I've said it in every previous post where Boeing makes a profit vs safety trade-off:
We should nationalize Boeing.
It's in our strategic interest to be able to manufacture planes, Boeing provides lots of decent wage jobs, it has wildly overpaid executives, and it had shown that when given the choice it will choose profit over safety. Nationalization removes the profit motive, ends the bizarre tax subsidies that get pushed around.
Boeing is already a public/private enterprise. The down years in commercial aircraft are propped up by US Gov defence orders, lots of primary research is funded by the US taxpayer, the US Gov works very hard to help Boeing sell airplanes, and there’s heaps of tax breaks available at the State level.
Many of the trade offs that Boeing has made - outsourcing, devaluing internal expertise, focusing on shareholder returns over risky long-term bets, and aggressively fighting unions - mirror US culture more generally. There’s little evidence that nationalising Boeing would change this - as an example related to this news story, the DoD is outsourcing more and more of its training and aggressor flying to private corporations.
It is worth pointing out that many of the points about Boeing being a public/private enterprise also apply to Airbus.
Disagree 100%. To me, what we are seeing IS the effect of a company that HAS been effectively nationalized, too big too fail, and time and time again doesn't feel the brunt of its horrendous decisions.
With benefit of hindsight, I wonder how I would have driven that policy initiative, if I had been pro-monopoly. I think as the largest customer (US Fed Govt), my quid pro quo would stipulate keeping IP and mfg domestic, and curtail the financialization (execs, board, and biggest investors goosing the stock price, buy backs, etc).
In other words, The New Deal. Forging national security thru appeasing both the war hawks and labor.
Boeing is already a nationalized business. They're financially propped up by the US government which is why they've been able to make all of these horrible decisions without any consequence. They're no longer a tech company. They're a zombie financial institution.
The point you are making is getting lost in splitting hairs over semantics of “nationalized”. It is rather short sighted for a nation that has for the past 2 decades given primacy to force over diplomacy to outsource military and critical industrial know-how. This stuff used to be state-craft 101 but apparently the ‘dumb down America’ project was more successful than possibly originally intended.
> How much do upper management of utility companies get paid?
Competent, cheap and limited power. Pick two.
The executive of Boeing, public or private, will control vast resources. If you underpay, you will get an idiot who follows the rules or someone who makes up the difference in undesirable ways. (Someone competent motivated by a sense of duty has better options in terms of executive staffing.)
There is little evidence that highly paid executives make better decisions than other similarly educated individuals. They're just "smarter" in the sense of getting into a company and/or field that pays more for similar expertise. The reality shows that huge companies make lots of mistakes, but they're often protected from these mistakes by their strong position in the market. See for example companies such as IBM, GE, GM, etc.
An excellent example would be Boeing before their merger with McDonnell Douglas. Boeing originally had an engineering-lead culture. After the merger, their exec salaries ballooned, profits grew, but engineering quality suffered.
Lucratively high exec pay is a recent phenomenon. There were plenty of successful companies before the last 40 years.
When that happens, the US will just ban Chinese aircraft from US airspace and impose economic sanctions on the Chinese aircraft industry under the pretext of IP theft and/or National Security<tm>.
That is the Washington solution for Huawei, TikTok, and Tecent after all.
They can do airframes but they are still far behind in avionics and engines. If the C919 ships in 2-3 years at all, it will be with CFM LEAP engines and American avionics. The problem for China is you cannot cut quality in aviation; there is no such thing as an affordable, lower quality product as there is in consumer products. We’re talking ca. 2030 for a competitive Chinese airliner.
China has been capable of creating quality products in other areas, for example their national high speed train, satellite, and electric car industries. Avionics take time, that is true, but I would say that in 3 years they will have the necessary technology.
Counterpoint: Sukhoi Superjet had its "deliveries" years ago, and now several of them have crashed and nobody wants to buy or fly them anymore. And that _Sukhoi_ - those guys have been designing and building planes for 81 years. Just not passenger ones. On paper, the plane is "competitive". Doesn't mean jack squat.
Absolutely disagree. Boeing is a direct result of mismanagement and protection because of government involvement.
What people use and want is the most effective signal. If regulation by government worked why hasn’t FAA succeeded? Largely many would argue they have statistically.
I prefer something closer to an emergent regulatory body that convenes on conferences and protocols.
Nationalism would be a nightmare. There’s so much to unpack there on mechanics and rights.
We should nationalize Boeing.
It's in our strategic interest to be able to manufacture planes, Boeing provides lots of decent wage jobs, it has wildly overpaid executives, and it had shown that when given the choice it will choose profit over safety. Nationalization removes the profit motive, ends the bizarre tax subsidies that get pushed around.