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US regulator considers stripping Boeing's right to self-inspect planes

wanderingmind
157 replies
22h39m

As an aside, For all those who talk about corruption and getting money out of politics I suggest reading Federalist 10 by Madison. Its a deep analysis of a need for a republican democracy. Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another.

gottorf
65 replies
22h34m

Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail. The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another.

Absolutely! Any form of government that depends on an unbroken line of "good people" in power will fail, and fail much sooner than anybody thinks. Modern China has already reached the end of their system, a scant 50 years after Mao Zedong.

"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition". And government should only have as much power as you think the worst possible people in charge should have. Otherwise, people suffer.

tw04
47 replies
22h22m

And government should only have as much power as you think the worst possible people in charge should have.

This immediately falls apart, by that logic we should literally have no government or society to speak of. "Only as much power as you think the worst possible person should have" would mean literally no power - there isn't a single decision in my life I would pass off to the worst person I could think of. What you're describing is anarchy.

You build checks and balances, but you cannot have a functioning government without the assumption that the people you put in charge will act in good faith, but also have a reliable means to remove them from power if they act in bad faith.

gretch
8 replies
20h51m

In addition to all of the theoretical responses provided, I would also say that the US has withstood the test (so far).

Trump is probably one of the “worst”* people and held the highest office. And yet despite the fact that it happened, the US is still chugging along. Bad things happened but the quality of life is similar to pre-trump presidency (as long as you are willing to discount for covid’s impact on the world).

*Some say there are worse ppl than djt, but I argue very few has his combination of badness + boldness + tenacity. A bad+meek person thrust into presidency would probably just go with the flow.

p1esk
4 replies
13h38m

Interesting, if Trump is so bad, why do you think half of the country will vote for him?

gretch
3 replies
13h22m

Those people have real problems that I am sympathetic to. For example, being left behind economically. Problems at the border. etc. Trump speaks to these problems and the democratic party does not fix these problems.

The reason Trump is popular is because he is willing to lie and make false promises in order to gain support. Any one can do this, you just have to have no moral boundaries and some charisma. For example how Enron, Theranos, and that crypto guy are able to defraud billions of dollars from investors.

p1esk
2 replies
12h16m

he is willing to lie and make false promises in order to gain support

This describes pretty much every politician who ever had to be democratically elected. Has any other American president behaved differently?

gretch
0 replies
10h57m

Who said anything about comparisons with other presidents? In general people who even seek political office should not be allowed such office.

Let’s not forget that trump is a known associate with convicted child rapists Epstein and Maxwell.

The best guy to be president is probably an average unnamed dude chillin somewhere.

I don’t have any connections with child rapists. Do you? Then already as a starting point we can be better than Trump.

defrost
0 replies
12h9m

Just those that fell short of actively encouraging and organising attempted overthrows of congress to alter the outcome of the vote.

blibble
1 replies
18h0m

Trump is probably one of the “worst”* people and held the highest office. And yet despite the fact that it happened, the US is still chugging along.

until the next election occurs we haven't really seen the effect of the damage done in 2020

1 in 3 voters no longer believing that the electoral system is fit for purpose ("the election was stolen") is really very scary

zmgsabst
0 replies
17h46m

A large fraction doesn’t view the government as fit for purpose either — as they allowed widespread, coordinated arson attacks across major cities totaling $2B+ in damages and then sent the FBI after peaceful demonstrators, based on which political faction people belonged to.

That’s some real fascism.

dpkirchner
0 replies
18h46m

Bad things happened but the quality of life is similar to pre-trump presidency (as long as you are willing to discount for covid’s impact on the world).

And are male, of course.

roenxi
5 replies
18h22m

Taking an argument to it's logical conclusion isn't "falling apart". The best scenario for governance is anarchy; ideally we could all just do what we want. It is a tautology that anything we're forced to do by the police is something we don't think is a good idea/in our interests.

The problem with anarchy is that it will get toppled by a group - probably internally to the society - that is organised and forms a standing military. Organised factions tend to grow. The US is creeping in the same direction as a group like the USSR or China - an overdeveloped and too-powerful central bureaucracy - but much more slowly because it started from a well designed system with lots of checks and balances. But just because centralised power tends to be stable doesn't mean it is good, decentralised power is much more pleasant to live under.

So the ideal government is anarchy, the practically ideal government is as close to anarchy as we can get without being destabilised by a military, and the reality of the situation is militarys form and tend to move away from anarchy towards tyranny. But that doesn't make them good.

AnthonyMouse
3 replies
11h26m

What this is missing is that you can be forced to do something by someone other than a military.

If a corporation pollutes the air, you're being forced to breathe polluted air. It's not in your interest for them to pollute the air, but it's in their interest because it's cheaper and they value money over incrementally cleaner air. Then you need a means to stop them from doing something they find to be in their own interest, because it isn't in yours and you didn't consent to it.

The problem with this is that if you extend it to its logical conclusion, now you're not allowed to breathe because I didn't consent to you emitting CO2 from your lungs.

The key here is to limit the government to the things that are both important and can only be feasibly accomplished through a monopoly on force. Prohibiting violence and monopolies, pricing major externalities, funding certain types of fundamental research, etc.

Not prohibiting entirely consensual behavior or micromanaging marginal commercial activity or impairing your view of the bay by having the gall to construct housing during a housing shortfall.

There can be some disagreement around the edges on what these things are, but the real hard part is finding a way to create checks and balances effective enough to resist when a wave of populism wants to stop imposing all of these restrictions on Their Guy. Because the thing that follows that is invariably centralization of power, corruption and injustice.

roenxi
2 replies
11h10m

It's not in your interest for them to pollute the air...

Not at all a settled point. There is a strong correlation between air pollution and rapidly improving quality of life. I think it probably is in my interest. The best salary I drew in my life was when I lived in the region with the worst air pollution and that wasn't an accident.

I think the evidence suggests governments have crippled society's capability to improve itself, in part through over-regulation of environmental issues based on faith and ideology rather than thinking seriously about what the optimal behaviour is.

AnthonyMouse
1 replies
10h31m

There is a strong correlation between air pollution and rapidly improving quality of life.

There is a strong correlation between air pollution and industrialization and a strong correlation between industrialization and quality of life. That doesn't mean pollution improves quality of life, it means you want industrialization without pollution.

To take a specific example, the ban on leaded gasoline was Good. Lead is powerfully toxic, the science on this is solid, and the negative consequence of the ban is that gasoline costs marginally more if at all.

Now you can list many more examples of the EPA imposing stupid rules with a marginal benefit that doesn't even exceed their implementation costs which in aggregate significantly increase the cost of everything while having negative overall value.

But it's not physically impossible to repeal all of those and keep the ban on leaded gasoline. The question is how to accomplish that in practice, and to maintain that as a stable equilibrium.

roenxi
0 replies
7h53m

it means you want industrialization without pollution.

If we have the option of industrialisation without pollution, why are the corporations polluting the air in your example? Nobody pollutes for the sheer joy of annoying their neighbours. The issue we face in the modern world is nobody knows how to do industrialisation without pollution. Governments banning pollution has just stifled industrialisation. Industrialisation and pollution is a better equilibrium point for all of us than the slow choking out of industry.

The natural market equilibrium is typically fast improvement. Moving away from the equilibrium because the elites are inconvenienced by the side effects is rarely a good idea. I'll give you leaded fuels were a mistake, but by and large the anti-industrial policies have been more harm than good.

Nevermark
0 replies
11h26m

The problem with anarchy is that it will get toppled by a group

The benefits of anarchy get “toppled” the first moment someone violates another persons freedom, leaving them no recourse but ad hoc retaliation, and the unlimited risks of further repercussions to themselves and those they care about. Assuming they are left in any shape to do so.

No group needed.

brightball
5 replies
22h7m

there isn't a single decision in my life I would pass off to the worst person I could think of

This is actually the point though.

You shouldn't have to give power to an individual. If you're going to, you should give that power to a group of individuals who have to agree for the thing to move forward.

