
The McDonnell Douglas-Boeing merger led to the 737 Max crisis - prostoalex
https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-to-the-737-max-crisis/
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> With the dawn of the 1980s, however, Boeing’s traditional way of doing
> things seemed increasingly out of touch. Deregulation under US presidents
> Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan had changed the economics of the industry,
> Greenberg said. “The idea was that if you had more competition, it would
> drop prices for consumers. Suddenly, airlines are looking at this and
> saying, ‘Oh my God, we can’t pass on the cost by continuously raising ticket
> prices.’ That put pressure back on Boeing, and on Airbus eventually, to
> become cost-conscious.”

I think the ultimate root cause that led to the 737 MAX crisis was de-
regulation and the airlines race to the bottom on price. The whole reason for
making the plane a 737 and not a new aircraft was to cut pilot re-training
costs.

I used to think that highly competitive markets with low prices are the best,
but now I am not so sure. Those kind of markets tend to push the quality down
as well as squeeze the workers. Compare the union workers for the Big Three
during the 1970's to that of the gig economy workers now. Maybe an oligopoly
with high profits and strong unions is what is best in the long term? Or
maybe, we need to alternate periods of disruption and highly competitive
markets with periods of stability and oligopolies? I suspect we as a society
will have to try to figure that out, and that it is not a simple answer.

~~~
justapassenger
Living in first world country it's easy to be biased against race to the
bottom - it hurts previously very well paid jobs and breaks established status
quo.

But that race to the bottom made cost of flying at least order of magnitude
more affordable, and as a result likely saved and improved countless numbers
lives (lifting out of poverty, ability to travel for treatments, ability to
see your loved ones, ability to travel for work, etc).

And to put things in perspective - air travel is still safest form of travel,
even accounting for MAX, and during this whole race to the bottom it was
constantly improving, by orders of magnitude.

~~~
ATsch
This kind of reminds me of the dril quote:

> drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people
> get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,

[https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762](https://twitter.com/dril/status/464802196060917762)

Point being, just that something has some upsides does not mean that it is a
good thing overall. I personally believe that if flying millions of people
across the globe is truly impossible without reckless exploitation of people
and resources, we should rather not do that, no matter what the benefits of
that would be.

~~~
aeternum
> no matter what the benefits would be

This is illogical reasoning. We should look at the cost/benefit tradeoff.
Looking only at costs or only at benefits will not yield the best decision.

We need to draw a line somewhere between safety & cost. I'd argue it is
_always_ possible to make something safer if you are willing to accept higher
cost. Expensive plane tickets have negative externalities, and for some, does
cost lives (inability to get treatments for ex.).

~~~
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> inability to get treatments for ex.

I don't think that is a good example. If the treatment you need requires you
to fly, that means it a very complicated diseases, or a rare disease that only
a few centers treat. In any case, it is likely that the care is very resource
intensive and is either expensive or heavily subsidized. In those cases, even
if the airfare were doubled or tripled, it would not be the limiting factor in
treatment.

~~~
muratk
It doesn't have to be a rare disease—it can just mean that non-basic
healthcare is hard to access.

Example: I live in the Philippines. Its healthcare system is affected by two
things: centralization and the fact that the country is an archipelago.

Most quality health care is happening in Metro Manila. What you find outside
is generally very basic, and even in 2nd-tier cities like Cebu or Davao they
may refer you to Manila for something you'd think they ought be able to do.

With travel by boat being … rather slow, with vacation time not exactly ample,
and the average salary being low I'm quite certain that affordable flights
($25 Cebu - Manila) are making ample difference in terms of what kind of
healthcare situations are being addressed.

~~~
Moru
So healthcare would have been better in the outer regions without cheap air
travel?

------
ratsmack
I spent 45 years in this industry and the following describes exactly what
happened in the mid 90's throughout the entire industry. As subcontractors, we
were told that we needed to get on board with the new way of thinking, or we
would lose our contracts.

>Inside the company, there were rumblings of dissatisfaction. A formerly cosy
atmosphere, in which engineers ran the show and executives aged out of the
company gracefully, was suddenly cut-throat. In 1998, the year after the
merger, Stonecipher warned employees they needed to “quit behaving like a
family and become more like a team. If you don’t perform, you don’t stay on
the team.”

~~~
jbigelow76
_Stonecipher_

Always have an eye on the exit if your new exec sounds like he belongs in the
next Bond movie.

