Was just about to post this. I think I'm unironically never flying on a Boeing again. There's no way they're fixing this short of nationalizing Boeing, and there's no political will for anything...
Was just about to post this. I think I'm unironically never flying on a Boeing again.
There's no way they're fixing this short of nationalizing Boeing, and there's no political will for anything like that.
But my life is more important than some shithead beancounter's 0.2% ROI, so airbus indefinitely it is.
I hate these stories. They just fuel the same conspiracy paranoia that surrounds all the Trump nonsense. If you don't want to fly Boeing that's fine, but this being your last straw is concerning,...
Exemplary
I hate these stories. They just fuel the same conspiracy paranoia that surrounds all the Trump nonsense. If you don't want to fly Boeing that's fine, but this being your last straw is concerning, especially if that's because you're implying Boeing had someone killed.
Without some massive evidence I highly doubt that Boeing had someone killed (especially over such small claims and a minor case), let alone had them killed NOW when this all started in 2017-2019, and will have law enforcement and his attorney magically wrapped up.
Just from the link alone it looks like he called out some corner cutting by Boeing, and likely wound up soft blacklisted, filed a suit about it, and then eventually took his life. This is not a totally uncommon pattern in such industries for all sorts of reasons, and that doesn't mean it's ok, but it's a far cry from the "had them killed to stay silent" kind of nonsense these headlines are gunning for.
Edit-
I’m not going to bother responding to every comment as I don’t think this will go anywhere. I will say that I have known people who will swear that Hillary Clinton has had people killed. They’ve had much the same evidence and reasoning.
I do not like Boeing. I do not like the Clinton’s. That does not mean that I’m going to assume they’re having people killed and capable of covering it up. Especially in some scenario where frankly it’s absurd to think they could pose any threat worth that risk.
I would consider that sufficient justification to avoid Boeing on moral grounds, if not on the basis that a corporation that retaliates against safety whistleblowers is unlikely to be a...
Just from the link alone it looks like he called out some corner cutting by Boeing, and likely wound up soft blacklisted, filed a suit about it, and then eventually took his life.
I would consider that sufficient justification to avoid Boeing on moral grounds, if not on the basis that a corporation that retaliates against safety whistleblowers is unlikely to be a corporation that takes safety seriously.
Yeah, this is my exact take. If people want to fly on the plane built by a company that clearly prioritizes profit over safety then be my guest. Pack a chute.
Yeah, this is my exact take. If people want to fly on the plane built by a company that clearly prioritizes profit over safety then be my guest. Pack a chute.
This type of reply really does nothing for a discussion. It's similar to telling someone they cannot be critical of capitalism due to buying things and existing in capitalism. Someone wanting to...
This type of reply really does nothing for a discussion. It's similar to telling someone they cannot be critical of capitalism due to buying things and existing in capitalism. Someone wanting to boycott one corporation due to current scandals and reasons is perfectly fine and they don't need to shrug and give up just because someone tells them "well you better hate every company that ever existed!".
Sadly, true. But the other corporation that makes commercial planes is a French company. Now... I don't know how much regulation France puts on companies but my limited knowledge I would think it...
Sadly, true. But the other corporation that makes commercial planes is a French company. Now... I don't know how much regulation France puts on companies but my limited knowledge I would think it would be tighter than an American company with more oversight seeing as Europe as a whole seems to be less worried about freedom of corporations and better about calling out corporation's bullshit.
But, I agree with some one else, just cause there isn't much choice doesn't mean we should not try to hold them accountable. And we should try to push our governments to hold them accountable (one of the many things wrong with America these days... in general corporations are not held near as accountable as even they were in the past).
That's one of these depressing, harsh facts that make me despise corporations chasing profits at any and all cost. You can ruin peoples lives without outright murdering them. And if there are...
Just from the link alone it looks like he called out some corner cutting by Boeing, and likely wound up soft blacklisted, filed a suit about it, and then eventually took his life. This is not a totally uncommon pattern in such industries for all sorts of reasons, and that doesn't mean it's ok
That's one of these depressing, harsh facts that make me despise corporations chasing profits at any and all cost. You can ruin peoples lives without outright murdering them. And if there are alternatives that do not utterly disregard human needs, and work on fixing shortcomings instead of preventing their detection by sowing fear, that's reason enough to choose those over the other.
I understand why we don't have downvotes here, but damn this comment is awful and should not be so high, and especially not listed as Exemplary. Comparing someone's deaths that might help cover-up...
I understand why we don't have downvotes here, but damn this comment is awful and should not be so high, and especially not listed as Exemplary.
Comparing someone's deaths that might help cover-up for corporates crimes to a list of things that there is evidence that never happened (the clinton conspiracies) is irresponsible at best.
Isn't that exactly what they're doing by being lax with the safety of their planes? Sure, it's a lot more direct an act to single out and deliberately murder one person. But their safety culture...
If you don't want to fly Boeing that's fine, but this being your last straw is concerning, especially if that's because you're implying Boeing had someone killed.
Isn't that exactly what they're doing by being lax with the safety of their planes? Sure, it's a lot more direct an act to single out and deliberately murder one person. But their safety culture could easily result in hundreds of people dying. If they're willing to accidentally kill hundreds of people, why not intentionally kill one person? You've already crossed the moral line where you're willing to sacrifice lives to make money. In the case of safety, they are willing to sacrifice hundreds of lives to increase their earnings a bit. In this case, they would be willing to murder one individual to avoid huge legal costs or losses in sales.
It's clear they're already willing to kill people to save money. If this was a deliberate murder, it wouldn't really be that much of an escalation.
I feel that you may have this vision of a cigar-smoking, mustachioed CEO sitting in his tower office saying "who gives a shit, put the planes into production - the passengers are only peasants,...
It's clear they're already willing to kill people to save money.
I feel that you may have this vision of a cigar-smoking, mustachioed CEO sitting in his tower office saying "who gives a shit, put the planes into production - the passengers are only peasants, after all." But that's not really how corporations work. There's nobody at Boeing making a deliberate choice to kill people to save money, as you put it.
Which is unfortunate, because if there were, we could just arrest them for manslaughter.
To forestall the immediate objection of "well, they could focus more on safety," that's true of every company, ever. You can always spend more money making things more safe... until ultimately you've gone completely bankrupt and never shipped a product. Obviously Boeing is on the wrong side of that line, but the overall point is that there are no clearly-defined metrics or laws that Boeing, as a company, is intentionally skirting. (And there shouldn't be: imagine if every company was liable every time they produced something that failed or led to a death. Nobody would produce anything. Automakers? All closed. The people who make bleach bottles? Out of business. Etc.)
So it's doubly unfortunate that the real problem is more pernicious and harder to solve: it's a complex system of incentives and decisionmaking in which nobody is ultimately responsible. I think you would really enjoy the book The Man Who Broke Capitalism by David Gelles. It's mostly about GE, but it does touch on Boeing fairly extensively as another company which was hollowed out and, basically, ruined by an increasing focus on profits and shareholder returns.
