Please don't post clichés of internet indignation to Hacker News. It leads to repetitive subthreads, as in this case. That's the opposite of the curious conversation we're trying for.
Executives are personally liable for loss of life, regardless of the law it is morally contemptible to hide behind a corporation. Until people go to jail for manslaughter this will not change.
The Intermediate People's Court in Shijiazhuang sentenced a farmer, Zhang Yujun, and a senior manager, Geng Jinping, to death in 2009. five more people received life sentences and the main company behind it went bankrupt.
this was for four infant deaths.
Boeing killed 189 indonesians in 2021 and executives didnt so much as take a breather at the country club between swings, so good luck.
Capitalism just isnt set up to punish the Bourgeois.
> On orders from the authorities, the rescue effort concluded less than a day following the accident, and the damaged train cars were seen being broken apart by backhoes and buried nearby. The Railway Ministry justified the burial by claiming that the trains contained valuable "national level" technology that could be stolen. However, hours after the rescuers had been told to stop searching for survivors, a 2-year-old girl was found alive in the wreckage.
So, basically, all we know is that Chinese political system is set up to protect powerful people (such as politicians who are overseeing national rail projects). On the other hand, a local milk dealer is expendable, just as he would be in America.
The main difference is whether these powerful people are called "bourgeois" or something else.
China executes billionaires with some regularity. Li Jianping got the death penalty last year. There were like a dozen that got it in the aughts from mining corruption. Not to say they are free of corruption but America will never do this.
> Capitalism just isnt set up to punish the Bourgeois.
Please read your own link. There were coverups and censorship galore. The problem was this story eventually got so big it could no longer be swept under the rug like so many things were and still are.
The US had one of these scandals too. nobody was arrested, no one charged. Tammany Hall politician Alderman Michael Tuomey, known as "Butcher Mike", defended the distillers vigorously throughout the scandal—in fact, he was put in charge of the Board of Health investigation.
The guy basically ended all investigation and shielded all guilty parties.
In 1850, we were in the buildup to the civil war and hadn’t even ended slavery, the political and legal environment were drastically different. I’m not suggesting there aren’t lessons to learn but the comparison is ridiculous.
The problem is called regulatory capture. And it’s by our campaign finance system. And that’s a result of unhindered capital accumulation by a minority.
You don’t need a campaign finance problem to get regulatory capture. Only industry insiders have the context to regulate industries. They come from industry, they know and are known by all the players, and back to industry is where they want options to return. They see the world in terms other insiders do and they don’t want to burn any bridges. This is a recipe for industry getting what they want in most cases.
> Its not a problem of capitalism its a problem of a judicial system having no balls to put execs in prison.
Parent was talking about root cause, not cause.
In the US, corporations, through campaign contributions, lobbying, etc. have influence at all levels of governance. In the end this requires money above all.
The conclusion that the system (including the judical one) is rigged in favor of such coroporations has "something" to do with capitalism isn't too far fetched.
Or for the case at hand: your point would be that the 346 people didn't die because of Boing taking shortcuts for profit; they rather died because their resp. planes fell out of the sky? ;)
America is not founded on capitalism and our judicial system is not innately born from it. Not saying capitalism via corporate lobbying and bribes hasn’t had an effect on the notion of justice, but our foundational legal principles exist outside of our nation’s choice of economic policy.
For the judicial system’s behavior to result from capitalism would imply that our economic policy is baked into our foundational doctrine. I was just pointing out that capitalism did not beget our legal system.
What do you think capitalism is? Define it, and I think you'll see our foundational doctrine is designed to enshrine and protect the ideas of capitalism.
Much more talented and studied folks than I have explored this in depth, which you can find if you google capitalism and it's entanglement with the foundation of the USA.
this is wrong. China cracked down on milk whistleblowers and severely repressed and harassed them, they stopped anyone from discussing the problem on the internet. Parents of the children who were harmed basically were told to shut up by the government.
The FAA gets authorized by Congress. Congress is actually the one with the constitutional power to legislate, so can override executive agencies like the grandparent describes.
> The Constitution gives Congress substantial power to establish federal government offices. As an initial matter, the Constitution vests the legislative power in Congress.1 Article I bestows on Congress certain specified, or enumerated, powers.2 The Court has recognized that these powers are supplemented by the Necessary and Proper Clause, which provides Congress with broad power to enact laws that are ‘convenient, or useful’ or ‘conducive’ to [the] beneficial exercise of its more specific authorities.3 The Supreme Court has observed that the Necessary and Proper Clause authorizes Congress to establish federal offices.4 Congress accordingly enjoys broad authority to create government offices to carry out various statutory functions and directives.5 The legislature may establish government offices not expressly mentioned in the Constitution in order to carry out its enumerated powers.6
It is widely known that the Supreme Court has been since at least FDR (if not longer) been derelict in their duty to limit the power of congress by ensuring laws fall into only the powers listed in Article 1 section 8 are accepted as constitutional.