~~~
jonplackett
Sounds like an AOL nickname.

~~~
mc3
Sounds like an easy to crack encryption scheme, probably used on IoT devices
and cryptocurrency exchanges.

------
maxharris
I have a different view of the situation. I believe that the 737 Max disaster
was directly caused by the idea that management is a valuable skill on its
own, that _management_ is somehow separable from the domain-specific knowledge
required in order to make an honest buck.

There are plenty of examples of engineers that make terrible managers, to be
sure. But there are also plenty of examples of managers with business
backgrounds that have absolutely _no_ idea about the consequences of their
decisions. An optimal result requires skill in _both_ domains.

By this point, you might be thinking, "Hey wait, isn't it true that cost-
cutting also had a role in the crisis? Wasn't there at least one engineer that
sounded the alarm in a memo?" And my answer to that is a resounding _yes_. But
the question remains, where the hell did that idea come from? At no point did
anyone think, "I'd love to spike my profits this quarter here and have huge
disaster that will tank us in the next quarter." Therefore the problem isn't
one of simple pursuit of the profit motive, because it is quite clear that
Boeing _hasn 't_ profited from this situation long-term. And that's why I have
focused explicitly on this foolish, self-defeating management fashion at the
top of my mini essay here.

This brings us to the topic of Boeing's future. I could be wrong about him,
but the fact that they have selected a person who majored in _accounting_ to
be their new CEO does not bode well for them. At the very least he has a major
gap in his background to overcome, and at best I can only see them just
managing to hang on instead of growing.

How does this relate to the merger issue? This management fashion I am
speaking would have likely infected _both_ McDonnell-Douglas and Boeing had
they remained separate. That's because companies hire people out of the same
pool of people that learn this stuff in their universities! Maybe there is a
case to be made that having separate companies would make it _slightly_ harder
for them to both fail, but I believe that this isn't a very strong argument.

~~~
rossdavidh
While I agree with some of your sentiment, I think it's worth pointing out
that the recently-fired CEO on whose watch this debacle happened, was a
lifetime aviation employee with an engineering background:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Muilenburg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Muilenburg)

~~~
jplayer01
He’d been the CEO since ... 2015. I think it’s entirely unfair to push all the
responsibility on him. He didn’t build the modern Boeing culture. He inherited
it, and by accounts I’ve read so far, was unable to change it sufficiently to
prevent the accidents. It’s _hard_ to change company culture once entrenched
and I’m hesitant to scapegoat him when there are obviously a lot of other
significant factors at play.

~~~
rl3
I agree he wasn't entirely to blame. Regardless, the handling of the MAX
incidents was inexcusable. The moral deficiencies were innumerable.

~~~
jplayer01
Yes, of course. He didn't handle it well at all. The problems aren't going
away with him stepping down, unfortunately, and considering his replacement,
it doesn't seem like there's any interest in fixing the real issues that are
plaguing the company.

------
djsumdog
I dunno. At first this article almost felt like damage control: it wasn't
Boeing, it was those McDonnell Douglas peeps. But then it seemed to focus more
on the engineers themselves and try to make them seem like a cozy family shop
.. even before the big merger; Boeing was hardly that. It was (and is) a
massive employer that has tactically distributed manufacturing to as many
different states as possible (to help with lobbying efforts under the banner
of job creation; distributed with a very wide net of employees).

Even without the Douglas acquisition, would we still be here with the 737-Max8
failure as bad as it is? I think all industry over the past two decades have
gone down the route of maximizing profits and cutting costs. Hell, there are
startups build around the idea of just ignoring or lobbying against
legislation (Uber, AirBnB) and marking that arrogance as being "disruptive,"
as if they were some kind of civil rights pioneers.

It's really impossible to tell what would have happened without Boeing buying
MCD, but I there is a good chance we would have ended up here eventually
anyway. Focusing on MCD in this article feels more of a narrative tool than an
objective critique and analysis.

~~~
Frost1x
In a lot of respects, I find modern business tactics skewing ever further
towards being more and more harmful to society at large for the sake of
business capital owners. Let's not forget the social contract and that we, as
a society, allow businesses to operate while they remain beneficial to
society.

