I have lived in the Seattle area for most of six decades, have long had a soft spot for what locals call “The Lazy B”, and I followed the Boeing 737 MAX disaster closely as it unfolded.
I think it is criminal that Boeing added the MCAS system AND didn’t require redundant sensors AND didn’t provide a “kill” switch AND didn’t inform its customers or their pilots about any of this.
So, I was looking forward to an objective exploration of the history of the Boeing 737 MAX program, with quotes from key company leaders and engineers on the design, development, deployment, and response to the tragic airplane crashes in 2018 and 2019.
Unfortunately, author Robison gets up on his Socialist Sandbox starting on page 7 (of the Kindle edition).
He blames the corporate leadership and malfeasance at Boeing not on the individuals involved, but on President Reagan, economist Milton Friedman, Wal*Mart, and capitalism in general. The New Deal, and The Great Society, and labor unions are good: capitalism and free markets are bad.
Robison’s claim that fifty years of “Reaganism” was the root cause of the Boeing 737 MAX catastrophe is ABSURD: many important and successful companies created great products and service for customers during those decades. Apple and Google created these powerful smart phones we all rely upon. provide vast selection for consumers while lowering prices and increasing shipping speeds. Microsoft helped create the personal computer era with Windows. Microsoft and have created The Cloud, allowing companies big (Netflix) and small to flourish without having to build server farms. Wal*Mart and Costco have innovated in “brick-and-mortar” retailing, lowering costs for groceries and staples (and some luxury goods) for hundreds of millions of Americans.
SpaceX and Blue Origin have lowered the cost and time to space — something no Government anywhere in the world has been able to achieve. Tesla has shown the way to a future of electronic automobiles. Uber and Lyft have made transportation less expensive, more convenient, and safer — many Americans no longer need to own an automobile.
And there are plenty of “old” companies that stuck to their values and continued to delight customers, including J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Pfizer, Exxon Mobil, Eli Lilly, Coca-Cola, Abbott Labs, Merck, and UPS (just to name a few of the largest market capitalization firms).
Here are a few excerpts from pages 7-9:
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
“Once ruled by engineers who thumbed their noses at Wall Street, Boeing had reinvented itself into one of the most shareholder-friendly creatures of the market. It celebrated managers for cost cutting, co-opted regulators with heaps of money, and pressured suppliers with Walmart-style tactics.”
“Borrowing a page from another flawed idol, Jack Welch’s General Electric, they executed what today might be called the standard corporate playbook: anti-union, regulation-light, outsourcing-heavy.”
“What happened at Boeing reflects the same forces that have roiled corporate America since the Reagan revolution ushered in an era of imperial leaders like Welch, obsessively focused on stock market investors.”
“…a long shift away from the communitarian ideals that had dominated American politics, economy, and culture from the New Deal of the 1930s to the Great Society of the 1960s. That consensus was just starting to fray when Milton Friedman, the Reaganites’ favorite economist, argued what was then still the contrarian viewpoint in the New York Times Magazine in 1970: ‘The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.’”
“Fifty years later, communities are fragile, workers insecure, and families stressed. It isn’t hard to see the connection to a half century’s embrace of narrow corporate self-interest over collective responsibility.”
“…a pathogen of a different sort [SARS2] started sickening people at a market in Wuhan.”
” Just as the FAA had been eclipsed by regulators from other national and international bodies, the CDC was shown to be no longer the world’s gold standard in public health. It’s impossible to divorce these regulatory failings from the financial imperatives underlying them.”
“Flying Blind” would have been a much better book if the author put aside his obvious political biases and just reported the story like the journalist he is. Cover the timeline, explain the technical details, quote the folks he interviewed, and explain how the leaders of Boeing failed its customers, their passengers, the stockholders, the employees, and severly damaaged Boeing’s global reputation.
Only then would it be OK to step back and muse about the broader forcers that may have influenced the Boeing leadership. And Robison would have to explain why the leaders of so many large successful companies did not succumb to a similar spectacular failure.
Thank you for reading this far!