It’s perfectly possible that the FAA has correctly optimized for the constraints they are under and the FAA is not sufficiently effective at delivering its charter.
Certainly wasn’t my intention! I don’t _think_ I said anything in there that was assigning blame to the FAA, merely pointing out that in practice they are no longer actively preventing issues.
I know their overall budget has been decreased and there are sources implying that’s the cause of the failures, but I couldn’t (on my phone, to be fair) find any good source comparing the portion of their budget that went to these programs specifically over time. So I chose to stick to what I could source and mostly let people draw their own conclusions.
For instance, while I have Thoughts(TM) I left it to the reader to take a wild fuckin’ guess which political party controlled the presidency, house, and senate in the years we decided outsourced the regulatory role of the FAA to those they regulate.
I am sure there is waste and opportunities for improvement but… that ignores the significant increase in flights, new planes etc. that has ballooned much faster than the crude time value of money calc above. Criticising them for doing less with, umm, less seems a bit rich. Especially as others (not necessarily you in this comment) then use that a reason for more cuts to agencies.