And then have checks on that group as well.

I live in South Carolina and one of the things I like about how this state works is that the governor is virtually powerless, so you never really have to worry about who is elected. There's certainly some degree of power outside of the veto, but for the most part the real power is with the state senate.

There are pluses and minuses to it. On the plus side, it means that things are slower to change. On the minus side, it means that things are slower to change.

verve_rat
2 replies
20h12m

Sounds like South Carolina follows a Westminster style government. Look at the UK, NZ, AU governments (and I assume Canada, don't know for sure): A King, or Governor-General, with the theoretical power to override parliament. A Head of State which can issue decrees and makes important decisions "on the advice of the Prime Minster".

Basically a figure head and a bunch of legal fictions wrapped up in the concept of "The Crown". But the real power lies with the PM and their Cabinet. But the party in charge can change the PM whenever they want, and if it ever got bad enough Parliament can change the party in charge without waiting for an election.

The PM is responsible to the Cabinet and to their party and to the rest of Parliament. It is all one big mess of ambitious people pointing guns at each other, constantly evaluating their position ahead of the next election.

int_19h
1 replies
18h2m

Westminster system is not a particularly good example of checks and balances, though, given that whole parliamentary supremacy thing. A Westminster-style Parliament is essentially unanswerable to anyone but the voters; and even then it can unilaterally change election laws, so it can circumvent the voters as well. If the courts deem some act of Parliament unlawful, the latter can just pass another act explicitly declaring it lawful (the recent Safety of Rwanda Bill was a good example of just such an attempt).

verve_rat
0 replies
8h37m

Yeah, parliament is sovereign, the checks and balances are (meant to be) internal to parliament.

That may break down a bit with modern parties and modern elections, I guess we will see if these systems still work in another couple of hundred years.

wolverine876
0 replies
19h3m

I live in South Carolina and one of the things I like about how this state works is that the governor is virtually powerless, so you never really have to worry about who is elected. There's certainly some degree of power outside of the veto, but for the most part the real power is with the state senate.

Don't be reactive to the current successful tactic. The senate GOP has organized and wields their power effectively; the governor has not gathered and organized power. In a different scenario, with a different people, it could be the other way.

ImPostingOnHN
0 replies
20h36m

The discussion was about giving power to an entire government, not an individual.

akira2501
5 replies
21h37m

we should literally have no government or society to speak of

I don't think society is dependent on government.

would mean literally no power

Literally no power ensconced in the hands of a _single individual_, I think was the point.

autoexec
2 replies
20h19m

I don't think society is dependent on government.

Is that a hypothetical or are there large and successful societies around today that don't have one (or a group by some other name fulfilling the same function)?

akira2501
1 replies
20h15m

You'd have to more thoroughly define "successful." You'd also have to explain why you think the lack of one would prove any point.

autoexec
0 replies
20h1m

It's not that the lack of one proves it's impossible, but if one existed it'd sure be evidence that government isn't a requirement. As for "successful" I suppose that is very much subjective. Is there one you'd consider to be successful?

int_19h
1 replies
18h0m

There are no historical or current examples of societies larger than a tribe that are lacking any form of government.

The thing that is not mandatory, however, is the state, which is not a synonym. State-based government is centralized government, but government does not necessarily need to be centralized to the point where the result is a state.

akira2501
0 replies
17h6m

You are limiting your definition of society to one that can be described by defended political borders. It's circular and tautological.

I would argue that the internet is a society that's broader than these political borders, obviously exists, and does so entirely outside of government control.

I would suggest you both missed this definition of society.

Geisterde
4 replies
18h31m

Thats the point, the power will be abused. Free markets subvert toxic heirarchies and inefficient industries, thats how america was designed to work, private capital formation and the ability to compete freely. When you need to resort to political means to achieve your ends you violate peoples rights, those rights are considered above the authority of the government.

JohnFen
3 replies
18h28m

Free markets subvert toxic heirarchies and inefficient industries

But a free market cannot exist in the absence of regulation, and regulation is a form of government.

pdonis
2 replies
17h29m

> a free market cannot exist in the absence of regulation

As you are using the term "regulation" (see below), this is false. A free market is in fact exactly what you do get in the absence of government regulation: all transactions are voluntary. Only governments can force people to engage in market transactions they don't want to engage in, or prevent them from engaging in market transactions they do want to engage in.

> regulation is a form of government

Not necessarily. A true free market is regulated by the voluntary choices of all of its participants. No government is required. Government regulation replaces or overrides regulation by voluntary choices of market participants.

carbotaniuman
1 replies
16h55m

A gun can also force people to participate in transactions they don't want to engage in.

pdonis
0 replies
16h40m

Sure, and that can happen whether there is a government or not. In fact, in the US, courts up to and including the Supreme Court have ruled that the government has no affirmative duty to protect individuals from crime.

I don't think laws against crime were the sort of regulation of markets that the post I responded to was talking about. But in any case, if the existence of crime is sufficient to make markets not free, then free markets don't exist with government any more than they would without it.

AnthonyMouse
4 replies
21h33m

This immediately falls apart, by that logic we should literally have no government or society to speak of. "Only as much power as you think the worst possible person should have" would mean literally no power - there isn't a single decision in my life I would pass off to the worst person I could think of. What you're describing is anarchy.

Not at all.

Suppose the worst possible person is in the prosecutor's office. They get to decide who to prosecute. But they can't just file false charges against someone and throw away the key, they have to prove it in court with evidence and convince a jury of the defendant's peers. Moreover, we could prohibit prosecutorial misconduct and set up an independent agency for investigating and punishing it. And we could require vague laws to be construed in the defendant's favor and strike down excessively broad ones as unconstitutional.

It's possible for these checks and balances to fail -- there is some evidence that they have -- but in principle we could have stricter ones that work better. And if they work as intended, it doesn't matter how bad the prosecutor is, they don't have the power to cause harm, and they themselves are punished if they try to exceed the limits of their power.

But if they just do their job, i.e. investigate crimes and prosecute the offenders, they do have the power to do that.

And so it is with any other office in the government.

mulmen
3 replies
20h18m

There is another failure mode. The prosecutor can refuse to prosecute a guilty party. This can happen for several reasons. 1) corruption, don’t prosecute your friends. 2) ideology, the law or punishment are “unfair” or the defendant is “misunderstood” or “disadvantaged” according to the prosecutor. 3) politics, to advance their political careers prosecutors want an unblemished record of successful convictions.

It is good that our system biases toward avoiding wrongful conviction but there’s no check that forces a party to “do their job.”

codersfocus
0 replies
18h39m

Prosecutors are relatively new. It used to be the right of citizens to petition a grand jury to indict. A few states still allow it.

LeroyRaz
0 replies
20h1m

You can have multiple prosecutors. E.g., if one does not want to prosecute (and so not get paid) then another will.

While you can't ensure an individual does their job, market forces and competition can ensure the job gets done (by someone).

AnthonyMouse
0 replies
15h59m

The prosecutor can refuse to prosecute a guilty party.

But this is intended as one of the checks and balances. If the legislature passes an unjust law or one with unjust applications, the prosecutor can exercise their discretion and not enforce it, acting as a check on the tyranny of the majority.

You could remove prosecutorial discretion and require prosecutors to proceed against anyone someone wants to file charges against (let the judge and jury sort it out), but now you're making a trade off against something else.

Notice that this applies to any of the rest of it. Congress could refuse to pass a law that makes sense because their cronies benefit from the status quo etc. But the concern here is that the government has an unprecedented capacity to do harm because it exercises a monopoly on violence. If the prosecutor's buddy is a serial killer, you can still exercise your right to self-defense, or avoid being alone in public. If the prosecutor's buddy is allowing your company to not pay you for hours worked, you can sue them yourself, or quit. All while lobbying the government to replace the prosecutor. If you're falsely imprisoned by the government, what are you supposed to do?

wegfawefgawefg
2 replies
18h29m

I know countries are different, but there are many people who are pro severely minimal government in the USA.

