> I wish more of the world could function like the culture adopted by the western airline industry where every incident and investigation is treated as an opportunity to learn and improve the system rather than an opportunity to lay blame.

Unfortunately, the nature of US politics is such that it's impossible to have reasoned conversations about how to alter these extremely complex and dynamic systems. Entire areas of the solution space are rejected because of ideology, and those rejections, themselves, are highly politically charged.

In what should be no great surprise, later, when the problem isn't resolved, fingers get pointed at those who rejected those alternative solutions or pushed for solutions that did not work, while those who previously got in the way of a more fulsome discussion continue to do so because the foundation of their ideology cannot be shaken by real world data.

So, yes, it would be nice if the world could function as a reasonable and rational place, but when it comes to wedge issues like this, that simply will not happen without fundamental structural changes to the nature of US politics.

All that being said, given Boeing's recent performance, I'd be a little careful to hold up the airline industry as a paragon of rationality and preparedness...

> I think the problem is that no one wants to take the blame for being wrong or unprepared and the media won't pass up an opportunity to sensationalize mistakes as incompetency, maliciousness,etc

So, is it going to be Law and Order for thee, paid suspensions and additional training for me?

I wish people would realize that Law and Order is different from Orderly Justice. Law and Order allows immoral laws and actions so long as they are codified in law and the "Order" from following the law can lead to injustice. Orderly Justice means there are procedures in place to ensure order while pursuing justice. Sometimes we get ticked off at how long it takes (look at all the process and time (and delays) involved in trying to determine the truth and ensure justice around Jan. 6th).

In this case I believe a [grand] jury of peers would have found had the officers gone in and just taken the suspect out, they would have been justified.

Sadly we have more and more of a Law and Order society than an Orderly Justice one.

> I wish more of the world could function like the culture adopted by the western airline industry where every incident and investigation is treated as an opportunity to learn and improve the system rather than an opportunity to lay blame.

If the airline industry had kept that culture we wouldn't have had so many incidents with the Boeing 737 MAX.

I don't follow. Were airline investigations not able to do a proper and thorough investigation of the 737 MAX crashes?

I'm not saying no mistakes were made. Of course mistakes were made. It was my assumption that the typical "post-mortem" process of those crashes did happen.

Post Mortem means somebody died (or more generously, at least you wrote off an airframe) which means you already failed. Actual safety culture went beyond that, the 737 MAX shouldn't have happened because it was apparent this aeroplane was unsafe before it killed people.

One of the many things NASA does for the US which affects ordinary people who aren't ever going to the Moon, let alone Mars, is ASRS. https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/ The purpose of ASRS is to report safety problems that weren't accidents yet. That's how you continue to improve safety when there are a tiny number of fatal accidents - by studying all the things which nearly went wrong. The pilot who nearly turned off his one remaining engine after losing one on a twinjet, the controller who nearly authorised a new pilot to fly straight into a mountain before checking the radar again.

Most safety culture can't aspire to that. In many cases maybe it would be overkill. Therac-25 not withstanding, most software engineers are not going to kill anybody through their incompetence, and we'd do well to even manage a Mortality and Morbidity conference culture (M&M is what medics do when patients unexpectedly die or have seriously negative outcomes, to try to prevent such things in future). Even most of aviation isn't that safe. General (the pilot isn't getting paid, they're doing it for fun or at least as their own choice) is very unsafe. Commercial (e.g. Crop dusting, News helicopter) is better but not great. However Scheduled aviation (you can just buy a ticket, like for a bus) had reached the point where ASRS was the key to likely further safety improvements, and yet somehow Boeing shipped the 737 MAX.

Thank you for pointing to ASRS.

My father is a retired airline pilot and we loved talking about safety, how things can fail and how there is a culture of learning for everyones mistakes. I mostly remember the pilots replaying actual crash scenarios.

But you are absolutely right, ASRS and learning from almost-failures is also critical.