Just to be clear, I agree with you that there's a problem at Boeing. I think there's an argument to be made that Boeing's board has incentivized the company's leadership to focus on profits over the years at the expense of all else, but that's still very different than someone deliberately saying "let's let these people die in order to save money."
And finally, in terms of lives lost, the air travel industry's safety record is the best it's ever been.
While that's probably the case for Boeing specifically, it would be disingenuous to say that companies won't make deliberate choices to kill people. The violent history of strikebreaking comes to...
But that's not really how corporations work. There's nobody at Boeing making a deliberate choice to kill people to save money, as you put it.
While that's probably the case for Boeing specifically, it would be disingenuous to say that companies won't make deliberate choices to kill people.
The violent history of strikebreaking comes to mind. Also it would be naive to say that the wars waged throughout the US's history were not heavily influenced by the desires of the business owners (the Banana Wars jump to the forefront).
The entire history of slavery in the USA also cannot be ignored...it's not as if slavedrivers weren't operating businesses....and they went to literal war over their right to keep slaves.
It is difficult to respond to this in text without seeming accusational, so please understand that I don't mean it in a bad way. I'd argue that the Pinto is actually a really good example of how...
It is difficult to respond to this in text without seeming accusational, so please understand that I don't mean it in a bad way.
I'd argue that the Pinto is actually a really good example of how these things don't result from some sort of corporate fatcat CEO making decisions that they knew would kill people. Below are some excerpts from the wikipedia article on the Pinto.
The Ford Pinto has been cited and debated in numerous business ethics[57][58] as well as tort reform[59][60] case studies. Ford was accused of knowing the car had an unsafe tank placement and then forgoing design changes based on an internal cost-benefit analysis. Two landmark legal cases, Grimshaw v. Ford Motor Co. and Indiana v. Ford Motor Co., resulted from fatal accidents involving Pintos.[61] ... Scholarly work published in the decades after the Pinto's release has examined the cases and offered summations of the general understanding of the Pinto and the controversy regarding the car's safety performance and risk of fire. These works reviewed misunderstandings related to the actual number of fire-related deaths related to the fuel system design, "wild and unsupported claims asserted in Pinto Madness and elsewhere",[62] the facts of the related legal cases, Grimshaw vs Ford Motor Company and State of Indiana vs Ford Motor Company, the applicable safety standards at the time of design, and the nature of the NHTSA investigations and subsequent vehicle recalls.[63] One described the Grimshaw case as "mythical" due to several significant factual misconceptions and their effect on the public's understanding.[64]
The placement of the car's fuel tank was the result of both conservative industry practice of the time as well as the uncertain regulatory environment during the development and early sales periods of the car...The Pinto's design positioned its fuel tank between the solid live rear axle and the rear bumper, a standard practice in US subcompact cars at the time.
As part of a response to the NHTSA's proposed regulations, crash testing conducted in 1970 with modified Ford Mavericks demonstrated vulnerability at fairly low crash speeds. Design changes were made, but post-launch tests showed similar results.[72] These tests were conducted to develop crash testing standards rather than specifically investigating fuel system integrity. Though Ford engineers were not pleased with the car's performance, no reports of the time indicate particular concern.[73]
Ford also tested several different vehicle modifications that could improve rear impact performance.[75] However, the engineer's occupational caution and aversion to "unproven" solutions, as well as a view that the crash test results were inconclusive, resulted in the use of a conventional fuel tank design and placement.[76][77] The use of an above-the-axle tank location was considered safer by some, but not all, at Ford. This placement was not a viable option for the hatchback and station wagon body styles.[78]
In 1973, Ford's Environmental and Safety Engineering division developed a cost–benefit analysis entitled Fatalities Associated with Crash Induced Fuel Leakage and Fires for submission to the NHTSA in support of Ford's objection to proposed stronger fuel system regulation.[81] Mark Dowie's investigative article "Pinto Madness", published in Mother Jones magazine, emphasized the emotional aspects of the Grush/Saunby Report and implied Ford was callously trading lives for profits.[87] The Mother Jones article also erroneously claimed that somewhere between 500 and 900 persons had been killed in fires attributed to the Pinto's unique design features.[88]
The public understanding of the cost-benefit analysis has contributed to the mythology of the Ford Pinto case. Time magazine said the memo was one of the automotive industry's "most notorious paper trails".[52] A common misconception is that the document considered Ford's tort liability costs rather than the generalized cost to society and applied to the annual sales of all passenger cars, not just Ford vehicles. The general misunderstanding of the document, as presented by Mother Jones, gave it an operational significance it never had.[89][90]
it is endlessly tiring to have to talk about corporate evil like this with people who think any serious person actually believes in a cabal of mustache twirlers. The reality is so much more bleak...
it is endlessly tiring to have to talk about corporate evil like this with people who think any serious person actually believes in a cabal of mustache twirlers.
The reality is so much more bleak and boring. Everyone does these evil things because each individual person is acting in their own rational self interest. That doesn't make it any less evil, and it certainly doesn't justify deciding the people you disagree with are conspiracy theorists when the way Boeing and the FAA have acted since the 737 Max debacle (and honestly even the 787 lipo battery fire) has been shown to be actually genuinely conspiratorial.
That would be my point. Boeing, with the Max, made some decisions that resulted in it not being legally required to recertify. Why? Because they didn't want to spend the money, and take the time,...
That would be my point. Boeing, with the Max, made some decisions that resulted in it not being legally required to recertify. Why? Because they didn't want to spend the money, and take the time, to recertify.
What is certification? It's where the FAA reviews, in detail, an aircraft and its systems to verify they're (among other things) safe and likely to perform as the FAA and manufacturer expect. To help establish procedures for how to operate and maintain the aircraft. And so on.
So really, it doesn't matter whether or not a "mustache twirler" was in the room when they decided to avoid recertifying. They found a path forward that avoided safety checks, simply because they decided those were a cost they were unwilling to engage in.
Which, by some definitions, is inarguably evil. People in decision making positions chose to go with the money, over going with the process that would examine and verify the aircraft. That's literally putting some unknowns on the passengers (and crew) to endure, simply for cost reasons.
Now I'll admit that gold plating every product is expensive. But safety regulations are written in blood. The FAA and NTSB have rigorous processes because the early history of aircraft showed accidents tend to be very, very, very serious. Often fatal. And passenger aircraft put not just a handful of crew at risk, but hundreds of people at risk.
The reviews and checks and verifications are an attempt to systemically reduce risk. Which industry sees only as cost.
This is an example of capitalism placing money at a higher value than humanity. When they look to "game" the system, when they look to "obtain exceptions" to safety regulations and safety checks, that's what they're doing. They're skipping out on things the system has included for safety reasons, simply to save money. To garner higher profit.
That's kind of evil. At least a little evil. And in the case of the Max, since it happened, people are dead who wouldn't be if the aircraft had undergone those systemic reviews. All because, at some point, after however much maneuvering and internal discussion, someone at Boeing where the buck stopped finally just said "no, make it happen so we don't have to go through the recert." And people died.