And it does not seem so unlike the initial intentions for the country either.

If you frame it as anarchy it sounds like screaming chaos. But consider for a moment that the vast majority of laws that exist that are enforcable now only recently came to be.

zmgsabst
1 replies
17h50m

There’s also real trade offs:

I had fiber to my condo a decade ago in Thailand, but still don’t reliably in the US.

Regulations and government monopolies on poles and conduits slow development at the same time they reduce fires and clutter on the poles. (Whoa are there some real tangles in Thailand.)

There’s a reasonable debate on where and how much we should regulate things.

wegfawefgawefg
0 replies
2h46m

I'm not concerned with slow development and the occasional fire. I'm more concerned with rampant over-regulation. Being required to have a license to put up a non load bearing wall in my own house... The homeless in the US that cannot afford the minimum ordained "humane" dwelling size. Minimum parking lot size requirements. Minimum wage. The fed modulating the currency value with the goal of INCREASING unemployment. Homes being required to have running water and electricity, be above a certain size, or you aren't allowed to live in them (Even if they are way wayy out in the middle of the woods). $20,000 driveway concrete keying fees intended to hurt companies that prevent basic individual rights on personal property.

Regulation raises costs, and raises price floors. Generally you gain some quality, but don't see the ghost it unleashes.

I understand we need building codes in cities so fires don't burn down all of New York, and train, plane, drug inspection laws. But I think overall, non-violent crime in the world is absolutely over-regulated.

For some reason people usually assume there are no costs to regulation, and only benefit. I think its a just psychology. Regulation is a thin line that requires dancing on. Always assume there's a ghost cost behind a decision, even if it seems harmless. Even something as well intended as banning candy from the front of grocery stores to cut childhood obesity could unroll into a huge problem as each actor solves their local issue, and generate an emergent behavior. I'll function as an annoying representative of this concept.

not2b
2 replies
22h2m

"people in charge" doesn't just include elected officials, it also includes heads of corporations. Checks and balances has to apply to them as well, meaning that regulation is necessary.

Nevermark
0 replies
11h39m

And it should apply to parties.

Especially in systems like the US where single party rule is actually attainable.

Political parties work hard to centralize and consolidate power across disparate voting districts, pushing and incentivizing their elected members to be more loyal to their party than to their districts.

Then the party as a coordinated whole just works for itself.

The whole point of having diverse representatives from diverse districts gets nullified.

National level seat limits, and cross state party limits for local elections, would eliminate any chance of single party rule and evaporate the dysfunction that spreads from seeking and holding that crown.

AnthonyMouse
0 replies
12h18m

This goes both ways. The merchant class is one of the checks and balances on the government because it serves as a separate power base that should find it in its own interest to oppose government misconduct.

One of the most important things for checks and balances to do is ensure the separation of commerce and state. Prevent the merger of state and corporate power.

So they must restrain the government from inhibiting competition at the behest of crony incumbent corporations. Which requires you to restrict what kinds of regulation the government can impose, when that regulation impairs competition or otherwise advantages crony corporations.

The last thing you want is to give a government official the power to do a corporation's bidding.

nomel
0 replies
21h22m

Many good answers, but to put it simply, ideally you create a system that assumes abuse, which will then make abuse difficult or obvious. If you make any positive assumptions about someone in power, then they will, eventually, be used against you.

mikepurvis
0 replies
22h17m

I think that's the right take, with particular attention to overall transparency, since otherwise you have nothing— how do you hold someone accountable if you don't have the right to see what they're up to?

gottorf
0 replies
22h12m

but also have a reliable means to remove them from power if they act in bad faith.

That answers your concern -- that's a reduction in the power of government. The worst possible person being in charge is OK if that person cannot unilaterally make things worse for everyone. I don't think it necessarily describes anarchy, though I do take your point.

As for people acting in good faith, well, POSIWID[0] is a thing; ideally the system should be designed such that it shouldn't matter whether any individual within the system is acting in good faith or not, because the incentive structures set up therein will lead to positive outcomes. Besides, for any politically divisive topic, someone will always think you're acting in bad faith, anyway.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

DANmode
0 replies
21h42m

What they're describing is infrastructure, which is what government should be.

Not a ruling class.

ajmurmann
2 replies
19h26m

I think a better way of phrasing that is "We cannot ask for better people. The right system makes the wrong people do the right thing". Russ Roberts sometimes says something like this and probably quoted someone else who I forgot

JellyBeanThief
1 replies
19h21m

The right system makes the wrong people do the right thing.

The words "right" and "wrong" in that sentence could make light of the Ardblair stones.

ajmurmann
0 replies
18h37m

The statement isn't about what we want to get out of a system or government, but about how to approach shaping the system to create the desired outcome. You can fill in "good" and "bad" with your own subjective values and it continues to hold true. How you make the collective decision to agree on what's desired and what's not is a whole other can of worms.

TylerE
2 replies
21h59m

And government should only have as much power as you think the worst possible people in charge should have

The problem is the worst people NOT IN GOVERNMENT already have more power than that, and can thus easily crush such a government and turn it into a de facto oligarchy.

cracrecry
1 replies
21h34m

More power than the Government has?

Which company or individual has nuclear weapons? Could send you to war like Russia in Ukraine to die? Could print as much money as they want. Can raise arbitrary taxes and people have to pay or you just incarcerate them. Can send you to prison. Spy everything you do by force.

Governments can kill you, rob you, kidnap you, spy you, without consequences.

I don't know any individual or company with as much power as Governments have.

TylerE
0 replies
21h19m

If you think the worst people cannot have nuclear weapons, then by your own logic governments should not have nuclear weapons, because a bad person could get elected and then have nuclear weapons.

OtherShrezzing
2 replies
19h34m

Strangely the UK, which has a no formal constitution and an unimaginable number "gentleman's agreement" parliamentary traditions - with absolutely no recourse for political malfeasance - has faired remarkably well for hundreds of years. The entire system is built on the notion that "the next leader will probably not undermine the entire system". It's only really faced a couple of real internal systemic threats throughout its history and was (until the last decade) considered a bastion of political stability.

nobodyandproud
0 replies
18h11m

With the French Revolution, the American Revolution, then Imperialism, then World War 2 and then its loss of influence: The UK faired remarkably simply because of the Enlightenment and later, the consequences of fighting against the people. Then antagonizing ally that shared many common interests.

Still, I can totally see the UK’s democracy devolving quickly, if in the decades and generations ahead governments trend towards authoritarianism.

blibble
0 replies
17h35m

It's only really faced a couple of real internal systemic threats throughout its history and was (until the last decade) considered a bastion of political stability.

the political instability was an unintended consequence of a small change in 2011: the Fixed Term Parliaments Act

the Act removed the ancient power of the PM to call an election early (ironically intending to provide stability)

it resulted in a situation where parliament couldn't agree on anything with the usual way out (government calling a general election) no longer possible

the Fixed Term Parliaments Act has now been repealed, so hopefully this was a one-off

wolverine876
0 replies
19h5m

Modern China has already reached the end of their system, a scant 50 years after Mao Zedong.

Off topic, but are you implying that Mao was 'good people'? It seems that for the Communist 'dynasty', it fell apart immediately - that is, it never got anywhere. I'm not sure the Communist dynasty is any worse than the Qing or Ming or others before it, at least in that respect.

philistine
0 replies
4h9m

Every Westminster-style democracy by your logic should have turned into a dictature. There is nothing stopping a governor general from seizing power but tradition and expectations.

janalsncm
0 replies
21h14m

What they failed to recognize is that factions (i.e. political parties) will inevitably form so they should be regulated. There is nothing in the Constitution about political parties. They found the time to mention the Post office but not political parties.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition

Sounds nice but it’s fundamental a recipe for getting nothing done. And just because the government doesn’t do it doesn’t mean it won’t be done. Private entities, with far fewer restraints (any ambitions to restrain them are of course counteracted) will naturally fill in the gaps. It’s why the US has private companies selling expensive tax software rather than a simple system which would benefit everyone.

huytersd
0 replies
20h12m

China hasn’t reached it yet but once Xi is out they have to hope they can find another benevolent king or the entire system is going to come crashing down.

graemep
0 replies
20h0m

Modern China has already reached the end of their system, a scant 50 years after Mao Zedong.