Under the current "living document" doctrine adopted by the court the power of the federal government is limitless, and there really is not need for Section 8 of Article 1 as to them "Necessary and Proper Clause" makes everything congress deems " Necessary and Proper Clause" to be constitution, a moronic interpretation of the Constitution who's entire purpose was to limit federal power.
The current court is set to role back some of that, I hope it does but it is unlikely they will go as far I want them to... Which includes going all the way back and reversing Wickard v. Filburn and every decision that built off that wrong.
> It is widely known that the Supreme Court has been since at least FDR (if not longer) been derelict in their duty to limit the power of congress by ensuring laws fall into only the powers listed in Article 1 section 8 are accepted as constitutional.
It's a partisan assertion of a narrow political group, not generally accepted. That doesn't mean you shouldn't make the assertion, but to say it's somehow a truth generally acknowledged is false.
That's a partisan phrasing, but I think there's an uncontroversial, generally accepted assertion there. Namely, starting with Wickard v. Filburn in 1942, the courts were willing to uphold nearly any federal program under the banner of "interstate commerce" until US. v. Lopez.
The idea that the constitution forbids Congress from delegating to the executive is not widely accepted. It is a novel interpretation from a Qanon-adjacent fringe group that wants to dismantle the government by making it too dysfunctional to work. It also creates a strange right for the judiciary to regulate how Congress and the executive choose to work together.
First off I'm not even talking about the delegation problem that's a whole other kettle of fish
That's said The arguments against Congressional delegation to the executive existed long before qanon and the arguments of limited congressional power date back to before 1789 so unless q anon existed in 1700's then you're just using a modern fringe group in a very poor attempt to sideline the conversation no different than calling everything that you disagree with racist or sexist or some other ism
For there still this idea that Congress and the executive should work together as a novel one and not one shared by the Constitution separately equal is critical to the functioning of our governance The key word there being separate.
The cozy relationship between the executive and Congress is a problem
>>It doesn’t literally explicitly contain regulations regarding air travel, because it did not exist in the 1700s.
If only the founders would have thought of that problem and included a method for which the constitution could be amended to grant additional powers to the federal government should the people and the states desire it...
But no it is easier to just invent new powers by continual reinterpretation of the documents than actually amending the document as required
I mean if you don't want to be federally regulated for air travel, you can just fly intrastate. Southwest famously operated like this in the pre-deregulation era and became the poster child for federal airline deregulation. Though I don't think anyone is dumb enough to risk reputational suicide by flying a grounded plane intrastate.
Yes that giant truck hole opened by Wickard that has become a catch all that means the federal government can regulated anything
However the actual wording is "to Regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States", the original intent to was to give power to congress to regulate how commerce is conducted between the states, i.e prevent the coastal states from having tariffs against the internal states, and prevent the internal states from having export taxes on gains, etc etc etc
The original intent was not to allow the congress regulate individual commercial transactions by citizens that happen to cross state lines.
Because the FAA is "responsible for the safety of civil aviation." They don't get to say that, and accept tax monies for that, and then throw up their hands when someone else tries to block them from doing their job. The director (or whoever heads the agency) should have resigned, alongwith the entire rest of the management. Instead of being content with letting someone else take the blame when the next accident claims 100s of lives.
Imagine if you were tasked with making sure that your app's customer's data were safe. Your boss goes against your recommendation and does something you know will put sensitive data in the hands of hackers. What would you do?
It’s been used to escape responsibility and shirk transparency entirely too much, and if orgs can’t be trusted with it (as they evidently cannot) then they don’t deserve to have it.
I appreciate that it’s a joke made to make a point, but I would prefer that the state keep prisoners safe from being raped in prison, regardless of what crime they committed.
I'm glad someone mentioned this. The tacit acceptance of physical violence in prisons is so widespread in our society.
It's weird because a comment like "these executives deserve to be raped as punishment" would be considered disgusting and unfunny: frankly, you'd probably be made a social pariah for saying something like that. That statement is morally equivalent to the "pounding in the ass prison" statement, which is far more socially acceptable.
I genuinely think it's something that future generations will look back upon in horror.
Sounds like a great way to create an airplane company that no competent people will want to run. Might want to think through the game-theoretic consequences a bit further.