I have no objection to someone describing executives as "killing people" in a rhetorical sense. The comment I replied to outright suggested that Boeing executives ordered the murder of the...
I have no objection to someone describing executives as "killing people" in a rhetorical sense. The comment I replied to outright suggested that Boeing executives ordered the murder of the whistleblower and theorized that they would be willing to do so based on their safety record - hence my post suggesting that bad things can happen because of systems, instead of because of evil people.
“yeah, there’s actually like lots of abstract social situations where these kinds of pressures and incentives can effectively create such a situation without requiring an actively evil person to be doing it”,
That is a good summary of what I was trying to get across in my comment, so I think we're in agreement here. Please let me know if that wasn't clear and I can try to rephrase.
My point is that 1. suspicious deaths should be investigated. 2. People do reprehensible acts sometimes. The experiments with syphilis and the drug experiments by the CIA in the 60s come to mind....
My point is that 1. suspicious deaths should be investigated. 2. People do reprehensible acts sometimes. The experiments with syphilis and the drug experiments by the CIA in the 60s come to mind. Also, the angel of death nurses etc. the Move bombing
I haven't got any investment in this case being a murder.
To nit pick on your point though, from what I've seen of the trolley problem type hypotheticals, people are far far more willing to "let others die" rather than to actively take one life. The (a)...
To nit pick on your point though, from what I've seen of the trolley problem type hypotheticals, people are far far more willing to "let others die" rather than to actively take one life. The (a) diffusion of responsibility coupled with (b) the uncertainty of "there might not be any deaths" plus (c) they will be random nameless masses together mentally keep it a very wide gap apart from intentionally naming one specific person to kill.
Honestly, the fact that the article doesn't mention the possibility of murder at all is itself a bit concerning. They say the injury was self-inflicted, but they don't mention what criteria were...
Honestly, the fact that the article doesn't mention the possibility of murder at all is itself a bit concerning. They say the injury was self-inflicted, but they don't mention what criteria were used to determine that.
In a case like this, where someone is a clear antagonist of a very powerful corporation, the default should be to publish information that clearly documents why the injury isn't self-inflicted.
Hell, this shouldn't even be up to a county coroner alone. If someone is a whistleblower against one of the biggest corporations in the country, and they turn up dead? There should automatically be an independent federal investigation into the matter. We should do that even if for on other reason than just building public trust in the justice system.
Because honestly, I wouldn't put it past Boeing to kill someone. They're clearly lax in their safety standards. They're clearly willing to let hundreds of people be killed in an accident if it helps their bottom line. If a company is willing to kill hundreds through lax safety standards, is it really that much of a stretch that they might be willing to directly kill one person? And Boeing certainly has the money and connections to various military and intelligence types that would make that sort of thing a lot easier to pull off.
This really wouldn't be such a stretch for Boeing. They would just be expanding their rap sheet from homicide to murder.
To be honest, yes? It's a pretty big difference. You can construct moral arguments that put some kind of equivalence between the two, but the reality of making the choice between "look let's just...
If a company is willing to kill hundreds through lax safety standards, is it really that much of a stretch that they might be willing to directly kill one person?
To be honest, yes? It's a pretty big difference. You can construct moral arguments that put some kind of equivalence between the two, but the reality of making the choice between "look let's just ship it yolo" and "let's hire an assassin to kill a whistleblower ex post facto just out spite" for an actual human being is quite large.
It wasn't post facto. 2 reasons why I think it's still reasonable that they'd do it now. ONe he was about to testify again against them for something. 2. He's being outspoken about his experiences...
It wasn't post facto. 2 reasons why I think it's still reasonable that they'd do it now. ONe he was about to testify again against them for something. 2. He's being outspoken about his experiences and this time due to a lot of bad publicity a lot more people are paying attention. I mean how many people knew who he was before Boeing got all sorts of bad media and then NPR actually wanted to interview this guy cause they saw that he had been a whistleblower in the past. And he is now well known for saying that he was about to take a commercial flight and turned around and got off the plane when he learned it was a 737. He's getting more attention right now.
Course, one would argue his suicide is just getting him more attention. So if Boeing killed him they either figured it was better to shut him up now (and before he testified against them) or they were stupid (I don't believe this of most big corporations, they have lots of lawyers and PR people to tell them otherwise) and didn't realize that him dying now would just get more attention on him.
(I simply don't know if he killed himself or if he was killed. But I fully admit it looks suspicious).
I've got to disagree here. It would be pretty irresponsible journalism to mention the possibility of murder without any grounds (other than "a big corporation didn't like this guy") to believe...
Honestly, the fact that the article doesn't mention the possibility of murder at all is itself a bit concerning.
I've got to disagree here. It would be pretty irresponsible journalism to mention the possibility of murder without any grounds (other than "a big corporation didn't like this guy") to believe that might be the case. Per the article, the police are investigating the death - I think we can safely say that if they turn up something to suggest that it was murder, we'll hear about it.
Think of the trolley problem. Many people are not willing to push a person in front of a trolley when they are fine with pulling a lever. Killing people due to negligence doesn’t register as...
Think of the trolley problem. Many people are not willing to push a person in front of a trolley when they are fine with pulling a lever.
Killing people due to negligence doesn’t register as murder in many people’s brains. Putting a hit out on a retiree would definitely register as murder in people’s brains.
It’s a pretty big leap to say that because an MBA in an office pressured engineers and technicians to cut corners to increase production, they would have no problem hiring a hitman to kill someone.
Why is that concerning? Whistle blowers in companies that skirt safety regulations and endanger and kill people are usually at risk of suicide, or just general depression and hence lowered life...
Honestly, the fact that the article doesn't mention the possibility of murder at all is itself a bit concerning. They say the injury was self-inflicted, but they don't mention what criteria were used to determine that.
Why is that concerning?
Whistle blowers in companies that skirt safety regulations and endanger and kill people are usually at risk of suicide, or just general depression and hence lowered life expectancy anyways.
Why? Because until you left and told everyone, you were part of the machine that got people killed. You might have personally worked on that shit in fact. And you might always hold it in front of yourself that if you had spoken up sooner, maybe, just maybe, people would not have died. Or in turn, you blow the whistle, nothing changes, and people still end up dead, so you end up even more depressed.
I find it highly concerning that your thoughts wander to murder conspiracies immediately instead of stuff like mental health support for people in such situations, or better support for whistleblowers in general. Because this is a not a Boing-murdering-one-ex-engineers-somehow-6-years-too-late specific thing. This is a general problem with people who had to work around or with systems that ended up endangering people due to company profit seeking policies.
And you wind up unemployable because no one wants you to blow the whistle on them. A problem for sure, but again, not company sanctioned murder via hitman.
Or in turn, you blow the whistle, nothing changes, and people still end up dead, so you end up even more depressed.
And you wind up unemployable because no one wants you to blow the whistle on them. A problem for sure, but again, not company sanctioned murder via hitman.
A team of eBay execs were totally fine with harassing/stalking bloggers that criticized the company, so I don't put it past Boeing either, to be honest.