I'm not saying remove capitalism but some modifications of our current state
of capitalism are certainly in order. Perhaps this is tighter or different
regulatory constraints, changes to some core principles (e.g. Citizen's
United, business rights as "people", etc.). I'm not saying I have the answers
or the quick examples mentionrd are the core issues, just that the future
doesn't look great if current trends continue. We need to start a productive
conversation and elect representatives willing to be a voice in that
conversation to explore and try improvement options.

~~~
vlovich123
Is this a genie that can be bottled back up? Lets say you enact these magical
regulations. Will the corporations stick around or will they focus on other
countries where they have more clout? Similarly, will they use international
levers of pressure to "fix" the issues any one country poses?

~~~
pm90
It can be. As bad as it seems today, the Gilded Age had even worse income
inequality. The part that's frightening is what it lead to, and I'm afraid to
say that the country seems to be going down exactly the same path as certain
countries in Europe did around that time (rise of fascism, nationalist leaders
lying through their teeth to secure power by any means, erosion of democratic
norms and institutions).

------
legitster
“We thought that we’d kill McDonnell Douglas and we had it on the ropes,” he
said. “I still believe that Harry outsmarted Phil and his gang bought Boeing
with Boeing’s money. We were all just disgusted.” More than that, he added,
the company had “paid way, way too much money [for McDonnell Douglas] and
we’re still paying for it. We wrote off so many tens of billions of dollars
for that whole mess.”

A good lesson to not play games with hustlers. McDonnell Douglas was famous
for being slimy, financial rent-seekers. They got hustled.

~~~
dade_
One great company after another destroyed by financial shenanigans. Avaya &
Silver Lake Partners is another that comes to mind, but there have been many.

------
bynkman
> Stonecipher seems to have agreed with this assessment. “When people say I
> changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so it’s run like a
> business rather than a great engineering firm,” he told the Chicago Tribune
> in 2004. “It is a great engineering firm, but people invest in a company
> because they want to make money.”

Wow. In retrospect, this is an amoral path. Basically it's money over lives.
Furthermore, this "intent" has cost them more financially.

~~~
jgeada
And yet for Stonecipher it was a personally financially successful personal
decision and none of the consequences will hurt him personally. When the
rewards always go to the top (aka shareholders) and consequences always fall
elsewhere, this is the predictable consequence.

We need some system such that shareholders and executives become personally
responsible for these tragic yet predictable consequences.

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
Exactly this. No skin in the game will lead to these outcomes.

~~~
senderista
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_problem)

------
JohnJamesRambo
Why has antitrust died completely in America? Any hope of it coming back? I
don’t want one movie studio, one airplane manufacturer...

~~~
munificent
_> Why has antitrust died completely in America?_

1\. The Citizens United ruling allows unbounded money to flow into campaigns.

2\. Campaign funding determines election results.

3\. Elected officials determine what America does in terms of law and
regulation.

4\. Billionaires pour tons of money into campaigns.

When you allow dollars to effectively determine elections instead of votes,
the end result is oligarchy and the rule of the rich.

~~~
bumby
I used to ascribe to this notion, but 2016 proved me wrong about #2.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-electi...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/campaign-
finance/)

~~~
ngngngng
This proves nothing. Both candidates raised outstanding amounts of money.
Without that, neither of them would have had a chance.

Also, it's a completely different ball game talking about which laws get
passed vs which candidate gets elected.

~~~
bumby
If a 46% increase in funding is negligible, then I would think "2\. Campaign
funding determines election results." would have to be modified.

Is your claim that above a certain dollar threshold money no longer has an
impact?

------
metabagel
Qatar Airways refuses to take Dreamliners built in South Carolina, due to
quality issues.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-
dreamline...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamliner-
production-problems.html)

~~~
mzs
Then Boeing tried to deliver them just days before the end of the year but
Qatar Airlines had them fly back. My guess is it really was that Boeing had
not met the schedule for fitting the Qsuite and QA was having none of it.

[https://simpleflying.com/qatar-airways-flies-brand-new-
boein...](https://simpleflying.com/qatar-airways-flies-brand-new-
boeing-787-9s-back-to-the-us/)

~~~
nexuist
>Qatar Airlines had them fly back

Must be quite a somber experience piloting an aircraft just deemed unreliable
by your employer...