I do not think you have picked a good example. Mao was a pretty nasty piece of work. The relatively prosperity of modern China is the result of abandoning his ideology - and a large chunk is the result of reversing the damage he and his followers did.

There has been no line of good people in communist and post communist China. It failed from the start.

baryphonic
0 replies
21h32m

Just for reference, the "ambition must be made to counteract ambition" line comes from Federalist 51, also by Madison.

PKop
0 replies
19h9m

Any form of government that depends on an unbroken line of "good people" in power will fail

They all depend on this. There is no set-it-and-forget-it algorithm that you can put in place that self-perpetuates good government. There are "people" at every point along the chain of any government including those writing its laws, enforcing them, interpreting laws in court and in many bureaucratic institutions that may or may not ignore these rules or undermine them.

I think every system has a life-cycle like an organism, and some aspects of degradation and corruption are almost unavoidable in practice if not in principle.

JohnFen
0 replies
18h31m

And government should only have as much power as you think the worst possible people in charge should have.

That doesn't make real sense to me, because that means that government is impossible. I prefer the idea that "desire for office should be disqualification for office."

notJim
27 replies
21h49m

The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances

I don't think this viewpoint can be supported empirically. The US government has much stronger checks and balances than most parliamentary systems where the prime minister is elected by the parliament. This means that there's no split possible between the executive and legislative branch. I think the result of this in the US is that the government tends to deadlock, and has a lot of difficulty compromising, which leads to dissatisfaction and instability. Conflicts heighten without compromise or resolution for decades until they reach a breaking point. In a parliamentary system, the need to build a governing coalition can result in greater incentives to compromise.

Similarly, judicial review seems to be much much weaker in most countries. In the US, the supreme court can strike down a law with immediate effect of nullifying that law. It's been hard for me to find comparisons, but it seems like in other countries, there's some combination of judicial review being only advisory, or not having immediate effect. So in some countries, the judicial branch says a law is un-constitutional, and the legislative branch can ignore it, or has some period of time to defend or revise the law, rather than the law being immediately struck. This is fundamentally undemocratic. That's a good thing some times, but not good other times.

In practice, parties tend to govern by attempting to control the supreme court, because there's no possible way to pass their agendas due to our vaunted checks and balances. This does not seem like the hallmark of an effective democracy to me.

returningfory2
5 replies
21h40m

In practice, parties tend to govern by attempting to control the supreme court, because there's no possible way to pass their agendas due to our vaunted checks and balances.

I agree that the the Supreme Court is more important because of the inability of Congress to pass regular legislation.

However I don't think the root cause is "checks and balances". I think the root cause is the (unconstitutional) Senate filibuster. This prevents parties who control both Houses of Congress and the Presidency from passing laws. It is often the case that this happens (2016-18 for Republicans; 2020-22 for Democrats) and in those periods it should be possible to pass many laws and thus diminish the role of the Supreme Court. But the filibuster prevents this.

baryphonic
4 replies
21h28m

How is the filibuster unconstitutional? The Constitution explicitly gives each House the power to select its own rules, and the Senate is never "dissolved" like the House of Representatives is, so its rules carry on.

returningfory2
3 replies
20h28m

Legal scholars as in [1] can make the point better than me:

When considering the filibuster as a supermajority requirement for regular legislation, it is clearly unconstitutional. As a textual matter, the Constitution appoints the Vice President as the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, providing that they “shall have no Vote unless [the Senators] be equally divided.” This provision implies that the Senate must pass regular legislation by a majority vote.

In general, the Senate's ability to set its own rules surely cannot be unrestricted. For example, when the Democrats had 60 votes in the Senate would it have been constitutional for them to create a new rule that all tax decreases require unanimous consent of the Senate? Or for Republicans in the same situation to create a rule that all tax increases require unanimous consent? Both of these changes would seem to be within the rule-making authority of the Senate. However both rules would be profoundly undemocratic because they would generally prevent a majority (or supermajority) of US voters from changing US tax law in the future.

[1] https://legaljournal.princeton.edu/tyranny-of-the-minority-t...

herczegzsolt
0 replies
18h38m

to create a rule that all (...) require unanimous consent?

What you describe is pretty much what has happened and still is happening in Hungary.

The conclusion here is that even if the majority agrees that these rules are against the spirit of the democracy, there's nothing practical to do against them. So yeah, checks and balances are important to have in practice, not just in spirit.

When you're relying on self-imposed limitations, radicals will sooner or later take over and do whatever necessary to stay in power.

baryphonic
0 replies
11h7m

In general, the Senate's ability to set its own rules surely cannot be unrestricted. For example, when the Democrats had 60 votes in the Senate would it have been constitutional for them to create a new rule that all tax decreases require unanimous consent of the Senate? Or for Republicans in the same situation to create a rule that all tax increases require unanimous consent? Both of these changes would seem to be within the rule-making authority of the Senate. However both rules would be profoundly undemocratic because they would generally prevent a majority (or supermajority) of US voters from changing US tax law in the future.

I think we should clarify that there is no "filibuster rule" in the Senate. The rule is that debate by default is unlimited; in order to close debate on any non-rule change, sixty senators must agree to invoke "cloture," after which debate continues for up to thirty hours under various restrictions. Then the vote on the underlying measure (e.g. a bill, a resolution, advice & consent on an executive matter) takes place with the majority vote rule. (Debate about rule changes can only be ended by 2/3 of the Senate, followed by a majority vote on the rule change itself.)

With that settled, we should also consider that the Constitution itself mandates super-majorities in the Senate for various reasons, including expelling a senator; giving advice and consent for the president to ratify a treaty; convicting an impeached president, vice president, other officer or judge; overriding a veto; or proposing an amendment to the Constitution. It further specifies certain procedures that can be invoked by less than a majority, like the 1/5 vote to record the names of those voting on any given measure, or the minority vote required to compel the presence of absent senators in the absence of a quorum. The Constitution clearly contemplates these situations where the vice president's vote wouldn't matter, so it stands to reason that the Senate is free to adopt rules requiring a different vote threshold than simple majority.

As to the hypothetical about rules governing tax legislation, I see nothing in the Constitution forbidding such a ludicrous procedure. I do see loads of evidence that it would be extremely impractical, including the 2/3 majority required to invoke couture on rule amendments; the "nuclear option" precedent; and the fact that the tit-for-tat is possible.

Finally, all legislative bodies have substantially undemocratic procedures. Referring matters to committee is undemocratic, restricting floor amendments is undemocratic, points of order are undemocratic, etc. It seems to me that preserving the minority's right to further debate is not so different.

anticensor
0 replies
10h8m

The rule is that debate by default is unlimited; in order to close debate on any non-rule change, sixty senators must agree to invoke "cloture," after which debate continues for up to thirty hours under various restrictions.

There is a solution to that as well: put explicit limits on the length of speech and the number of speakers for each debate item. This worked well in the Turkish legislature to make the legislature faster.

ethbr1
5 replies
21h18m

I'd argue that the US biparty system tends to have fewer checks and balances than a parliamentary system.

In many ways, it's winner take all. President + 50%+1 in the lower legislature + 50%+1 in the upper legislature = a huge amount of power.

Historically, I think it's been exceedingly rare to have as finely balanced government as recent times have featured.

And to me, the Supreme Court is less about the people currently sitting on it, and more about the fact that they have all dedicated their lives to the legal profession.

They may rule one way or another on hot issues, for personal reasons. But you're checking with people who all hold the rule of law (as a concept) much higher than the legislature or executive. Which is a valuable check to have.