A team of eBay execs were totally fine with harassing/stalking bloggers that criticized the company, so I don't put it past Boeing either, to be honest.
Even setting ethics aside, I think it's a lot easier for most humans, psychologically, to cross the line into stalking/harassment than it is to cross the line into murder.
Even setting ethics aside, I think it's a lot easier for most humans, psychologically, to cross the line into stalking/harassment than it is to cross the line into murder.
Whether I would put it past them or not, I think you have a good point. I really don't like to think Boeing would do that, I don't think so. But it's highly suspicious and just cause I don't think...
Whether I would put it past them or not, I think you have a good point. I really don't like to think Boeing would do that, I don't think so. But it's highly suspicious and just cause I don't think they would doesn't mean they would not (and it's suspicous enough I don't know if I can say for sure he wasn't killed). And if it is that suspicious, it should be investigated whether we trust the corporation or not. Appearance of trustworthyness should not be a way out of not getting investigated.
Thank you for raising these issues. Sometimes on Tildes these people tend to get heavily upvoted, or have people boost their comments with the exemplary tag, because of the emotional gut reaction...
Thank you for raising these issues. Sometimes on Tildes these people tend to get heavily upvoted, or have people boost their comments with the exemplary tag, because of the emotional gut reaction towards an idea of reasoned thinking. It's rather dismissive, and I think the thing that bugs me the most about this kind of behavior is that it's often used to suppress valid criticism or discussion under the guise of intellectualism. Often these comments are full of their own failings in reasoning or logical fallacies, but more importantly I think they serve as a way to shut down discussion rather than encourage it. If the goal is to provide a criticism of the discussion they are trying to shut down, they often fail to provide ample evidence to do so. A strongly reasoned or well sourced reply would do better, but I've also seen that weaponized in silly ways where people just flood their comment with links to sources which are at best tangentially related.
I think what upsets me the most is that the comment is especially dismissive - it compares the musings of the odd circumstances surrounding this person's death to the idea that Hillary Clinton had people killed. This is not a political conspiracy theory. This is not a judgement against someone that we might be biased towards, although it implies an organization may be responsible it could be an individual and not the organization at whole. That is to say, we're not saying a specific person had this individual killed. Instead, we're talking about a specific person who did die, and the strange circumstances surrounding their death. I know many people will dismiss this on the very basis that it's absurd that someone would have been killed by a hired professional, but I think there are a few interesting facts about this person's death.
They retired in 2017. Since retiring they've repeatedly pushed to litigate against Boeing implying that this is something they feel strongly about. They've been whistleblowing for over 2 years on this issue. Their own words seem to indicate that they feel Boeing owes a responsibility to the American people. I think it's important to note that idealistic attitudes towards a cause or a charge are extremely strong psychological motivators. They are currently in the middle of a pending legal case, which they were flown out to be examined as a witness for. I think it's important to note that flying with a firearm is a very difficult thing to do. I haven't seen any reports on this yet, but there's a lot of paperwork and annoyances that come along with flying with a firearm. They were just on stand and examined by Boeing's lawyers. They died before they had a chance to be cross examined, and the fact that they were missing for the cross-examination is what prompted anyone to look into why they had not shown up at court yet.
Does this absolutely mean he didn't kill himself? No. But to hand wave all of those facts above away by comparing this to the conspiracy theory of 'Hillary Clinton' hired people to murder is completely unwarranted.
To further use this to bolster the idea that refusing to fly on a Boeing feels malicious to me. Polls conducted on how regular people feel about Boeing aircraft have historically been rather negative (this was taken after the 737 max Ethiopian airlines crash) and it's not difficult to find plenty of stories highlighting how people in the industry regularly avoid Boeing. I think it's important to note the number of crashes that have happened, as well as the expert testimony and internal exchanges that came out as a result of the last time Boeing was investigated by congress. After all, they were fined 2.5B just years ago for defrauding the FAA. There's a history here, fraught with problems, and it's worth paying attention to regardless of the weird happenings involving one whistleblowers death.
Exactly, in not so many words, people with a bone to pick with Clinton were making up all sorts of wild bullshit to water down the insane appearance of her competition, Trump. Boeing has a history...
Exactly, in not so many words, people with a bone to pick with Clinton were making up all sorts of wild bullshit to water down the insane appearance of her competition, Trump.
Boeing has a history of being awful, and they're a massive corporation that's explicitly protecting their bottom line. They're not a good person getting slandered, they are a money making Goliath who has cheated and attacked people and organizations in the past. They're pretty explicitly a "bad guy" even without the context of this whistle blower's death, and nobody should feel compelled to defend them unless they're majority shareholders.
If we were reading this story in the 1800s about someone testifying against a railroad company suddenly committing suicide, we wouldn't need to guess about what happened, but when or modern equivalent does it, we're overreacting and it's unthinkable.
"If we were reading this story in the 1800s about someone testifying against a railroad company suddenly committing suicide, we wouldn't need to guess about what happened, but when or modern...
"If we were reading this story in the 1800s about someone testifying against a railroad company suddenly committing suicide, we wouldn't need to guess about what happened, but when or modern equivalent does it, we're overreacting and it's unthinkable."
I think the big problem here is a lot of people want to think that this day and age this would not happen, that's just something that happened when people were more corrupt/immoral. I know I fully admit I'm like that, and I have a hard time believing that Boeing actually did this and yet I also find it very suspicous at the same time. I think I've settled on I simply don't know but given the circumstances I'll fully admit it looks suspicious, especially with at least one family member claiming the guy said if he died it wasn't a suicide. But I do have a hard time believing a large corporation would go to that extent... part of me feels that they'd feel it looked worse on them being so suspicious).
I would also like to point out how frustrating it is that an airline can and do switch planes on passengers without telling them or giving them recourses for free re-booking or compensation for...
I would also like to point out how frustrating it is that an airline can and do switch planes on passengers without telling them or giving them recourses for free re-booking or compensation for cancellation, and that travel insurance do not list "can't fly Boeing" as acceptable reason for trip cancellation
I wonder if there is political will to pass a law saying you can get your flight and all your fees refunded if the change to a different type of plane than the one it was when you booked. That...
I wonder if there is political will to pass a law saying you can get your flight and all your fees refunded if the change to a different type of plane than the one it was when you booked. That would give people leverage to decline to fly Boeing and force the airlines to honor it. Once it starts hitting airlines bottom lines, I bet then there'd start to be some political will to fix Boeing.
I think this rule would require more political will than actually penalizing Boeing would, tbqh, and it would make airport logistics even more of a nightmare than it already is.
I think this rule would require more political will than actually penalizing Boeing would, tbqh, and it would make airport logistics even more of a nightmare than it already is.
This is quite the commitment. Tools like Kayak now have a filter on the types of aircraft you want at booking, but these things change all the time in the days and months leading up to the actual...
I think I'm unironically never flying on a Boeing again.
This is quite the commitment. Tools like Kayak now have a filter on the types of aircraft you want at booking, but these things change all the time in the days and months leading up to the actual flight. Then there's the possibility of a last minute change if something's wrong with the originally assigned aircraft on the day of the flight.
