- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
Airlines say they found loose parts in door panels during inspections of Boeing 737 Max 9 jets::Federal investigators are learning more about how a door panel flew off an Alaska Airlines jetliner last week.
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I always wondered what would happen if an army of accountants took over an engineering-heavy company and just gutted the engineering culture for profit…
This is absolutely crazy. Boeing was the undisputed number one maker of passenger Jet for decades, and McDonnell Douglas was 2nd. USA had a lead on passenger jets in the world where the competition was mostly irrelevant. Then Boeing buys McDonnell Douglas, so there is less competition in USA, but that only paves the way for Airbus.
It’s crazy how USA managed to lose their sovereignty in an area where dominance was almost total. But the lack of preventing monopolies in USA, was probably the cause, making the problem 100% internal for USA as I see it. Allowing ever more monopoly like companies since Reagan, is undermining the strength of American innovation and excellence.
This is probably also the reason the bean-counters took over, why bother with the technology, when there is almost no competition? We might as well make as much money as we can.I think that a Milton Friedman/Ronald Reagan style of anarcho-capitalist idiology will eventually become popular in any capitalist system, as capitalism demands endless growth at its core.
You can put some patchwork on top of it (social democracy-style regulations and safety nets), but since people are allowed to have enough power to buy governments and influence media conglomerates, it will just revert back into what we now call late stage capitalism.
Although even if we cap income, politicians are surprisingly cheap to buy. $10000 slipped into the right pocket could influence the vote enough for a deregulation-bill to pass, not to mention privately-owned media has the need to make a profit, and they’re going to want to make more profit so much, that they’ll do whatever it takes to do so.
I think what you describe is important to be aware of, and as things are now it rings mostly true. But I’m not entirely sure. Wasn’t USA even more capitalistic in the late 1800’s? then it turned towards actually improving conditions under and after the great depression. Which went reasonably well until the late 70’s, where it probably peaked with Jimmy Carter. Ironically the oil crisis reversed the direction. But I suspect the direction can be reversed again.
AFAIK Russians considered the 70’s as late stage capitalism, but instead it was the Soviet Union that collapsed.
But again as things are now USA with Republicans getting ever more extreme it is going really really bad over there IMO, But USA is a very poor democracy, where an undemocratic or at least far from ideal 2 party system is protected by first past the post elections, that undermines democracy, together with a flawed system of freedom of speech that allows the press to spread outright lies without repercussions.
Most EU countries have better and stronger democracies, and I don’t think we are seeing late stage capitalism taking over here. Although we have some right wing tendencies, that are mostly driven by high immigration from the middle east, immigrants that on average don’t adapt well into our societies. Compared to the compassion of democracies in that regard, we have seen almost zero compassion from communist countries, so with regard to human values, socialism/*communism seems to not be the answer.According to Professor Richard Wolff (economic historian and Marxist economist), capitalism fails on average every 47 years. The late 1800s to the Great Depression was about 50-ish years; the Great Depression to the 70s oil crisis was about 30-40 years (depending on when you start timing it, if post-Depression or during); the Reagan-era 1980s deregulation to 2008 was 30-ish years, 2008 to COVID was 12 years.
Also worth noting that what ended the Great Depression was both FDR’s social democracy-style of politics along with the economic boost that WW2 gave to the US.
The USSR failed for many reasons. One of which is totally their fault, where they didn’t adopt computers early enough. Another big fault, though, is the Cold War, where the US did everything in its power to overthrow Communist idiology wherever possible (see: Korea and Vietnam for extreme examples). That also includes economic sanctions, like we see today with the US and Cuba. When the US sanctions a country, they don’t do as well as when they have the ability to trade. This is because the US is a massive global economic superpower that produces a lot of important things needed to run a society, like medicine, technology, food, etc.
I’m not as well versed in current-day European politics, but do communist countries even exist in modern day Europe? If they do, then they’re probably poorer due to the probable economic sanctions levied by capitalist countries (the US generally forces countries that it trades with to also sanction US state enemies, which includes all countries considering themselves Communist, other than China since China became a massive economic superpower, in part due to the US establishing free trade agreements with Permenant Normal Trade Relations with China). I’m just guessing on this front, though. I also am not as well versed as to the timelines of social democracy on Europe, but I have been seeing more economicly right wing voices in European politics as of late.
Social democracy probably extends that 47 year timeline a bit, but deregulation will usually come at one point or another, since corruption can still exist. Not that Communism doesn’t have corruption issues either, because it definitely does. The issue is centralization of power. Marxist-style Anarchy might be an option, but TBH I’m not well versed enough on that subject to really comment on it or give an opinion on it.
Thisis what happened at litetally every good tech company.
Well that and “engineering culture” is now mostly “startup culture” where tech companies are spun up purely with an exit strategy in mind with the goal of growing in value for the founders as quickly as possible
Bolts needed additional tightening
Ratcheting up pressure on Boeing
Heh
Why do airlines still buy Boeing? New airplanes they make are clearly dangerous, and they don’t seem to be able to fix it for the next one, as we are already at the next ones…
There’s a long list of reasons:
- training pilots to change planes
- training maintenance teams
- changing procurement practices
- adapt supply chain
- etc
- and then on the bottom, 2 of the most important ones: cost control (maximize profits) and comfort
Boeing advertises the 737 Max by saying that it works just like the old 737 so you don’t need to retrain your pilots and save money. The issue a few years ago with that is that these planes are not 737 so when some new issue happens the pilots don’t know how to deal.
The cost of retraining their pilots would bite into their profits.
It’s near impossible to switch to airbus if an airline is preset entrenched in Boeing. You have to retrain everyone from ground crews to pilots to FAs to maintenance. On top of that you need new suppliers for spare parts, maintenance hubs and contracts.
Also supply is a major issue. Both Airbus and Boeing are back ordered for years, so there isn’t a way to easily switch fleets.
If that door plug hit and killed someone on the ground, then that would be some Final Destination shit.
More like Donny Darko
Wait wait wait… A part of complex thing fell 20K feet out of the sky onto the hard ground.
And they say some of the stuff they found is ‘a bit loose’ ?
Hmmmmm…