~~~
mzs
It was eight months later, the planes were fine. This was about Boeing trying
to deliver planes CY19 for accounting reasons that did not have business class
seating that can turn into a conference room, the reason QA chose to buy them
in the first place.

------
typon
What I don't understand is why the Boeing executives are not on trial for the
negligent killing of 189 + 157 people?

~~~
d33
Shouldn't then car industry executives be also to blame for negligent killing
of the ones whose death was a result of a car failure related to planned
obsolescence?

~~~
markdown
Absolutely. If there is a direct link between wilful negligence and death,
executives need to go to jail.

------
combatentropy
From the article: “When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was
the intent, so it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm,”
[Harry Stonecipher, the new CEO from McDonnell-Douglas] told the Chicago
Tribune in 2004. “It is a great engineering firm, but people invest in a
company because they want to make money.”

I lay the blame at the feet of each person at the company who acted selfishly.

Selfishness gets an easy pass here on Hacker News --- well, just about
everywhere these days, I guess. Take this recent thread, where the submitter
confesses that he has been slacking off for 6 years at work. A lot of people
egged him on. I remember one comment that advised him to double down and go
Full Sociopath
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21964204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21964204)).

I could not think of a good rebuttal. I mean, I work hard even when no one is
watching, because I am religious, but I did not imagine it going well if I
just laid out the idea of a transcendental world. But the only solution I see
is reformation of the individual, one by one, not revolution of the social
structure --- change from the inside out, instead of the outside in.

The enemy is not the rich or the poor, the executive or the engineer. Any of
these people can be dangerous, if their philosophy is maximum selfishness.
Furthermore, no set of laws is clever enough to keep the peace if the majority
of citizens are sociopaths. They will always find the legal loopholes. On the
other hand, a country with the dumbest regulatory set-up would still run fine
if peopled by saints, people who are the opposite of selfish, who are always
asking, am I treating others how I wish to be treated?

~~~
jmkni
> I mean, I work hard even when no one is watching, because I am religious

Interestingly, I work hard even when no one is watching because I'm not
religious.

If you are religious, then by definition you believe somebody is always
watching.

~~~
combatentropy
Thank you. What then would you say motivates you?

------
soapboxrocket
This is absolutely on target. I am hearing from friends in Wichita that the
Textron Aviation merger with Beechcraft is creating the same situation as the
Douglas-Boeing merger. I have friends that have been with Textron for a long
time that are getting new bosses from Beechcraft and the term that is getting
used is "well that was Beeched."

~~~
senderista
Hope they find making cluster bombs a rewarding career choice.

------
Aloha
I dispute that McDonnell Douglas was 'on the ropes' before the merger - the
MD-80/90/95 family was selling well, and while the MD-11 was not, the market
at that time for wide-body jets was fairly soft. In addition the C-17 was
still being made as fast as it could be at that time. I'd also point to the
success of the Delta II heavy lift vehicle too.

Whats interesting to me, is the merger between McDonnell Aircraft and Douglas
Aircraft was effectively a shotgun marriage. DAC was capital starved in the
late 60's and merged for an infusion of capital.

~~~
cameldrv
The MD-80/90/95 didn't have a very big order book, and there was no
replacement for it. The MD-11 was a failure, and the MD-12 was cancelled.
Douglas essentially had no future after 2000. The military side was better,
but the A-12 was cancelled, and they lost the JSF. The only bright spot was
the Super Hornet, which was supposed to have been an interim aircraft until
the JSF started to be produced.

~~~
Aloha
2000 is a bit premature, also in 97, the MD-95 was still a paper aircraft
(first flight was not until 1998) - and the last MD-95 rolled out of Long
Beach in 2006. Nor was a replacement for the MD-90 obviously needed

The MD-11 had the same issues the 767 had at that time, meaning the market for
wide body aircraft was slow, very slow.

I suspect that had the merger with Boeing not happened, the MD-11, MD-90 and
MD-95 would have continued on in sales for a while. I'm lead to believe Boeing
didn't try as hard to sell the MD-95 (Boeing discontinued the MD-90 entirely
because it competed in the same space as the 737) as McDonnell Douglas would
have. I also suspect Boeing would rather have cancelled the ship as soon as
the merger happened, but it would have cost them more to cancel it then, than
it did by waiting 8-odd years.

Growing up in Long Beach, it was clear to all the people who worked at DAC,
that Boeing bought them for their Military side, not for the commercial
aircraft though.

In the end, 9/11 made the whole new aircraft market go squishy, and it lead to
several project ends across the industry - most notably the 757.