I think it's possible that the capacities, ranges and seating arrangements are such that they might not switch between Boeing and Airbus that often, so I have no idea how often a switch like this would take place.
I'd love to read a blog post about somebody actually trying to stick to this commitment for a year or so.
I always forget that this is true. Sorry, I don't have much to add, other than I really hate that we don't have much choice in the matter when it comes to what craft we fly, so voting with our...
I always forget that this is true. Sorry, I don't have much to add, other than I really hate that we don't have much choice in the matter when it comes to what craft we fly, so voting with our feet/dollars is often impossible here.
I already don't fly very much, so it's not exactly difficult for me to specifically choose Airbus aircraft. I made the choice when the door plug incident happened, to be clear. I don't personally...
I already don't fly very much, so it's not exactly difficult for me to specifically choose Airbus aircraft. I made the choice when the door plug incident happened, to be clear. I don't personally think it's conspiratorial to give Boeing exactly 0 benefit of the doubt when they built a plane that was literally missing essential screws.
Sure, we can append the implied suffix "right now," I don't disagree. I think it will likely have to happen because there will be no other choice, but things will have to get much worse first.
Sure, we can append the implied suffix "right now," I don't disagree. I think it will likely have to happen because there will be no other choice, but things will have to get much worse first.
Isn't the actual ownership of Airbus a little more complicated than straight out nationalised? Sure 25% is owned by three govts (DE,FR,ES) but the rest is just subject to normal share ownership of...
Isn't the actual ownership of Airbus a little more complicated than straight out nationalised? Sure 25% is owned by three govts (DE,FR,ES) but the rest is just subject to normal share ownership of a listed company.
I don’t think that Boeing is putting hits out on people. That’s just absurd, not everything is a grand conspiracy. What is concerning is that he reported that 1 in 4 oxygen masks weren’t working...
I don’t think that Boeing is putting hits out on people. That’s just absurd, not everything is a grand conspiracy.
What is concerning is that he reported that 1 in 4 oxygen masks weren’t working on 787s. That’s very scary to think about.
I'm not saying that I believe Boeing did this. It is however possible. It might be availability bias on my part since Tildes book club is just getting ready to discuss Cloud Atlas, a novel in...
I'm not saying that I believe Boeing did this. It is however possible. It might be availability bias on my part since Tildes book club is just getting ready to discuss Cloud Atlas, a novel in which this is an explicit part of the story.
However, like someone above, I am unhappy that there is not a sophisticated public investigation into whether this actually was suicide. Some journalists worldwide die mysterious deaths every year. Boeing executives might or might not stoop to ordering a hit, but some executives and political leaders worldwide do and will.
I doubt Boeing murdered him, because that would be absolutely moronic when they're already under so much dang scrutiny for the door plug incident. I fully believe this was a suicide, either due to...
I doubt Boeing murdered him, because that would be absolutely moronic when they're already under so much dang scrutiny for the door plug incident. I fully believe this was a suicide, either due to stress over his involvement in this case, self-assigned guilt for not doing more in his time at Boeing, or some other personal factors we're not privvy to.
Even then though, the timing is bad for Boeing. I'd never heard of this case (1 in 4 oxygen masks don't work?? They used parts from scrap bins to avoid production delays!?), but it's now going to get plenty of national spotlight.
Previously I'd found writeups on plane crashes reassuring because each one was a lesson for the industry on how to prevent each particular cause from happening again, but that only works if everyone involved actually cares about safety. And clearly, Boeing doesn't.
A close family friend of John Barnett said he predicted he might wind up dead and that a story could surface that he killed himself.
But at the time, he told her not to believe it.
"I know that he did not commit suicide," said Jennifer, a friend of Barnett's. "There's no way."
Jennifer said they talked about this exact scenario playing out. However, now, his words seem like a premonition he told her directly not to believe.
"I know John because his mom and my mom are best friends," Jennifer said. "Over the years, get-togethers, birthdays, celebrations and whatnot. We've all got together and talked."
When Jennifer needed help one day, Barnett came by to see her. They talked about his upcoming deposition in Charleston. Jennifer knew Barnett filed an extremely damaging complaint against Boeing. He said the aerospace giant retaliated against him when he blew the whistle on unsafe practices.
For more than 30 years, he was a quality manager. He'd recently retired and moved back to Louisiana to look after his mom.
"He wasn't concerned about safety because I asked him," Jennifer said. "I said, 'Aren't you scared?' And he said, 'No, I ain't scared, but if anything happens to me, it's not suicide.'"
Boeing whistleblower John Barnett was planning to drive home to Louisiana after his deposition on Friday 3/8 before Boeing lawyers asked him to stay one more day to finish his testimony.
His body was found on the morning of 3/9.
Barnett was planning to start driving from SC to LA after completing his testimony on Friday 3/8, but that night the Boeing lawyers asked him to stay for one more day of depositions on Saturday 3/9.
Something happened overnight at his hotel, and he was found dead that morning.
I mean, Occam's razor is that the legal proceedings he was doing before his death caused him sufficient distress for him to take his own life. That's a lot more likely than that Boeing put out a...
I mean, Occam's razor is that the legal proceedings he was doing before his death caused him sufficient distress for him to take his own life. That's a lot more likely than that Boeing put out a hit on this guy.
Plus, if he was otherwise suffering from suicidal ideation, the fact that the timing sheds even more negative light on Boeing might have made it that much easier for him to make that choice.
Plus, if he was otherwise suffering from suicidal ideation, the fact that the timing sheds even more negative light on Boeing might have made it that much easier for him to make that choice.
Was just about to post this. I think I'm unironically never flying on a Boeing again.
There's no way they're fixing this short of nationalizing Boeing, and there's no political will for anything like that.
But my life is more important than some shithead beancounter's 0.2% ROI, so airbus indefinitely it is.
I hate these stories. They just fuel the same conspiracy paranoia that surrounds all the Trump nonsense. If you don't want to fly Boeing that's fine, but this being your last straw is concerning, especially if that's because you're implying Boeing had someone killed.
Without some massive evidence I highly doubt that Boeing had someone killed (especially over such small claims and a minor case), let alone had them killed NOW when this all started in 2017-2019, and will have law enforcement and his attorney magically wrapped up.
Just from the link alone it looks like he called out some corner cutting by Boeing, and likely wound up soft blacklisted, filed a suit about it, and then eventually took his life. This is not a totally uncommon pattern in such industries for all sorts of reasons, and that doesn't mean it's ok, but it's a far cry from the "had them killed to stay silent" kind of nonsense these headlines are gunning for.
Edit-
I’m not going to bother responding to every comment as I don’t think this will go anywhere. I will say that I have known people who will swear that Hillary Clinton has had people killed. They’ve had much the same evidence and reasoning.
I do not like Boeing. I do not like the Clinton’s. That does not mean that I’m going to assume they’re having people killed and capable of covering it up. Especially in some scenario where frankly it’s absurd to think they could pose any threat worth that risk.
