I suppose high tech industry claims it’s in a bit of shock because of Boeing’s agreement to plead guilty:
Boeing agreed on Sunday to plead guilty to conspiring to defraud the government in a case linked to crashes of its 737 Max jets in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people — a stunning turn for the aerospace giant after the Justice Department determined that Boeing failed to live up to terms of a 2021 deal to avoid prosecution. [WaPo]
But so will be the US government. Along with being just about the only American commercial airliner supplier, Boeing is also big in Defense and NASA.
I blame this on a failure to enforce anti-monopoly laws. Such laws are all about guaranteeing[1] competition in the marketplace, and, in limited circumstance, commodification of products that allows interoperation.
Of course, investor demands also contribute to the failures, I suspect. The continual demand for greater and greater dividends places c-suite executives in more and more difficult positions. Although it’s hard to envision a capitalist-type economy that functions well without investors, there’s definitely an urge to toss them out on their ears.
And this piques the interest:
Paul Cassell, attorney for the families in the case and a professor at S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, immediately filed an objection to the agreement on their behalf.
“Through crafty lawyering between Boeing and DOJ, the deadly consequences of Boeing’s crime are being hidden,” Cassell said.
Added Erin Applebaum, a partner at Kreindler & Kreindler who has worked with Cassell in representing family members: “We are extremely disappointed that DOJ is moving forward with this wholly inadequate plea deal despite the families’ strong opposition to its terms.”
Just trying to minimize damage to a favored contractor, or what?
1 Guarantee is such a binary word, unsupportive of gradations. Its popularity makes it emblematic of a culture that, in large part, desires absolute, easy judgments. Members of that culture should go read H. L. Mencken: For every problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. In fact, a number of his quotes are applicable to today.