In that way, they're more like the UK's Speaker of the House of Commons.

jackcosgrove
1 replies
20h7m

In recent times the Supreme Court has also been staffed by graduates of only a handful of law schools. I think that, more than a dedication to the rule of law, is what sets them apart from the rest of the country. Given the complexities of harmonizing a large body of law that's centuries old, I'm not sure there's a better way. But I think we should always remember that the Supreme Court is by far the least representative and least democratic branch of government.

ethbr1
0 replies
12h55m

It's also the only branch of government that, at least as designed, cannot originate policy.

HDThoreaun
1 replies
19h55m

You need 60% in the senate to get anything passed. There have been many cases where one party controlled all three but couldnt accomplish much due to the filibuster. Famously Obama's first couple years.

the_gastropod
0 replies
16h57m

Which, in practice, means senators representing an extreme minority of US citizens can block hugely popular legislation. California itself has a larger population than the least populous 21 states combined, yet gets the same 2 senate votes as each of those other states. The Senate is a hot mess as far as political game theory goes.

refurb
0 replies
13h13m

In many ways, it's winner take all. President + 50%+1 in the lower legislature + 50%+1 in the upper legislature = a huge amount of power.

Those are 3 separate bodies, each independently elected.

Versus the parliamentary system where it's one election for a combined executive and legislative and sometimes with a token senate. Power is far more concentrated than the US system.

AnthonyMouse
4 replies
21h18m

The US government has much stronger checks and balances than most parliamentary systems where the prime minister is elected by the parliament. This means that there's no split possible between the executive and legislative branch. I think the result of this in the US is that the government tends to deadlock, and has a lot of difficulty compromising, which leads to dissatisfaction and instability.

The problem in the US is actually the opposite -- the checks and balances were intended to be stronger but have been substantially weakened, in a way that creates instability.

In the original constitutional framework the federal government was meant to be extremely limited. Senators were appointed by state legislators so that they would limit expansion of federal power at the expense of state power, but that was changed and deprived the states of their primary representation in the federal government. Which not coincidentally was immediately followed by a massive expansion of federal control.

Which was itself meant to be much more limited. The original intention of the interstate commerce clause was for the federal government to handle things like mail fraud, where you have a perpetrator and a victim in different states and the victims have no representation in the perpetrator's jurisdiction. It has since been interpreted to allow the federal government to regulate essentially anything, infamously including non-commerce that occurs solely within a single state.

In the intended frameworks the deadlocks were fully intentional. If you couldn't reach widespread consensus then you couldn't do something at the federal level, doing things at the federal level was disfavored in general, and that was fine because anything outside the scope of federal power or without widespread consensus could be handled by the states. Laboratories of democracy.

But then we made it too easy to do things at the federal level, and of course power-hungry sociopaths are attracted to centralized power. So instead of the federal government being weak and uninteresting because strong checks and balances limited it from being abused, it became the battleground for winner-take-all popularity contests.

EMIRELADERO
3 replies
17h32m

In the intended frameworks the deadlocks were fully intentional. If you couldn't reach widespread consensus then you couldn't do something at the federal level

If gridlock was intended, what's the purpose of the formal simple majority requirement to pass laws? If gridlock was always to be the main state when disagreement existed, the "Nay" vote seems superfluous, which is an absurd result IMO.

AnthonyMouse
2 replies
16h25m

If gridlock was intended, what's the purpose of the formal simple majority requirement to pass laws?

It isn't a simple majority. You need both houses of Congress (which were originally representing separate interests) and the signature of the President, or you need two thirds in both the House and Senate to override a veto.

In theory you could require unanimity, but then you could never pass anything, even if it had 95% support. The point isn't to prevent all laws, it's to require the approval of enough distinct interests that controversial issues are easier to address at a different level of government, and each of their controversial solutions only apply in an area where that idea has local support, while everyone has freedom of movement in the event that they disagree with the local majority enough to vote with their feet.

EMIRELADERO
1 replies
15h57m

It isn't a simple majority. You need both houses of Congress (which were originally representing separate interests) and the signature of the President, or you need two thirds in both the House and Senate to override a veto.

The simple majority I'm referring to is about both houses of Congress in isolation. In the House of Representatives you need 218 out of 435 reps, while in the Senate it's 51 of 100. That's what I meant.

Either the rules of Congress are superfluous (by requiring only a simple majority in each house to pass a law despite the existence of the fillibuster/gridlock), or the fillibuster/gridlock is an obstructionist, absurd, and potentially unconstituional tactic.

AnthonyMouse
0 replies
13h52m

The way the filibuster actually works is that you need a vote to close the debate before you have the vote on the bill, and that vote requires 60 rather than 51, and that makes some sense. Because if a bill is going to pass 97 to 3 and the proponents are satisfied they've heard enough discussion, the chances of you convincing 47 Senators to change their vote are pretty slim. But if the bill is only going to pass 51 to 49, there's a real chance you might be able to change the result if you had more time, and so the rules give the minority the ability to delay the vote if the vote is close enough.

Of course, since they can take as long as they want, that means in practice they can delay the vote indefinitely. But that doesn't seem substantially different than some committee being able to kill a bill by just never passing it through to the full Senate even if it would pass there. It's just another opportunity to prevent government action if there is insufficient consensus.

And "60 votes to end debate" and "60 votes to pass a bill" aren't the same thing, and therefore aren't superfluous. The Senate passes many, many bills by a vote of less than 60 to 40, because many Senators will vote to end debate on a bill they intend to vote against. The filibuster is a means for the minority party to moderate a bill that they generally don't support. If the majority party submits an extremist version of a bill, the minority threatens to filibuster it unless they replace it with a moderate version. Then they don't filibuster the moderate bill but still vote against it, and it passes along party lines with less than 60 votes.

Also notice that it doesn't take 60 votes to amend the Senate rules to eliminate the filibuster. If the majority wanted it enough, they could remove the rule and then pass whatever they wanted with 51 votes. But then so could the other party, the next time they're in the majority. There are enough Senators who don't want to see that happen the next time they're in the minority that there aren't 51 votes to change the rules. Even if there are 51 votes to pass a bill the other party is filibustering.

JumpCrisscross
3 replies
18h20m

in the US is that the government tends to deadlock

This is a feature. In a unitary state, it would be suicide. But in a federation, national disagreement prompts gridlock which automatically devolves the question.

int_19h
2 replies
17h59m

It doesn't, though. It just means that whatever current arrangement exists on federal level (which is not necessarily devolution!) remains in force.

AnthonyMouse
1 replies
12h53m

This was one of the biggest defects in the original constitutional framework. They made it hard to pass laws, which was by design, but then used the same procedure to repeal them. If the goal is for federal laws to reflect general consensus, they should be easier to repeal than to pass.

anticensor
0 replies
10h14m

Easy: make all statutes temporary, not just budgeting acts. Then inaction means repeal.

mason55
2 replies
21h30m

The US government has much stronger checks and balances than most parliamentary systems where the prime minister is elected by the parliament. This means that there's no split possible between the executive and legislative branch. I think the result of this in the US is that the government tends to deadlock, and has a lot of difficulty compromising, which leads to dissatisfaction and instability. Conflicts heighten without compromise or resolution for decades until they reach a breaking point. In a parliamentary system, the need to build a governing coalition can result in greater incentives to compromise.

Yeah, if I understand, the original idea of the checks & balances in the US was that each branch of government would be fighting to become the most powerful and so they all had ways to stop each other. But it wasn't really designed to deal with the idea that political parties would grow in power enough to supersede the branches of government as the top-level entities fighting for power.

This idea that you'd be able to form a large enough coalition across Congress, the Supreme Court and the Presidency that you could get all three branches to work together wasn't really considered back then. With more localized politics that was basically impossible and so the individual branches were fighting for power.

Our form of government should be updated to reflect the reality of more powerful political parties.

janalsncm
0 replies
21h2m

Precisely. There’s effectively no forcing mechanism which guarantees any factions work with each other. So I see Washington’s farewell address warning against factions less as a drop of quaint wisdom but more of a last ditch attempt to rectify a gaping hole in the constitution they had just written.

