The more fundamental problem is that corporations are run by people who, mostly, care more about themselves than the company they are running, and more about this year than the future. Boeing needed to suck it up and accept a couple years' poor sales, in order to get an effective competitor to Airbus' latest. In the long run, or even the medium run, this would give the best monetary results, as well as save lives.
But, it would mean bad financial results this year and next year, and the corporate business environment is biased against that. If the CEO makes decisions which give worse results this year and next, but better results later, he will not be around in his job to enjoy those better results. So, he optimizes for the near term, and rolls the dice (with other people's lives).
The biggest exception to this would be companies where the CEO is the founder, who usually has the ability to retain his job through a bad year or two.
Of course, the CEO should have made the right decision anyway, and accepted the consequences, because people's lives are at stake and anyway it's not like he would starve if he got fired next year. But, if we're talking about incentives and conflicts of interest, that's the real issue, not money vs. lives (because both point in the same direction, of making the plane safe), but short term vs. long term and CEO vs. the company as a whole.
It's not obvious how the responsibility for those deaths should be allocated.
What's the tolerance threshold for airline fatalities?
Meaning what?
This is such a tired argument.
How much money do you think Boeing is going to make for its shareholders if its planes are crashing and fleet is grounded?
What sort of mindset must one have to assume that once a person becomes a "manager" or "executive" they are suddenly immoral or evil? Such an odd worldview.
I guarantee no one at Boeing make the conscious effort to kill hundreds of people for a bonus. Mistakes happen. People of all standing are corrupt. We fix the issues and move on, not cry about executives, board members and shareholders (of which most people on this board are striving to be).
Each person is only responsible for their own bad decisions. It's likely there is no one person who signed the memo that said "casualties totally okay, make more money!" Instead we'll find several people signing off on several bad decisions, each person myopic enough to be able to honestly claim they had no idea something this bad could happen.
It would be nice to see the buck stop at, say, the CEO, but I haven't seen that happen. In many cases the CEO will claim that they gave blanket performance goals and that the execution of those goals was too technical for them to actually understand, or that those technical details were hidden from them by people below them who were trying to hide things (rather than only deliver the type of information the CEO really wanted).
It's well known that large US companies offer perverse incentives for their executives. As long as they don't do anything super illegal, there's often no recourse. I mean, recent history is replete with examples of executives optimizing-for-bonus.
I have had the opportunity to observe a very wide variety of businesses in several industries and have noticed the same thing as multiple studies - a high degree of sociopathy among execs. My conjecture is that this is both because aggressive sociopathy will help people rise among the ranks, and also because the structure of business will tend to actively select for those traits (unless active counter-selection is implemented).
So, sure, one does not automatically change by becoming a manager (although there are psych studies indicating high income causing reduced compassion for others), but there is good reason to expect higher "immoral or evil" behavior in higher ranks.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduce...
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/06/10/2016/wealth-c...
Becoming an executive at a publicly traded company is a joyous and public acceptance of capitalism. Capitalism is objectively bad, given the state of the world.
If Boeing can put out faulty products that kill people will no recourse, that's not capitalism, that's the government allowing these criminals to continue operating unchecked.
Two relatively new Boeing 737-MAX airplanes crash in relatively quick succession. A critical flaw in the aircraft is exposed to the public. Significant numbers of people refuse to fly in a 737-MAX.
Southwest made a substantial investment in 737-MAX airplanes, and cannot make their money back. They approach Boeing and Boeing gives them a 75% discount on a 737-MAX replacement. Or, Boeing shrugs their shoulders and says, "huh". Southwest cancels all future orders with Boeing and buys Airbus.
Or, Boeing waves their hands and says, "We fixed everything. The 737-MAX is perfectly safe now." The next week, Southwest relaunches their fleet and books 100% occupancy. They negotiate with Boeing about the $millions lost while the fleet was grounded and get back to business as usual. For the next 5 years, a 737-MAX crashes every year killing everyone aboard, but bookings stay high. All ticket prices go up $25 to fund the payouts to crash victims. Bookings stay high. Business continues as usual.
See all the very different directions capitalism can take you? I continually struggle to understand the mindset where all blame goes to the government and there is no individual responsibility for consumer choices. We've seen it over and over with Wells Fargo, GM, Facebook, and the list goes on.
Government can serve a meaningful purpose in the regulation of capitalism. But also, capitalism can and must serve a critical role in the regulation of capitalism.
if you cut corners on engineering to reduce costs and nothing bad happens, that good engineering actually
Suppose Bob fires a gun into a crowded area and happens not to hit anyone. I didn't hurt anyone! It's my right as a consequentialist!"
Bob still goes to prison.
Beyond that, engineering is about using a principled approach, by definition. Throwing something together ad-hoc and finding that it happens to work, is not what is meant by 'engineering'.
A core scope of engineering is to make technologies to make life of people better without killing them. To reduce cost is a one of instrumental goals helping business to do more than it might have done without it.
To risk someone's life is a very bad idea, even if it increases profits.