
Before Deadly Crashes, Boeing Pushed for Law That Undercut Oversight - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/business/boeing-737-max-crashes.html
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pseudolus
"The proposal of any new law or regulation which comes from [businessmen],
ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be
adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the
most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an
order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the
public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the
public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and
oppressed it."

—Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations,
vol. 1,

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ahartmetz
Adam Smith is very selectively quoted by "free market" types...

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LMYahooTFY
How is your comment relevant? Smith's words are extremely apt here, and don't
speak to a "free market" ideology at all.

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andrewflnr
Maybe I'm a weirdo, but I think that quote is in general extremely apt for
free market ideology. Businesses don't like free markets as much as they like
markets tilted in their own favor. If you want an actual free market, you have
to watch out for businesses trying to break it through legislation.

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njacobs5074
I thought that the “free” in “free markets” meant that corporations are free
to do what they want.

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marvin
Not an economist, but I rather figured it means that markets are regulated in
a way that properly allows and encourages competition. No monopolies, no anti-
competitive practices, no pricing or wage collusion, no regulatory capture
etc. I'm sure this can be interpreted in as many ways as there are special
interest groups, though.

E.g, radically, labor markets in the absence of a basic income system are not
really free, since employees starve and lose their homes if they do not accept
the best available offer. Hence companies' competition for paid labor is not
really free, and most groups have an existential threat if they do not accept
the terms of the employers that are willing to employ them.

There are a million aspects to this that I'm not an expert in, but many of the
"free market" principles are considered in the context of contrasting a market
economy vs. a planned economy.

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x86_64Ubuntu
Well, maybe. In common discourse, "free market" is used to downplay the need
for government regulation concerning things like labor rights, pollution and
anti-consumer/predatory behavior.

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hannibalhorn
Pretty obvious, but maybe not clear from the headline: the Max was certified
under the old rules.

At this point, not sure it matters - it seems like lessons have been learned
and overseas regulators (certainly the EASA) will never just rubber stamp the
FAA again. The net effect is Boeing looking at significantly more regulatory
overhead than ever before.

Maybe having multiple, independent regulators reviewing designs will better
address these issues than any legislative requirements ever could.

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sho
I find an interesting parallel with the current discussion around American
business being unduly influenced by China's massive buying power, where even
though it's perfectly legal, businesses are so scared of being locked out of
China's market that they refrain from any criticism of the government there.

That's a negative side, but a positive side could be feeling great pressure to
adhere to the (higher) regulatory standards of other countries. Boeing's
capture of the FAA thus becomes a moot point because better regulators will
still need their own standards met.

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bilbo0s
I would just point out that China and the EU will, without question, move to a
more robust regulatory régime. I agree with that, that's just going to happen.
But also, the US will act to move past its "rubberstamp" regulatory framework.

Now, should China or the EU regard the new US regulatory framework as being
any more effective than the last "rubberstamp" US framework? Absolutely not.
But changes will happen within the US as well, and there is an opportunity
there to make things better.

All that said, yeah, in this case, people can be forgiven for being skeptical
of the US. So most of the improvement in quality will likely be driven by the
regulatory proctology exams we'll probably see out of China and the EU. But,
hey, as long as better quality comes from somewhere, that's better for the
people of the world overall.

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megous
"and the law allows companies to make recommendations about the compensation
of F.A.A. employees."

What? :)

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ensignavenger
The US Constitution allows companies (and anyone else) to make recommendations
as to the salaries of government employees. No law needed to "allow" them to.

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salawat
You're missing the nuance.

Your contention amounts to basic civics.

The legislation mandates an executive implemented direct feedback loop which
can be used by industry to essentially attempt to crack down on problematic
regulators.

While the intent is that it should remain neutral, and only used for purposes
of streamlining and "making things more efficient", providing a means through
which industry could say "this works" vs. "this doesn't", it won't end up
being used that way.

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upofadown
If you base your safety stuff off of a standard that must be met then you need
to do your regulation as a sort of policing. I used to run into this sort of
thing when attempting to design stuff to European standards. The North
American way is to ensure safety by inspection by an agency. The European way
was to leave it to the manufacturers and then penalize deviations from that
standard when they came to light. So this could be seen as a move toward the
European model. That seems to be the general trend these days. Which can
perhaps be seen as a good thing as the various inspection agencies are being
privatized.

The big difference here seems to be on the policing side. European regulators
have the power to impose billion dollar fines and generate criminal charges
against even executive level management. It does not sound like that is the
case here. The companies will be considered innocent until proven guilty which
really should be the other way around for safety related stuff.

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ahartmetz
That is pretty interesting because it's unexpected to be that way around
regarding Europe and USA. I suppose it varies by the kind of product in any
case.

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tialaramex
I'm actually astonished by the apparent claim that the European way isn't how
it's done everywhere for low-risk compliance.

I picked up a random piece of electronics with a bunch of logos that show it's
authorised to be imported and sold in important jurisdictions. It happened to
be a Netgear switch.

It has a CE logo (from the European Union) and an FCC logo (from the US).

For the CE logo Netgear's people will have verified that it behaves in
accordance with the relevant rules, as part of normal procedure for any
product, and the sticker with the logo on just affirms to an importer that
Netgear says this complies. Nobody outside Netgear will have checked it's
compliant unless/ until somebody realises there's a problem.

Only very high risk items in the CE scheme actually need checks by a third
party, that's stuff like pacemakers where if it goes wrong you'll literally
die.

Is it really true that the FCC and similar US agencies have people at
factories and ports across the US checking everything manufactured or imported
is complying to their rules?

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oasisbob
> Only very high risk items in the CE scheme actually need checks by a third
> party

It's not just pacemakers, pretty much the whole PPE category requires
inspection by independent third parties (notified bodies).

That's obvious stuff like climbing gear and equipment for work at height,
maybe less so for certain gloves, helmets, eyewear, carabiners, rope, etc.

Compare the checks for climbing rope, and the whole EN/US scheme is inverted.
We have so few standards in the US market that we just piggyback on theirs.

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m0llusk
If corporations are legally similar to people then some combination of
criminal trial and punishment should be in order.

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klyrs
The death penalty is still a common practice in the US. Given that Boeing is
responsible for hundreds of deaths, what would that look like?

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donarb
A death penalty for a corporation would mean that the company would lose its
license to do business. It used to be done regularly during the 19th century.

[https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/01/08/its-time-
bring...](https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/01/08/its-time-bring-back-
corporate-death-penalty)

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rayiner
The headline implies some sort of causation, or at least correlation, but the
article admits a few paragraphs in that the 737 MAX was “certified under the
old law.”

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0xcde4c3db
It's definitely clunky, but I think there are a couple reasonable readings:

1) This points to a larger pattern of disdain for robust safety regulations as
opposed to a hiccup with one specific product line.

2) The change only happened because the crashes happened later. Had the
crashes happened first, Boeing would have been forced to back off.

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Causality1
I feel like we're in a strange new paradigm where the earliest reaction to
something determines the entire reaction. Boeing wasn't prosecuted in the
first weeks after the crashes therefore it doesn't matter how far the depths
of their greed and negligence went, they never will be.

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chaostheory
When it comes to other shady companies either bending or avoiding safety
regulations, the millennium tower comes to mind

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Tower_(San_Franci...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Tower_\(San_Francisco\))

I’m hoping that tax payers won’t be subsidizing the builder’s irresponsibility

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0583839103
Despite this why is BA stock still going up?

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emiliovesprini
This is paywalled for me. Anyone have a workaround link?

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dicytea
[http://archive.is/0qe4Y](http://archive.is/0qe4Y)