I would consider that sufficient justification to avoid Boeing on moral grounds, if not on the basis that a corporation that retaliates against safety whistleblowers is unlikely to be a corporation that takes safety seriously.
Yeah, this is my exact take. If people want to fly on the plane built by a company that clearly prioritizes profit over safety then be my guest. Pack a chute.
Then you’d better start walking and biking because there’s not a large corporation that hasn’t done this kind of nonsense
This type of reply really does nothing for a discussion. It's similar to telling someone they cannot be critical of capitalism due to buying things and existing in capitalism. Someone wanting to boycott one corporation due to current scandals and reasons is perfectly fine and they don't need to shrug and give up just because someone tells them "well you better hate every company that ever existed!".
Sadly, true. But the other corporation that makes commercial planes is a French company. Now... I don't know how much regulation France puts on companies but my limited knowledge I would think it would be tighter than an American company with more oversight seeing as Europe as a whole seems to be less worried about freedom of corporations and better about calling out corporation's bullshit.
But, I agree with some one else, just cause there isn't much choice doesn't mean we should not try to hold them accountable. And we should try to push our governments to hold them accountable (one of the many things wrong with America these days... in general corporations are not held near as accountable as even they were in the past).
That's one of these depressing, harsh facts that make me despise corporations chasing profits at any and all cost. You can ruin peoples lives without outright murdering them. And if there are alternatives that do not utterly disregard human needs, and work on fixing shortcomings instead of preventing their detection by sowing fear, that's reason enough to choose those over the other.
I understand why we don't have downvotes here, but damn this comment is awful and should not be so high, and especially not listed as Exemplary.
Comparing someone's deaths that might help cover-up for corporates crimes to a list of things that there is evidence that never happened (the clinton conspiracies) is irresponsible at best.
Isn't that exactly what they're doing by being lax with the safety of their planes? Sure, it's a lot more direct an act to single out and deliberately murder one person. But their safety culture could easily result in hundreds of people dying. If they're willing to accidentally kill hundreds of people, why not intentionally kill one person? You've already crossed the moral line where you're willing to sacrifice lives to make money. In the case of safety, they are willing to sacrifice hundreds of lives to increase their earnings a bit. In this case, they would be willing to murder one individual to avoid huge legal costs or losses in sales.
It's clear they're already willing to kill people to save money. If this was a deliberate murder, it wouldn't really be that much of an escalation.
I feel that you may have this vision of a cigar-smoking, mustachioed CEO sitting in his tower office saying "who gives a shit, put the planes into production - the passengers are only peasants, after all." But that's not really how corporations work. There's nobody at Boeing making a deliberate choice to kill people to save money, as you put it.
Which is unfortunate, because if there were, we could just arrest them for manslaughter.
To forestall the immediate objection of "well, they could focus more on safety," that's true of every company, ever. You can always spend more money making things more safe... until ultimately you've gone completely bankrupt and never shipped a product. Obviously Boeing is on the wrong side of that line, but the overall point is that there are no clearly-defined metrics or laws that Boeing, as a company, is intentionally skirting. (And there shouldn't be: imagine if every company was liable every time they produced something that failed or led to a death. Nobody would produce anything. Automakers? All closed. The people who make bleach bottles? Out of business. Etc.)
So it's doubly unfortunate that the real problem is more pernicious and harder to solve: it's a complex system of incentives and decisionmaking in which nobody is ultimately responsible. I think you would really enjoy the book The Man Who Broke Capitalism by David Gelles. It's mostly about GE, but it does touch on Boeing fairly extensively as another company which was hollowed out and, basically, ruined by an increasing focus on profits and shareholder returns.
Just to be clear, I agree with you that there's a problem at Boeing. I think there's an argument to be made that Boeing's board has incentivized the company's leadership to focus on profits over the years at the expense of all else, but that's still very different than someone deliberately saying "let's let these people die in order to save money."
And finally, in terms of lives lost, the air travel industry's safety record is the best it's ever been.
While that's probably the case for Boeing specifically, it would be disingenuous to say that companies won't make deliberate choices to kill people.
The violent history of strikebreaking comes to mind. Also it would be naive to say that the wars waged throughout the US's history were not heavily influenced by the desires of the business owners (the Banana Wars jump to the forefront).
The entire history of slavery in the USA also cannot be ignored...it's not as if slavedrivers weren't operating businesses....and they went to literal war over their right to keep slaves.
Very fair point.
The Ford pinto is notorious in product liability because executives knew that the design would kill people. They choose to go ahead
It is difficult to respond to this in text without seeming accusational, so please understand that I don't mean it in a bad way.
I'd argue that the Pinto is actually a really good example of how these things don't result from some sort of corporate fatcat CEO making decisions that they knew would kill people. Below are some excerpts from the wikipedia article on the Pinto.
I will look into this and get back to you.
I learned about the pinto case decades ago
it is endlessly tiring to have to talk about corporate evil like this with people who think any serious person actually believes in a cabal of mustache twirlers.
The reality is so much more bleak and boring. Everyone does these evil things because each individual person is acting in their own rational self interest. That doesn't make it any less evil, and it certainly doesn't justify deciding the people you disagree with are conspiracy theorists when the way Boeing and the FAA have acted since the 737 Max debacle (and honestly even the 787 lipo battery fire) has been shown to be actually genuinely conspiratorial.
That would be my point. Boeing, with the Max, made some decisions that resulted in it not being legally required to recertify. Why? Because they didn't want to spend the money, and take the time, to recertify.
What is certification? It's where the FAA reviews, in detail, an aircraft and its systems to verify they're (among other things) safe and likely to perform as the FAA and manufacturer expect. To help establish procedures for how to operate and maintain the aircraft. And so on.
So really, it doesn't matter whether or not a "mustache twirler" was in the room when they decided to avoid recertifying. They found a path forward that avoided safety checks, simply because they decided those were a cost they were unwilling to engage in.
Which, by some definitions, is inarguably evil. People in decision making positions chose to go with the money, over going with the process that would examine and verify the aircraft. That's literally putting some unknowns on the passengers (and crew) to endure, simply for cost reasons.
Now I'll admit that gold plating every product is expensive. But safety regulations are written in blood. The FAA and NTSB have rigorous processes because the early history of aircraft showed accidents tend to be very, very, very serious. Often fatal. And passenger aircraft put not just a handful of crew at risk, but hundreds of people at risk.
The reviews and checks and verifications are an attempt to systemically reduce risk. Which industry sees only as cost.
This is an example of capitalism placing money at a higher value than humanity. When they look to "game" the system, when they look to "obtain exceptions" to safety regulations and safety checks, that's what they're doing. They're skipping out on things the system has included for safety reasons, simply to save money. To garner higher profit.
That's kind of evil. At least a little evil. And in the case of the Max, since it happened, people are dead who wouldn't be if the aircraft had undergone those systemic reviews. All because, at some point, after however much maneuvering and internal discussion, someone at Boeing where the buck stopped finally just said "no, make it happen so we don't have to go through the recert." And people died.