For example, instead of ranting and howling about prisons and guillotines, you could point to some successful examples of other companies or orgs that have operated in a similar fashion. That might provide more productive grounds for further discussion. Any good examples?
> Sounds like a great way to create an airplane company that no competent people will want to run.
Is it your assertion that Boeing is currently operated by competent people? They're getting crushed by SpaceX at rockets. How much more of this incompetence will it take before someone does the same to them with airliners? Relying on being "too big to fail" isn't a viable long term strategy. It only lowers the barrier to entry for competitors.
You wouldn’t build a website with a single point of failure, yet the argument here is it’s okay to engineer things badly because of the success rate of requests is high.
For air travel impacting human lives.
I think it speaks to current generation of leaders avoiding thought, consideration, foresight, insight, and just using any statistic that can justify a decision.
It’s a decline and one that also explains the excitement that LLMs/AI might be able to help us think less, know less, and perhaps be even less responsible for our work products.
This statement makes no sense. It has never been safer to fly, precisely because aviation is so dedicated to root cause analysis.
A whole door exploded out of a plane and
1. The plane did not suffer structural damage and could land safely
2. Nobody died because seat belts are mandatory
3. The crew is drilled over and over on what to do
4. The plane has extensive monitoring and logging so RCA is easier
5. The US funds a whole org dedicated to investigating this sort of thing and the results are public
and that's just the ones I can think of.
This is shocking precisely because aviation is so good at this. There are multiple layers in the swiss cheese model and this somehow made it past them.
Yeah, not to be totally insensitive, but 45,000 Americans died on our roads last year and basically no one has even a single fuck to give about it. For some reason all we ever complain about is the only safe transportation system we have.
People most certainly do give a fuck. The ones who are trying to fix it -- and the only ones who have a shot at it -- are held to impossible standards, far beyond what we hold humans to. A handful of accidents, even when they're not actually at fault, is enough to get an entire autonomous driving project shut down.
What we're hearing in this thread, from people who have clearly never done much of anything, is that passenger aviation needs to work exactly the same way. "If it can't be perfect, heads must roll. Surely that will fix it."
Ehhhh tightening bolts and not building MCAS with a single sensor and flight computer, whilst hiding the changes and selling a warning light…
If this is a genuine comment it’s worth thinking about why you reached straight to defend egregiously bad engineering and manufacturing.
Self driving is a different risk profile, even if you engineer it to the best of human knowledge — people still don’t understand why, and can’t ask why, the system in control of multiple ton vehicles being beta tested ‘in production with human lives’ and marketed as FSD, makes the decisions it makes. Or at least they can’t immediately tell it not to drive into trucks. Which is quite a straightforward thing to ask of a driving control system.
None of those asks are perfection, or more than we’d expect from a child let alone ‘humans’ as a species
You’re arguing past the GP. Just because it’s never been safer to fly doesn't mean we should relax any part of the rigid and high bar the aviation industry holds itself to. You’re both right…
This latest debacle is obviously due to some schlub on the factory floor who was more interested in checking his Facebook than installing bolts. Guillotining the CEO won't help.
I wish I knew what would, believe me. I have to deal with the exact same problem, luckily in a factory where there is a lot less at stake.
Then perhaps you meant to reply to a different subthread. I'm merely addressing the upstream poster's childish argument. ("Let the guillotine come out, I want to see heads roll.")
You did so by (as I understand) suggesting the status quo attracts competent leadership. I offered an argument that it does not. I agree we do not need to bring out guillotines. I disagree that Boeing has competent leadership. This is how Internet conversations work.
Oh, I definitely don't maintain that they have competent leadership, and clearly the status quo isn't ideal for attracting and retaining it. The board is clearly negligent.
I just disagree with some proposed solutions in the thread, that's all. Also don't necessarily agree that the situation was any better in the past.
Most companies would be bankrupt without their customers. A $5 billion government contract isn’t something that can be dismissed as the recipient ‘being kept solvent by Uncle Sam.’
SpaceX is doing things nobody else has done. ULA is equally reliant on government dollars. Boeing is a company that builds rockets and airliners and they aren't doing a great job of either at the moment. Who else is responsible for that if not the C-suite?
It's not about "failing". Boeing lobbied for special treatment to save some cash instead of fixing a safety issue. For that, the death penalty is appropriate.
Whoa, way to twist the argument. No one is arguing for a lower salary and the death penalty. Exorbitant pay is fine if you're willing to put your life on the line for that kind of money. Plenty of people are.
Anyone opposed to seeing the entire C-suite and board of directors having their bonuses clawed back and sent to jail? I'm not.
Let the guillotine come out, I want to see heads roll.