#shorttermism

dredmorbius@joindiaspora.com

In the frame of Moralising Pathology, what went wrong at Boeing?

"Boeing’s 737 Max Is a Saga of Capitalism Gone Awry":

... What made the crashes so vexing is that it was impossible to pin the blame on one central villain. Instead, the whole company seemed to be at fault. Time and again, Boeing executives and engineers didn’t take warning signs seriously enough, opted against adopting additional precautions and made decisions for the sake of saving money or raising profits. ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/sunday-review/boeing-737-max.html

In this case, maybe, morality is to blame. There were individual technical, regulatory, design, and management errors, yes, but the common underlying cause is a fundamental misalignment of moral values. Of engineering excellence and passenger responsibility versus short term profits, bonuses, and above all, Milton Friedman's murderous bugbear, "shareholder value".

Or was it just short-sightedness, short-term thinking, denial, and scapegoating?

See previously: Treating systemic problems as moral failings … is why California is on fire.

#boeing #737max #MoralisingPathology #CorporateCulture #ShareholderValue #EngineeringDriven #ShortTermism #ShortSightedness #risk #trust #RegulatoryCapture #blame #denial #scapegoating #distributedResponsibility #BigProblems #ethics #morals #MiltonFriedman #JackWelch #DennisMuilenburg #HarryStonecipher #DaveCalhoun