I have no objection to someone describing executives as "killing people" in a rhetorical sense. The comment I replied to outright suggested that Boeing executives ordered the murder of the whistleblower and theorized that they would be willing to do so based on their safety record - hence my post suggesting that bad things can happen because of systems, instead of because of evil people.
That is a good summary of what I was trying to get across in my comment, so I think we're in agreement here. Please let me know if that wasn't clear and I can try to rephrase.
My point is that 1. suspicious deaths should be investigated. 2. People do reprehensible acts sometimes. The experiments with syphilis and the drug experiments by the CIA in the 60s come to mind. Also, the angel of death nurses etc. the Move bombing
I haven't got any investment in this case being a murder.
To nit pick on your point though, from what I've seen of the trolley problem type hypotheticals, people are far far more willing to "let others die" rather than to actively take one life. The (a) diffusion of responsibility coupled with (b) the uncertainty of "there might not be any deaths" plus (c) they will be random nameless masses together mentally keep it a very wide gap apart from intentionally naming one specific person to kill.
Honestly, the fact that the article doesn't mention the possibility of murder at all is itself a bit concerning. They say the injury was self-inflicted, but they don't mention what criteria were used to determine that.
In a case like this, where someone is a clear antagonist of a very powerful corporation, the default should be to publish information that clearly documents why the injury isn't self-inflicted.
Hell, this shouldn't even be up to a county coroner alone. If someone is a whistleblower against one of the biggest corporations in the country, and they turn up dead? There should automatically be an independent federal investigation into the matter. We should do that even if for on other reason than just building public trust in the justice system.
Because honestly, I wouldn't put it past Boeing to kill someone. They're clearly lax in their safety standards. They're clearly willing to let hundreds of people be killed in an accident if it helps their bottom line. If a company is willing to kill hundreds through lax safety standards, is it really that much of a stretch that they might be willing to directly kill one person? And Boeing certainly has the money and connections to various military and intelligence types that would make that sort of thing a lot easier to pull off.
This really wouldn't be such a stretch for Boeing. They would just be expanding their rap sheet from homicide to murder.
To be honest, yes? It's a pretty big difference. You can construct moral arguments that put some kind of equivalence between the two, but the reality of making the choice between "look let's just ship it yolo" and "let's hire an assassin to kill a whistleblower ex post facto just out spite" for an actual human being is quite large.
Not to mention the legal risk of "manslaughter through negligence" vs "premeditated murder".
It wasn't post facto. 2 reasons why I think it's still reasonable that they'd do it now. ONe he was about to testify again against them for something. 2. He's being outspoken about his experiences and this time due to a lot of bad publicity a lot more people are paying attention. I mean how many people knew who he was before Boeing got all sorts of bad media and then NPR actually wanted to interview this guy cause they saw that he had been a whistleblower in the past. And he is now well known for saying that he was about to take a commercial flight and turned around and got off the plane when he learned it was a 737. He's getting more attention right now.
Course, one would argue his suicide is just getting him more attention. So if Boeing killed him they either figured it was better to shut him up now (and before he testified against them) or they were stupid (I don't believe this of most big corporations, they have lots of lawyers and PR people to tell them otherwise) and didn't realize that him dying now would just get more attention on him.
(I simply don't know if he killed himself or if he was killed. But I fully admit it looks suspicious).
I've got to disagree here. It would be pretty irresponsible journalism to mention the possibility of murder without any grounds (other than "a big corporation didn't like this guy") to believe that might be the case. Per the article, the police are investigating the death - I think we can safely say that if they turn up something to suggest that it was murder, we'll hear about it.
Think of the trolley problem. Many people are not willing to push a person in front of a trolley when they are fine with pulling a lever.
Killing people due to negligence doesn’t register as murder in many people’s brains. Putting a hit out on a retiree would definitely register as murder in people’s brains.
It’s a pretty big leap to say that because an MBA in an office pressured engineers and technicians to cut corners to increase production, they would have no problem hiring a hitman to kill someone.
Why is that concerning?
Whistle blowers in companies that skirt safety regulations and endanger and kill people are usually at risk of suicide, or just general depression and hence lowered life expectancy anyways.
Why? Because until you left and told everyone, you were part of the machine that got people killed. You might have personally worked on that shit in fact. And you might always hold it in front of yourself that if you had spoken up sooner, maybe, just maybe, people would not have died. Or in turn, you blow the whistle, nothing changes, and people still end up dead, so you end up even more depressed.
I find it highly concerning that your thoughts wander to murder conspiracies immediately instead of stuff like mental health support for people in such situations, or better support for whistleblowers in general. Because this is a not a Boing-murdering-one-ex-engineers-somehow-6-years-too-late specific thing. This is a general problem with people who had to work around or with systems that ended up endangering people due to company profit seeking policies.
And you wind up unemployable because no one wants you to blow the whistle on them. A problem for sure, but again, not company sanctioned murder via hitman.
A team of eBay execs were totally fine with harassing/stalking bloggers that criticized the company, so I don't put it past Boeing either, to be honest.
Even setting ethics aside, I think it's a lot easier for most humans, psychologically, to cross the line into stalking/harassment than it is to cross the line into murder.
Whether I would put it past them or not, I think you have a good point. I really don't like to think Boeing would do that, I don't think so. But it's highly suspicious and just cause I don't think they would doesn't mean they would not (and it's suspicous enough I don't know if I can say for sure he wasn't killed). And if it is that suspicious, it should be investigated whether we trust the corporation or not. Appearance of trustworthyness should not be a way out of not getting investigated.
Thank you for raising these issues. Sometimes on Tildes these people tend to get heavily upvoted, or have people boost their comments with the exemplary tag, because of the emotional gut reaction towards an idea of reasoned thinking. It's rather dismissive, and I think the thing that bugs me the most about this kind of behavior is that it's often used to suppress valid criticism or discussion under the guise of intellectualism. Often these comments are full of their own failings in reasoning or logical fallacies, but more importantly I think they serve as a way to shut down discussion rather than encourage it. If the goal is to provide a criticism of the discussion they are trying to shut down, they often fail to provide ample evidence to do so. A strongly reasoned or well sourced reply would do better, but I've also seen that weaponized in silly ways where people just flood their comment with links to sources which are at best tangentially related.
I think what upsets me the most is that the comment is especially dismissive - it compares the musings of the odd circumstances surrounding this person's death to the idea that Hillary Clinton had people killed. This is not a political conspiracy theory. This is not a judgement against someone that we might be biased towards, although it implies an organization may be responsible it could be an individual and not the organization at whole. That is to say, we're not saying a specific person had this individual killed. Instead, we're talking about a specific person who did die, and the strange circumstances surrounding their death. I know many people will dismiss this on the very basis that it's absurd that someone would have been killed by a hired professional, but I think there are a few interesting facts about this person's death.