And keep in mind that the current constitution took effect in 1789, only 8 years after the Articles of Confederation went into effect. So there was far less of a feeling that the fundamentals of the Constitution we have now would last forever.

AnthonyMouse
0 replies
12h51m

The flaw is actually in the use of first past the post voting, which causes more powerful political parties, because the math induces a two party system.

Use score voting or approval voting and you'll have more parties that each have less power.

parineum
0 replies
20h19m

This seems like a very presentism viewpoint. I don't think your points hold historically nor do they acknowledge that "strong checks and balances" and the adversarialness of congress is the same thing and considered a feature, not a bug.

NoboruWataya
0 replies
21h6m

Other democracies do generally have their own checks and balances. They might not be the same set of checks and balances as the US, but it's difficult to say as a whole that they are weaker. It's true that often the division of the executive and legislative branches is rather weak. But on the other hand there is often a stronger division between the judicial and other branches as judges are appointed independently. There are plenty of countries out there with very strong constitutional courts as well.

I'm also not sure I agree that the US system is necessarily less sustainable than those other systems. A lot of European democracies are younger than the US, and some of them are more frequently deadlocked. I think effectiveness and sustainability are orthogonal concepts here (some would say they are diametrically opposed...)

Adverblessly
0 replies
20h26m

In a parliamentary system, the need to build a governing coalition can result in greater incentives to compromise.

Alternatively, you get brinkmanship where you have a coalition of 53.33% where every party in the coalition that has >=4% of the votes (a.k.a. all of them) will threaten to bring down the entire coalition unless they get their most extreme demand. Incidentally, they are still trying to bring down the supreme court.

Personally, I'd gladly welcome some political deadlock over here.

hash872
15 replies
21h58m

The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another

Completely American myopic POV. Stable, healthy democracies that are unicameral parliamentary systems include Norway, New Zealand, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Portugal, and Sweden. (Most of those countries don't have strong judicial review either. Or federalism). That's without even getting into bicameral countries where the upper house is actually a lot weaker/just for show.

You don't have to separate the executive & the head of state, and you don't need to have checks & balances- that's propaganda for presidential systems. In fact I'd say the opposite is true- it's the countries with the checks & balances (by having a separately elected legislature and president) that are much more unstable and prone to autocracy. See Juan Linz on the Perils of Presidentialism

iteria
7 replies
21h51m

Look at all those nations you listed that are very homogeneous. I want a nation with significant culture tradition differences listed that is like that. American exceptionalist is mostly BS but we do have some ways that we are very unique as a nation and that is how many different kinds of major cultures we have hanging out in US. People handwave the US as all the same but that is very much not the case. Even for as good as American indoctrination is, nothing is gonna change that living in Montana is nothing like living in Florida. What rural urban even means in both states is so different. And we've been this heterogeneous.

I'm willing to accept your premise, but I want an example where there isn't one overwhelmingly dominant culture. I'll accept 2 equally dominant cultures.

hash872
2 replies
21h30m

nothing is gonna change that living in Montana is nothing like living in Florida

The problem with this argument is that Montana and Florida vote for the same political party, and then their representatives generally vote the same way once in Congress

pimlottc
1 replies
19h6m

I don’t think that necessarily follows; you could argue that rather it’s because states are so different that the best (national) strategy is to have a broad uniform national platform that can appeal to the most voters. Our political (electorally and procedurally) system does not favor having a multitude of regionally distinct parties.

hash872
0 replies
18h45m

Our political (electorally and procedurally) system does not favor having a multitude of regionally distinct parties

We use FPTP, which famously does favor having regionally distinct parties. Smaller parties can get outsized seats in the legislature by running up the vote in just a few districts, whereas if they had the same number of voters nationally but were spread out they'd get 0 seats. If you looked at all of the electoral systems globally and said 'pick the 1 that favors regionally distinct parties the most', it'd be FPTP.

In the UK which also uses FPTP the Lib Dems got 11.5% of the vote nationally and 11 seats in the last election. The SNP got 3.8% of the vote and 48 seats

verve_rat
0 replies
19h8m

25% of people living in NZ were not born in NZ. Add to that, NZ was founded out of an agreement between the British Crown and some, not all, of the Iwi (indigenous tribes) that already lived there.

Tell me that NZ is a homogeneous place with no cultural or political divisions that make working together tricky, go on.

nneonneo
0 replies
21h35m

Canada is bicameral but with a dysfunctional senate, meaning that it's effectively a unicameral system - and it's a highly diverse country.

bryanlarsen
0 replies
20h53m

Look at all those nations you listed that are very homogeneous.

New Zealand isn't.

NoboruWataya
0 replies
20h57m

It's not just homogeneity, they are also tiny. I didn't check all of them but I would guess Portugal is probably the biggest of those, with about 10 million people or 1/30 of the population of the US.

InTheArena
5 replies
20h16m

Comparing tiny countries at the edge of Europe and the edge of the world with the the US as super-power is a weakness.

Every country has adopted American Republicanism with a clearly defined and written constitution that has some form of separation of powers. None of these, for example, allow the PM to act as an absolute dictator without some form of emergency. The difference is simply in whether the president has an independent mandate from the parliament or not.

blibble
2 replies
20h1m

Every country has adopted American Republicanism with a clearly defined and written constitution that has some form of separation of powers.

the UK has none of this and its current system of government predates the US

InTheArena
1 replies
19h45m

The modern UK state has superficial resemblances - primarily in a shiny ceremonies with colonial era Britain,

blibble
0 replies
18h42m

the franchise widened and there have been some minor tweaks (e.g. devolution), but the fundamental system has remained essentially unchanged since the Civil War

hash872
1 replies
19h20m

The UK, Israel, Canada, and New Zealand all don't have written constitutions. 'None of these, for example, allow the PM to act as an absolute dictator' is not an example of the separation of powers, that's not what that phrase means at all

int_19h
0 replies
17h18m

Canada may not have a singular written document called "constitution", but it has the Constitution Act, the Canada Act, and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, so I'd argue that it's still mostly written.

refurb
0 replies
12h49m

I mean, why not go full bore and do the Singaporean system? An effective dictatorship? It's a great example of a stable, healthy system (until it isn't).

TylerE
14 replies
22h0m

While the Federalist Papers are great works, I don't agree with taking them as enlightened guidance from on high. They were theorizing. No one of them really knew how a modern democracy/republic would actually work in practice.

Remember, the authors of the constitution (large overlap) stated on the record that they expected they got a lot of it wrong, and expected large swathes of it to be amended and replaced once actual experience was obtained.

Yes, for those on one side of the spectrum the ruling orthodoxy is textual originalism. The founders themselves would have told the modern Supreme Court that it's bonkers.

InTheArena
5 replies
20h23m

The Supreme Court itself wasn't really defined by the constitution - they conveyed a need for it - but not how to structure it, given the lack of historical data. They also foresaw the problems with parties but didn't take enough steps to retire them.

This is why things like Roe V. Wade are (/were) so controversial. Does the Supreme Court have the right to imagine new rights to abortion with no textual basis in the Constitution? Even RBG didn't think so. OTOH, given the recent election results, Abortion is finally starting to become settled law - something the USSC could not do. Democracy works again.

That said - they got far more right then wrong, and ditching the lessons they learned first are a big reason we are in the state we are in now.

Once upon a time, leaders actually had to learn history to be leaders. Now-adays, not so much.

krapp
4 replies
18h15m

The Supreme Court's power of judicial review isn't defined in the text of the Constitution. It was applied by the Court to itself not by interpreting the text but reading between the lines and deciding it should have been there.

It seems to me that if we can accept that then we've already accepted that the Supreme Court can imagine new rights with no textual basis in the Constitution. After all, the Constitution isn't meant to describe an exhaustive list of rights so much as maximally bind the Federal government as to what rights it is allowed to abridge. So the concept of "rights having a textual basis in the Constitution" is nonsensical, ̶a̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶C̶o̶n̶s̶t̶i̶t̶u̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶t̶s̶e̶l̶f̶ ̶c̶l̶a̶i̶m̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶r̶i̶g̶h̶t̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶g̶r̶a̶n̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶a̶ ̶"̶C̶r̶e̶a̶t̶o̶r̶,̶"̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶o̶v̶e̶r̶n̶m̶e̶n̶t̶.̶ (edit: ... ok that was in the Bill of Rights my bad but still, rights aren't defined by the Constitution.)

