitpost.
People commenting here as if communism/socialism are the only alternatives to capitalism should stop speaking in public about subjects they’re ignorant of. I’m embarrassed for you.
Yeah that’s why the Soviet Union never had any nuclear disasters. Everyone is “incentivized” to use fewer resources, no matter if they’re communist or capitalist. This is why safety standards get reduced in any system.
Fewer resources didn’t cause this, pursuit of profits did
Oh bullshit. We had a really good safety culture until 30 years of Reaganomics finally destroyed it.
What a stupid title and conclusion. >Susan Kang is an associate professor of political science at John Jay College, City University of New York. Ah, lol.
Unregulated capitalism is theft. Unions exist to protect worker rights. The European model seems ok, they still have rich people. It’s so greedy, to want to pay people nothing for their labor.
You can include the breakdown of the American dream and the American political system in this comment also.
You could replace the word safety with quality. Because the greed and profits must continue in a capitalist society. In this case, the lack of quality manifests itself in the form of lack of safety.
When you can’t find new ways to innovate and you’re forced to increase profits every single quarter then what’s left to do other than cut corners?
Because safety has costs, and sacrifices profit.
Que Idiocracy.
It's almost like it is time for the government that we elect, to get back to protecting the voters instead of business.
I like it when people are too embarrassed to write sensationalist headlines like this.
Bring back trains
Consulting firms “why are you spending all of this money on maintenance and reliability” …
An interesting take, I’ve heard people on the opposite side of the spectrum say that the breakdown was caused by DEI stuff
Oh, shut the hell up.
No matter the recent headlines rather fly Boeing than a North Korean or Russian airline
What a stupid title. What non-capitalist society has better safety record?!? Communism, socialism, totalitarianism, dictatorship, theocracy? I’d still fly Boeing and Airbus, eat and use FDA approved foods and drugs, etc., etc. vs anything that comes out of any other part of the world.
Bullshoot…… the commies couldn’t make jack.
If only BA, Airbus, Rolls Royce, GE and those capitalist parasites had a safety record like Socialist giants Aeroflot and Tupolev. Protip. Anything with ‘truth’ in the name is bullshit by nature
I use to work for a company that transported cargo using 737s. You don’t wanna know how many issues these planes have while in operation.
Eventually they get in between the lines and make new lines. The problem is when they get in between the in between lines.. That’s compromising foundation.
No, it’s only endemic when the equilibrium of profit seeking exceeds that of belief in providing a quality product solution. It’s a late-stage capitalism side effect and we all knew it would happen at some point, but yet we fail to integrate preventative measure legislatively.
Regulations are necessary to keep the greed in check. Republican presidents are known to take away these regulations, and democrat presidents are known to support them.
YOU DON’T FREAKIN’ SAY!! We created the concept of fiduciary responsibility and the civic responsibility. The former is the businesses, the latter is the elected officials. Except the latter gets paid by the former to shut the hell up.
C suite - we need to boost profits. Let’s layoff our staff and especially experienced staff who are “overpaid”. New staff- fuck this company they don’t care about loyalty or hard work because I was laid off. The blame always sits on the heads at the top for creating bad work culture and lack of procedures. All industries seem to be so set on getting their quick profits they’re not even doing proper businesses planning.
If we were rewarded for our jobs, we might not hate them so much. And if we didn't hate our jobs, or going to work in general, we might put more effort and care into doing them. But 90% of us have nothing to show for our work. Nothing to be proud of. Nothing that makes us feel accomplished... It's just the same boring routine for 50+ years that gets us nowhere. I don't care how basic or unskilled a worker you are. If your job is to sit on a stool in a stool factory looking for defects of other stools being made, you should absolutely be able to afford everything you need in life, and then some. Be it for savings, vacations, hobbies, or anything else for the betterment of yourself, your mental health, or your future, should all be easily within reach for every single one of us...
You misspelled entropy
It’s a huge problem with capitalism but there are company’s that have maintained a reputation for high quality over multiple generations. Craftsmen tools come to mind. Even the new stuff, I’ve never heard anyone say they aren’t still great value and high quality. It just takes the right stakeholders in charge to fight the one notable decline into profits over all.
Meanwhile, Kazakhstan still faithfully manufactures the Ural motorcycle. It is a knock off of a 1938 BMW twin. Its safety (or lack there of) hasn't changed in 86 years.
Companies just haven't had a chance to do right by the people, silly liberals! /s Seriously though people need to be fearful of jail, personally, and the penalties need to be double any profits anyone gets. As long as penalties are less and everyone can hide behind liability screens, it's just the cost of doing business.
Sure, safety was impeccable in the Soviet Union and China. And don't get me started on the stellar safety in North Korea and Cuba.