Whoever is sitting down to write Boeing's PR response quotes needs to be fired, along with whichever c-suite exec is approving them. It's not acceptable to totally ignore actual safely issues being brought to light and respond universally with panglossian emptiness.
The quote about not needing to ground the Max, before being ordered to do so, was especially egregious.
Not only is it acceptable, it's effective. Until a 787 actually crashes and provides unambiguous evidence that the whistleblowers are telling the truth, it's a he-said-she-said situation.
It’s been the downfall of many companies, and in this case, has resulted in the unnecessary death of many individuals.
Boeing is currently in the spotlight, but there are so many other companies - ranging from pharma to agriculture to tech, that also adhere to the above mantra and have been the cause of much death and destruction.
You can’t blame individuals, nor the companies here. The system they operate in requires them to report quarterly; with a priority on short term performance over a longer term outlook (it exists, but not overtly so). When you don’t meet those short term goals, both individuals (employee reviews, getting laid off etc) and the company (value on the public or private market) suffers.
I don’t know if there is a “fix”, or if it needs fixing at all, as our rapid progress is also down to this competitive and unforgiving environment.
You can and you have to. Corporations are structuredi nsuch a way that there is always somebody who is in charge of a certain project or descision. Of course this might be hidden. in order to fight "Profit before people / product / planet", these individuals need to be punished. It cannot be allowed that blame diffuses in a corporation. Otherwise there will be no change.
The problem is that we have insulated the shareholders from responsibility so that granny can buy blue chip stocks to fund her retirement without having to actually pay attention to the bothersome details of corporate governance. Management is doing exactly what it was hired to do: maximize granny's ROI by any means necessary.
The question of responsibility differs from what one should expect. I think it's perfectly fine to blame the individuals and companies here. "I was just following incentives" is becoming the new Nuremberg defense.
Of course, to change what happens in reality most of the time, it's not enough to blame people; you need to change the incentives.
Related: http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-inc...
You can’t blame individuals,
nor the companies here.
Mostly, I'm thinking about synthetic opioids. Mostly because you mentioned pharma in passing. Mostly I'm thinking about Purdue Pharmaceuticals and the Sackler family.
I can't really condone the idea that it's okay to throw your money into a magic black box, and ignore the reason why the black box magically grows your money.
If a pleasant financial advisor sits at a desk and tells you to feed your life savings into a worm hole, and on the other side you'll get triple back, as long as you never ask questions, sure, you'll do that.
But that right there is the origin of hundreds of thousands of lives lost to drug overdoses and addiction. Investors not asking questions, but just demanding returns. Who cares, as long as the checks come through?
The truth is, that level of commoditization is what gets people killed.
"I don't care how it works,
I want 10% growth every year, minimum"
There is no “fix.” It’s human nature.
Socialist organizations do not have a better track record. Without a profit motive (and competition) there is no reason to please customers.
>To this day, I refuse to fly on a 787. I'm sure that the Dreamliners that came off the assembly line after about a year or so were fine but there's that first year of production that, as far as I'm concerned, are ticking time bombs. I talked to many engineers who had worked on that program to know just how badly they rushed that initial production.
Honestly, I already feel guilty flying due to the crazy amount of pollution these planes put out. Now I've got a slight fear that my plane might randomly fuck up due to software and now I feel like I should just stay grounded.
I assume you’ve addressed more important sources of carbon emissions, such as moving to a state that doesn’t require heating in the winter or AC in the summer. (And it goes beyond saying that you don’t use Amazon prime or buy anything shipped air freight.)
The overall impact of aviation is actually less than 5%, though it's fast growing and projected to be 5% and more. (And I doubt only a fraction is related to moving people around.) Note that aviation contributes to global warming in excess of its pure CO2 emissions; at very high altitude even water vapour is an issue. Another point of comparison: aviation's overall impact is about 10% of the entire transport sector, the same amount as all water based shipping.
Either way it's a huge amount, there is no such thing as just an integer percentage of overall emissions.
Source: Wikipedia and IPCC, mostly https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ipcc_wg3_ar5...
(This behavior is by no means unique to Boeing or unusual at all).
When I left in 2010, it became somewhat of an internal joke that you were never fired from Boeing, just sent to Charleston.
These planes are going to start failing in unison in a few years.
Shit. I take back everything I said about preferring to flying civilian aircraft. Throw me on a P3 or C130 any day. At least we took FOD seriously on those old things.
Shame on Boeing, and shame on the CEO making the typical blanket phrase.