Also, RBG believed abortion could be supported as Constitutional right, but she preferred an argument on the basis of equal protection over the arguments from privacy that underpinned Roe V. Wade, which she believed were too weak and easily undermined (and she was correct.)

The only relevant question per the Constitution is not whether the right to an abortion exists, but whether the Federal government should be allowed to interfere with that right, whether states should be allowed to interfere with that right, or whether that right should be left in its default state of being claimed by the people.

AnimalMuppet
3 replies
2h19m

Not the Bill of Rights, either. The Declaration of Independence.

No, there's another question on abortion. Is abortion a right that anyone should have? Bluntly, is it murder, or not? If it's murder, then it's not a right that anyone should have, whether or not that inconveniences the mother.

So do you regard the fetus as human (and therefore entitled to the same protection as other humans), or not? That's not a question that you can answer by law, or by constitution. That's a religion/philosophy/worldview question, on which there is no consensus. Which is why the abortion question is such a mess.

But nothing short of resolving "is it human, or not?" is going to solve the question. If it's human, then killing it is murder, and compromise is completely unacceptable. You just don't compromise on murdering people.

krapp
2 replies
1h23m

Is abortion a right that anyone should have? Bluntly, is it murder, or not? If it's murder, then it's not a right that anyone should have, whether or not that inconveniences the mother.

You're oversimplifying the argument, because not every case of killing another human being is considered murder. "Murder" is a legal construct. The right to kill another human being does exist in certain circumstances, such as in self defense, warfare or capital punishment, but the right to commit "murder" does not. The US has an entire Constitutional amendment to protect the right of people to kill other people "in defense of a free state."

Even if one does concede that a zygote at the moment of conception is fully equal to human being, it still doesn't follow that abortion is murder. Especially not when the health of the mother is threatened (which would arguably make abortion in that case a matter of self defense.)

And it's honestly weird to me that shooting a person will be defended to the ends of the earth by Americans as sacrosanct, while in numerous states it's now a crime to even search the web for a morning after pill, and women are forced to carry even stillborn fetuses to term. Let's not pretend there is even an objective definition of "human" in regards to American jurisprudence, there never has been.

As to whether someone should have that right, it exists whether anyone wants it to or not. The question at hand is whether government should be allowed to abridge that right, or made to respect it. I believe there is no argument that the government should be allowed to abridge the right to abortion if the test is strict constitutional originalism, and the intent of the founders relative to their culture. When the Constitution was ratified, abortion was seen as a personal choice, shameful in the way that everything related to women was shameful, but not illegal. Rightly a matter left to the people.

AnimalMuppet
1 replies
1h18m

See, in your last paragraph, you're assuming the answer. "That right exists whether anyone wants it to or not". Does the right to murder exist?

If you can't understand the other side's view, you can't do anything but fight them to the ends of the earth. Well, it's been 51 years since Roe, and you still haven't won, so maybe you should re-think that approach.

krapp
0 replies
42m

The right that I was talking about was clearly abortion, not murder, since it was a answer to your question of whether abortion was "a right that anyone should have?". I even went through the trouble of pointing out that "murder" is a legal construct, not a right, whereas killing another human being is, clearly, considered a right. This is an important context to consider in the question of abortion, because "if a fetus is human then abortion is murder" (essentially your argument) is a false dichotomy, just as "does the right to murder exist" is a contradiction in terms.

I think I understand the other side's view more than you understand mine, since you seem to be arguing against some strawman anti-abortionist living rent free in your head, and I at least put in a good faith attempt.

And as far as approaches go, attacking the person instead of their arguments will doubtless score you points on the internet, but it won't convince anyone of anything. But I guess you're correct that I can't argue with results. You don't have to convince anyone when you can just force the issue through a cabal of unelected judges by fiat.

gottorf
3 replies
21h19m

The founders themselves would have told the modern Supreme Court that it's bonkers.

expected large swathes of it to be amended and replaced

Would they have? There exists a mechanism to amend the Constitution, and it seems reasonable to me that the Supreme Court would insist on textual originalism until the text is amended through that legal process.

TylerE
2 replies
21h16m

Here's Thomas Jefferson writing to James Madison in the early 1790s:

"The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another…

On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation…

Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right."

That's one founding father to another. Funny how the "originalists" never bring this quote up. It's one founding father, later our 3rd president, writing to another founder who would later be our 4th.

Edit: Here's the full letter, and it's actually from late 1789: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-024...

refurb
0 replies
12h56m

Originalists never said the Constitution can't be changed, it can and has. Originalists say that if you want to change the Constitution, then change it, don't try and interpret it in a different way just to fit what you want. That's subverting the process itself.

peyton
0 replies
19h8m

I’d read Madison’s reply. Everyone knows Jefferson talked a lot of shit. The other founders were used to him. This is him getting emotional in Paris during the French Revolution. He thought the proto-Cult of Reason people were a bunch of crackpots and was worried the same thing was going to happen here.

adamisom
1 replies
21h33m

you could even say that the USA founders’ vision is the worst ever tried—except for all those others.

jacquesm
0 replies
19h59m

There are plenty of other countries that have similar or even better (depending on the viewpoint of the observer) systems of governance, this sort of American exceptionalism isn't rooted in an objective evaluation but simply a nice soundbite and a riff on the 'democracy' one, which has a lot more substance to it.

int_19h
0 replies
17h23m

Yet at the same time, when re-reading them, I often find it striking just how relevant they are to some of our problems today, even though they were written by people in very different overall circumstances. My favorite for the past decade or so has been Federalist #22:

"Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair representation conspire to condemn a principle, which gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New York; and to Deleware an equal voice in the national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts the fundamental maxim of republican government, which requires that the sense of the majority should prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States will be a majority of confederated America. But this kind of logical legerdemain will never counteract the plain suggestions of justice and common-sense. It may happen that this majority of States is a small minority of the people of America; and two thirds of the people of America could not long be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinctions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their interests to the management and disposal of one third. The larger States would after a while revolt from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller. To acquiesce in such a privation of their due importance in the political scale, would be not merely to be insensible to the love of power, but even to sacrifice the desire of equality. It is neither rational to expect the first, nor just to require the last. The smaller States, considering how peculiarly their safety and welfare depend on union, ought readily to renounce a pretension which, if not relinquished, would prove fatal to its duration."

"But this is not all: what at first sight may seem a remedy, is, in reality, a poison. To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. Congress, from the nonattendance of a few States, have been frequently in the situation of a Polish diet, where a single VOTE has been sufficient to put a stop to all their movements. A sixtieth part of the Union, which is about the proportion of Delaware and Rhode Island, has several times been able to oppose an entire bar to its operations. This is one of those refinements which, in practice, has an effect the reverse of what is expected from it in theory. The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: for upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy."

"It is not difficult to discover, that a principle of this kind gives greater scope to foreign corruption, as well as to domestic faction, than that which permits the sense of the majority to decide; though the contrary of this has been presumed. The mistake has proceeded from not attending with due care to the mischiefs that may be occasioned by obstructing the progress of government at certain critical seasons. When the concurrence of a large number is required by the Constitution to the doing of any national act, we are apt to rest satisfied that all is safe, because nothing improper will be likely TO BE DONE, but we forget how much good may be prevented, and how much ill may be produced, by the power of hindering the doing what may be necessary, and of keeping affairs in the same unfavorable posture in which they may happen to stand at particular periods. "

int_19h
0 replies
17h52m

The Federalist Papers themselves point out that Constitution is not meant to be a perfect document, but merely the best that everyone could agree on.

