Throw on your tinfoil hats
In her masterpiece “Atlas Shrugged”, Ayn Rand describes a society in economic decay with widespread business failures, decreased productivity and shortages. In the book this decline is exemplified by accidents in the US railroad system and the fictional railroad company Taggart Transcontinental.
If you’re looking for early signs of the decline of the US economy beyond fiction, look no further than Boeing. Boeing, and particularly its 737 MAX plane, have had numerous issues and accidents in the past with this last week marking a new wave of incidents.
A lenient interpretation is that these incidents are still marginal in the greater scheme of Boeing airtaffic and that the company merely needs to refocus on engineering quality over profitability.
More scrutiny, however, seems to suggest that the US government is failing to regulate air safety and that this is one of many prominent examples of regulatory capture and the revolving door between many US industry giants and their regulators.
In fact, the Federal Aviation Administration (F.A.A.) has over recent decades introduced a practice of delegating some of its inspection functions to Boeing’s own engineers. Design issues with the 737 MAX, which was rushed into production to compete with Airbus’ new A320neo, were known and documented but arguably glossed over by F.A.A. oversight (more here).
The part of the story where we should throw on our tinfoil hat is where John Barnett, a former Boeing quality-control-manager-turned-whistleblower was found dead by apparent suicide two days ago. This happened a couple of days before Mr. Barnett was scheduled to give legal interviews linked to his whistleblower retaliation case against Boeing.
In the words of the Charleston officials: “No detail can be left unturned”.
arcticorangutan / Arctic Orang-Utan
npub1lem…y3sy
2024-03-15 14:45:40
Author Public Key
npub1lem4kp0fmrqada46zdns53w42pxj79xlgwq4m3fyy0j09mrza6hqh3y3syPublished at
2024-03-15 14:45:40Event JSON
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"content": "Throw on your tinfoil hats\n\nIn her masterpiece “Atlas Shrugged”, Ayn Rand describes a society in economic decay with widespread business failures, decreased productivity and shortages. In the book this decline is exemplified by accidents in the US railroad system and the fictional railroad company Taggart Transcontinental.\n\nIf you’re looking for early signs of the decline of the US economy beyond fiction, look no further than Boeing. Boeing, and particularly its 737 MAX plane, have had numerous issues and accidents in the past with this last week marking a new wave of incidents.\n\nA lenient interpretation is that these incidents are still marginal in the greater scheme of Boeing airtaffic and that the company merely needs to refocus on engineering quality over profitability.\n\nMore scrutiny, however, seems to suggest that the US government is failing to regulate air safety and that this is one of many prominent examples of regulatory capture and the revolving door between many US industry giants and their regulators.\n\nIn fact, the Federal Aviation Administration (F.A.A.) has over recent decades introduced a practice of delegating some of its inspection functions to Boeing’s own engineers. Design issues with the 737 MAX, which was rushed into production to compete with Airbus’ new A320neo, were known and documented but arguably glossed over by F.A.A. oversight (more here).\n\nThe part of the story where we should throw on our tinfoil hat is where John Barnett, a former Boeing quality-control-manager-turned-whistleblower was found dead by apparent suicide two days ago. This happened a couple of days before Mr. Barnett was scheduled to give legal interviews linked to his whistleblower retaliation case against Boeing.\n\nIn the words of the Charleston officials: “No detail can be left unturned”.",
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