~~~
cameldrv
In 1997, the 767 had 682 cumulative deliveries, and 120 unfilled orders. The
777 had 104 cumulative deliveries, and 221 unfilled orders. The MD-11 only
sold 200 units total in its entire history.

The MD-90 was also non-competitive with the A321 and the 757. You can take a
look at the sales numbers. By the mid nineties, Douglas was producing
something like 20 a year, Boeing was doing about 50 a year, and Airbus was
producing about 25 a year.

Douglas badly needed a cash infusion to get a competitive product flying.
Their whole product line was derivatives of 1960s aircraft that weren't even
winners in the 60s. Meanwhile, Boeing had introduced the 757, 767, and 777,
which were all great aircraft.

------
cletus
I am not an aeronautical engineer. A year or two ago I read a comment here
that certainly _seemed_ legitimate that talked about airplane design and it
went something like this (paraphrased because I can't find it now):

> As soon as you move the engines, you probably need to move the wings. As
> soon as you move the wings, you need to redesign the airframe. As soon as
> you do that you're designing a whole new plane.

I can't even remember if this was talking about the Max at all.

So it seems to me the core problem here is Boeing had reached the limit of
what they could do with a 50 year old airframe while maintaining the common
type rating and aircraft and engine design have simply changed. Airbus may
eventually have that problem with the A320 family. I really don't know. But
they don't have it yet.

Part of controlling costs at a budget airline is maintaining a single fleet
(in type rating terms). The two choices here seem to be the 737 or the A320.

The Max came about because there was a huge captured demand for it from the
likes of Southwest. Would this have happened without the MD merger? I can't
say but I'd be surprised if it couldn't given the demand from budget airlines.

Of course people like to take an issue like this and tie it to whatever axe
they want to grind too.

~~~
temac
> Airbus may eventually have that problem with the A320 family. I really don't
> know. But they don't have it yet.

Airbus is already fly-by-wire on the A320, and they know how to do it not
_too_ stupidly. They can provide the same control laws and feedbacks to new
models without introducing ugly hacks on top of mechanical commands. That
helps.

I believe other Airbus families already use controls that are _very_ similar
to the ones used in the A320, and even if that's not of the same type rating
that probably also ease training a lot.

The 737 will eventually have to go; even the somehow modernized versions are a
quite outdated way to make big commercial airplanes nowadays. (And the whole
idea of grandfathering regulation is utterly stupid, btw.)

------
dzonga
political corruption brought the 737 max to the ground. once a manufacturer
has power to do their own QA instead of the FAA or any other independent
authority, you're doing stuff on a 3rd world status level. no oversight.
investor driven.

------
cptskippy
This piece kind of reads like the HP / Compaq merger.