They retired in 2017. Since retiring they've repeatedly pushed to litigate against Boeing implying that this is something they feel strongly about. They've been whistleblowing for over 2 years on this issue. Their own words seem to indicate that they feel Boeing owes a responsibility to the American people. I think it's important to note that idealistic attitudes towards a cause or a charge are extremely strong psychological motivators. They are currently in the middle of a pending legal case, which they were flown out to be examined as a witness for. I think it's important to note that flying with a firearm is a very difficult thing to do. I haven't seen any reports on this yet, but there's a lot of paperwork and annoyances that come along with flying with a firearm. They were just on stand and examined by Boeing's lawyers. They died before they had a chance to be cross examined, and the fact that they were missing for the cross-examination is what prompted anyone to look into why they had not shown up at court yet.
Does this absolutely mean he didn't kill himself? No. But to hand wave all of those facts above away by comparing this to the conspiracy theory of 'Hillary Clinton' hired people to murder is completely unwarranted.
To further use this to bolster the idea that refusing to fly on a Boeing feels malicious to me. Polls conducted on how regular people feel about Boeing aircraft have historically been rather negative (this was taken after the 737 max Ethiopian airlines crash) and it's not difficult to find plenty of stories highlighting how people in the industry regularly avoid Boeing. I think it's important to note the number of crashes that have happened, as well as the expert testimony and internal exchanges that came out as a result of the last time Boeing was investigated by congress. After all, they were fined 2.5B just years ago for defrauding the FAA. There's a history here, fraught with problems, and it's worth paying attention to regardless of the weird happenings involving one whistleblowers death.
Exactly, in not so many words, people with a bone to pick with Clinton were making up all sorts of wild bullshit to water down the insane appearance of her competition, Trump.
Boeing has a history of being awful, and they're a massive corporation that's explicitly protecting their bottom line. They're not a good person getting slandered, they are a money making Goliath who has cheated and attacked people and organizations in the past. They're pretty explicitly a "bad guy" even without the context of this whistle blower's death, and nobody should feel compelled to defend them unless they're majority shareholders.
If we were reading this story in the 1800s about someone testifying against a railroad company suddenly committing suicide, we wouldn't need to guess about what happened, but when or modern equivalent does it, we're overreacting and it's unthinkable.
"If we were reading this story in the 1800s about someone testifying against a railroad company suddenly committing suicide, we wouldn't need to guess about what happened, but when or modern equivalent does it, we're overreacting and it's unthinkable."
I think the big problem here is a lot of people want to think that this day and age this would not happen, that's just something that happened when people were more corrupt/immoral. I know I fully admit I'm like that, and I have a hard time believing that Boeing actually did this and yet I also find it very suspicous at the same time. I think I've settled on I simply don't know but given the circumstances I'll fully admit it looks suspicious, especially with at least one family member claiming the guy said if he died it wasn't a suicide. But I do have a hard time believing a large corporation would go to that extent... part of me feels that they'd feel it looked worse on them being so suspicious).
I would also like to point out how frustrating it is that an airline can and do switch planes on passengers without telling them or giving them recourses for free re-booking or compensation for cancellation, and that travel insurance do not list "can't fly Boeing" as acceptable reason for trip cancellation
I wonder if there is political will to pass a law saying you can get your flight and all your fees refunded if the change to a different type of plane than the one it was when you booked. That would give people leverage to decline to fly Boeing and force the airlines to honor it. Once it starts hitting airlines bottom lines, I bet then there'd start to be some political will to fix Boeing.
I think this rule would require more political will than actually penalizing Boeing would, tbqh, and it would make airport logistics even more of a nightmare than it already is.
Literally happened to my wife last week.
This is quite the commitment. Tools like Kayak now have a filter on the types of aircraft you want at booking, but these things change all the time in the days and months leading up to the actual flight. Then there's the possibility of a last minute change if something's wrong with the originally assigned aircraft on the day of the flight.
I think it's possible that the capacities, ranges and seating arrangements are such that they might not switch between Boeing and Airbus that often, so I have no idea how often a switch like this would take place.
I'd love to read a blog post about somebody actually trying to stick to this commitment for a year or so.
That shouldn't be to hard for most people, given that the median person doesn't even step foot in a plane every year.
I always forget that this is true. Sorry, I don't have much to add, other than I really hate that we don't have much choice in the matter when it comes to what craft we fly, so voting with our feet/dollars is often impossible here.
I already don't fly very much, so it's not exactly difficult for me to specifically choose Airbus aircraft. I made the choice when the door plug incident happened, to be clear. I don't personally think it's conspiratorial to give Boeing exactly 0 benefit of the doubt when they built a plane that was literally missing essential screws.
I just recently avoided a cheaper airfair for a more expensive one due to this reason.
Sure, we can append the implied suffix "right now," I don't disagree. I think it will likely have to happen because there will be no other choice, but things will have to get much worse first.
Let's normalize it a bit more then. Nationalize Boeing. Especially because Airbus is already nationalized (continentalized?).
Isn't the actual ownership of Airbus a little more complicated than straight out nationalised? Sure 25% is owned by three govts (DE,FR,ES) but the rest is just subject to normal share ownership of a listed company.
I don’t think that Boeing is putting hits out on people. That’s just absurd, not everything is a grand conspiracy.
What is concerning is that he reported that 1 in 4 oxygen masks weren’t working on 787s. That’s very scary to think about.
I'm not saying that I believe Boeing did this. It is however possible. It might be availability bias on my part since Tildes book club is just getting ready to discuss Cloud Atlas, a novel in which this is an explicit part of the story.
However, like someone above, I am unhappy that there is not a sophisticated public investigation into whether this actually was suicide. Some journalists worldwide die mysterious deaths every year. Boeing executives might or might not stoop to ordering a hit, but some executives and political leaders worldwide do and will.
I doubt Boeing murdered him, because that would be absolutely moronic when they're already under so much dang scrutiny for the door plug incident. I fully believe this was a suicide, either due to stress over his involvement in this case, self-assigned guilt for not doing more in his time at Boeing, or some other personal factors we're not privvy to.
Even then though, the timing is bad for Boeing. I'd never heard of this case (1 in 4 oxygen masks don't work?? They used parts from scrap bins to avoid production delays!?), but it's now going to get plenty of national spotlight.
Previously I'd found writeups on plane crashes reassuring because each one was a lesson for the industry on how to prevent each particular cause from happening again, but that only works if everyone involved actually cares about safety. And clearly, Boeing doesn't.
Local news is now reporting a pretty unsettling allegation:
'If anything happens, it's not suicide': Boeing whistleblower's prediction before death
Most concerning thing still: https://twitter.com/BostonJerry/status/1769750520644694374
Possible suicide. If this were a murder mystery story, the suicide would have been faked. But who knows.
I mean, Occam's razor is that the legal proceedings he was doing before his death caused him sufficient distress for him to take his own life. That's a lot more likely than that Boeing put out a hit on this guy.
Absolutely but statistical outliers exist sometimes.
The US is not immune from sociopaths
I'd contend that a lot of the US is led by sociopaths.
Plus, if he was otherwise suffering from suicidal ideation, the fact that the timing sheds even more negative light on Boeing might have made it that much easier for him to make that choice.