~~~
Iwan-Zotow
You mean Xerox/HP merger

~~~
ggm
You mean the Digital-Equipment Corp/Compaq merger

------
ausjke
Recently the highly controversial bill
S.386([https://antis386.org/](https://antis386.org/)) that mentioned Boeing
used $9/hr India engineers to write some level of the software used on its
airlines, is this true if there are any insiders who know something about it?

Without a competitor Boeing has no intention to make the safest product
anymore, however, Airline unlike others, must make sure safety/quality remains
to be the No.1 priority. Any outsourcing should be carefully thought out
before running towards the cheapest offer offshore.

------
oefrha
Previous discussion on basically the same story:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21304277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21304277)

------
fargle
See also: Lockheed purchase of General Dynamics aircraft division in 1990s...

------
vanusa
Companies merge, split up, get acquired, go bankrupt.

It's what they do, and there's nothing inherently dysfunctional about that. By
themselves, these actions don't cause mines to collapse, plans to fall from
the sky and highly polluting vehicles to be put on the road with full
knowledge of the company's senior leadership. If there is a systemic cause for
these things -- it's yawning gaps regulatory oversight (and enforcement).

But these gaps aren't accidents, and don't arise in a vacuum, either. Nor are
they mere byproducts of what should otherwise by a working system.

In effect, they're there by _design_. They are exactly the desired outcomes of
a system -- and the governing ideology behind it -- that enshrines the "right
of capital" as a fundamental right. And which (not coincidentally) seeks to
protect the exercises of this "right" from the inevitable consequences of
their actions, as much as it can get away with doing so. With carnage and
tragedy being the inevitable results.

Because that's what it was designed to do.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism)

------
jillesvangurp
Are we doing an another round of armchair aviation engineers outlining ad
nauseum all the reasons they believe the 737 Max cannot possibly fly and
should never have been considered that ignores all the evidence that the two
accidents were successfully root-caused to an issue that has now been fixed
and is undergoing an understandably and embarrassingly lengthy process of
certification? Seems to be an almost daily ritual on HN these days.

Yes Boeing has issues; especially in their senior management. That's why they
are struggling to keep up with competitors in the cheaper/faster/more
efficient/less noisy category (aka. the market). But also, the 737 is still
one of the safest and most successful planes ever and last year was one of the
safest years in aviation history with many thousands of them flying around
every day. Once patched up, the max will be part of that fleet for decades to
come and is unlikely to bend the excellent safety record in any statistically
meaningful way regardless of the current sentiments or the recent accidents.

IMHO, Boeing has some corporate culture issues to sort out and it definitely
does not help that they operate as a state protected monopoly that mostly acts
to shovel defense money around and enrich contractors, share holders,
politicians, lobbyists, etc. involved with cutting up that pie. But lets be
real, every other big aviation manufacturer works exactly the same way and it
seems to work fine in terms of safety.

Fundamentally there are no good technical reasons for the hundreds of 737
maxes to be permanently retired over real, perceived or imagined risks. Yes,
there are some technical issues that are addressable, are being addressed, and
require lengthy inspections & certification to verify that they have indeed
been addressed. That's basically what's happening because they are fixable
issues. There are no known un-fixable issues here, no known show stopping
design flaws that can't be worked around, no known unacceptable (i.e.
uncertifiable) hacks, etc. Some of the fixes may indeed lead to some
retraining effort, which I'm sure is annoying but not fatal for Boeing. And
yes, there's brand damage and Boeing is probably going to have to do some pro-
forma rebranding (737 maxi-cosi, anyone?) and symbolic modifications.

When their choice is to go out of business or attempt to fix entirely fixable
technical issues they'd be complete idiots to get sucked down the first hole.
Permanently retiring many hundreds of planes that once fixed are perfectly
good for decades to come is just not going to be a thing. Boeing going
bankrupt over this under the current political climate is also not a thing. To
big to fail means rules can be bended, changed, abused, or otherwise ignored.
That's how this happened to begin with. One way or another the FAA will
ultimately rubber stamp whatever needs rubber stamping.

Some time this year, the thing will resume flying and Boeing goes back to
licking its wounds and planning the next iteration of its products. I imaging
they'd be tempted to unshelve some projects they had for future products as
well and dust off what lingering R&D capability they have to come up with
something new. That'd be a smart investment.

------
cryptozeus
Sure lets blame 40 year old merger

------
wallace_f
Imagine if the FTC actually still did their job, not just how much more
innovation and competition there'd be, but also lives saved.

------
Cyder
Capitalism is working in this case. Boeing is being punished. Market forces
are not always instantaneous. The China boom made investors demand
unreasonable returns for domestic companies as well. A good business plan and
making solid money over time is no longer acceptable. The China boom changed
the expectations of investors to unreasonable rates. But the China boom wasn't
capitalism. The Chinese economy is highly controlled and this influence on
more capitalistic markets is what happens where the two separate markets
converge.

~~~
bgutierrez
Yes. If enough customers die using a product, people will stop using that
product.

~~~
maxharris
Both of you have a point! I believe that I have identified a crucial factor in
my comment here
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21972656](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21972656))
that identifies the root of the problem. I hope that it helps in resolving
this disagreement.

------
Stierlitz
McDonnell Douglas to blame for 737 Max crisis? I don't think so. But full
marks to the PR team that thought up that retrospective self serving
disinformation.

------
rb808
Looks like Boeing is the biggest producer of aircraft in the world. What is
the problem again?

~~~
simsla
People dying, because cutting costs was considered more important than due
diligence. Might doesn't make right.

~~~
maxharris
I agree with you, but what do you think of the point I have made here, which
is that there's an even more fundamental problem _drove_ the awful, immoral
cost-cutting?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21972656](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21972656)