"I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man. The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necessarily be a compound, as well of the errors and prejudices, as of the good sense and wisdom, of the individuals of whom they are composed. The compacts which are to embrace thirteen distinct States in a common bond of amity and union, must as necessarily be a compromise of as many dissimilar interests and inclinations. How can perfection spring from such materials?"

blibble
13 replies
22h16m

Its a deep analysis of a need for a republican democracy.

The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances

this is a very US centric view

constitutional monarchies seem to work as well, if not better by the various democracy/stability indicies

Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail.

the near term survival of the current US system certainly looks far from certain at present

hangonhn
9 replies
22h10m

Aren't most modern constitutional monarchies just a veneer over a republican democracy anyways? The monarch wields no real power -- even if on paper they may still retain a great deal.

The US system is notoriously bad to get working and really seems to only work for the US. Anywhere else we have tried it has ended with some kind of failure. However, it's reasonable to call the parliamentary systems like the UK republican democracies and those have been emulated else where with a higher degree of success.

blibble
5 replies
21h56m

Aren't most modern constitutional monarchies just a veneer over a republican democracy anyways?

it's the other way round, by the time of the rebellion absolute monarchy was long gone, the things the colonists didn't like were being passed by parliament

the US then gave its presidency more power than George III would have dreamed of

(in practice the presidency also seems to be prone to dynasties)

InTheArena
3 replies
20h19m

Absolute monarchy was still a thread at this time. They just called it enlightened despotism. The colonists were objecting to taxation (and really any form of government) without representation, which both the monarch and the parliament were at fault for. Enlightened Despotism died when George III didn't apply reason (as the colonists saw it) to rectify the problem.

In terms of power then George III would have dreamed of - yes, we live in a era when the power of government is still orders of magnitude greater then what anyone could have imagined at the time.

blibble
2 replies
20h4m

Absolute monarchy was still a thread at this time.

The Civil War (1642-1651) was the last attempt at absolute monarchy in England

then Bill of Rights (1688) put it well and truly to bed when Parliament decided they didn't like the current king and picked someone else, simultaneously stripping them of their powers

it was well and truly dead by the time of the rebellion

InTheArena
1 replies
19h39m

Absolute monarchy never really existed in England. There is more to the world then England, and monarchy as government is still a thing. After all, a short hop-skip-jump across the channel, there is a French king soon to lose his head.

blibble
0 replies
18h51m

Absolute monarchy never really existed in England.

of course it did

I suspect my English history is better than yours!

hangonhn
0 replies
19h14m

it's the other way round, by the time of the rebellion absolute monarchy was long gone, the things the colonists didn't like were being passed by parliament

Wow. I feel foolish to have not come to that same conclusion until now despite knowing the same sets of facts as you. Great point.

ianburrell
2 replies
21h37m

The important difference isn't between monarchy or republic, but how the executive is chosen. Parliamentary democracies elect the prime minister. Presidential democracies have separate executive. For example, Ireland is parliamentary republic; the president is only head of state, the prime minister has all the power.

pi-e-sigma
1 replies
20h42m

That's not true. It varies by country, in some most power is hold by president, in some by premier, yet in some it's a mixture. But I don't know any country with a premier who is elected by the people. He is either selected by president or is the leader of the winning party. The executive can be chosen in various ways in a monarchy, too, because there are constitutional monarchies, too, where power of a monarch is limited (famously the UK is still a constitutional monarchy, but their monarch holds almost no power, but it wasn't so historically). You obviously only had the worst kind of monarchy in mind, the absolute monarchy

ianburrell
0 replies
19h21m

I was conusing; in parliamentary democracies, the parliament chooses the prime minister. There are hybrids like France with head-of-state President with lots of power; I can't tell how different from monarch "choosing" the prime minister.

We're not talking about absolute monarchies. For one thing, doesn't really matter how selects the government. It also doesn't really matter for absolute governments if power is inherited, inherited without acknowleding like North Korea, or says is President.

DennisP
2 replies
22h8m

It turned out the US system depended more on human virtuousness than many of us realized. Personally I've been kinda shocked to find out how much was just based on norms and traditions with no enforcement at all.

rootusrootus
0 replies
21h51m

I agree. But on the other hand, it has survived a pretty steady onslaught so far, with a significant plurality of the elected representatives trying to subvert it. There's hope yet.

int_19h
0 replies
17h17m

The UK system depends on the same even more, though.

throw0101d
1 replies
20h56m

For all those who talk about corruption and getting money out of politics I suggest reading Federalist 10 by Madison. Its a deep analysis of a need for a republican democracy. Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail.

And yet in Federalist 55 virtue is needed to sustain self-government:

Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be, that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.

* https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed55.asp

The only way to have a sustainable government is to have strong checks and balances and putting multiple factions with different interests against one another.

A particular faction can gain control over the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial in the US, and then they can collude unless individuals choose to follow the Constitution.

Donald Trump urged two Michigan election officials not to certify Democrat Joe Biden's victory in the state following the 2020 presidential election, personally calling them in a pressure campaign reminiscent of his Georgia tactics, the Detroit News reported.

In a Nov. 17, 2020, phone call, the then-president told two fellow Republicans on the Wayne County Board of Canvassers not to sign the state election's certification, saying they would look "terrible" and must "fight for our country," according to recordings of the call reviewed by the Michigan news outlet.

* https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pressured-michigan-of...

There are no "institutions" (to protect things), only people.

blibble
0 replies
20h19m

Donald Trump urged two Michigan election officials not to certify Democrat Joe Biden's victory in the state following the 2020 presidential election, personally calling them in a pressure campaign reminiscent of his Georgia tactics, the Detroit News reported.

it is utter madness that politicians are involved in anyway in certifying the results of elections

jltsiren
1 replies
19h28m

Checks and balances will fail without virtue. There are plenty of examples of that around the world. Checks and balances are fundamentally nothing more than words on a paper. They cannot be stronger than the elites' belief in their legitimacy.

refurb
0 replies
12h47m

That's true to an extent, but you're viewing it in too black and white a way.

A system with checks and balances can be subverted, but it's still better than a system without them.

foldr
1 replies
22h10m

If the goal is just sustaining government then there are lots of countries without those features that have a longer history of sustained government than the US.

quickthrowman
0 replies
20h43m

There are three governments that have existed longer than the US. Sweden, UK, Denmark.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fo...

Microstates don’t count.

wolverine876
0 replies
19h9m

In addition are other essential solutions, which accept the reality that we all have virtue and evil inside us; we are all biologically the same as MLK and Stalin, as Lincoln and the slave-owners (and the slaves).

* Good people, which is people who are at that moment able to bring out the virtue in themselves, must act to promote virtue. If they sit on the sidelines, the results are predictable - other people won't do it.

* Good people can specifically develop and institutionalize systems - of government, society, culture - that bring out the good in people. It won't happen by accident, and plenty of bad people will do the opposite with intent.

If you think these things aren't possible, look at the incredible accomplishments of our ancestors, as we live in a world of freedom, peace, and prosperity absolutely unmatched in human history. What will we build for our descendents? Or will we throw away our inheritance?

soperj
0 replies
18h43m

putting multiple factions with different interests against one another

wasn't that how we ended up with WW1?

smrtinsert
0 replies
18h33m

But some guy told me disbanding congress and the Supreme Court was the way

smdyc1
0 replies
16h2m

This makes me think about the Roman Republic. Yes, it failed in the end, but the idea of having two Consuls is appealing to check each others ambition. As an aside, Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast has a multiparter called Death Throes of the Republic which is highly entertaining.

Edit: can you imagine what it would be like though if the US had a dual presidential system and Trump and Obama were both in power at the same time? Somehow I think it would be more dysfunctional.

pyuser583
0 replies
18h54m

Sounds very Puritan.

janalsncm
0 replies
20h50m

Any government that depends on human virtuousness will fail.

All governments fail, it’s only a question of when. The stability of the US is in no small part due to its geography and natural wealth. Having two oceans on each side and more arable land than you know what to do with is far more of an asset anything written on paper. It seriously reduces the threat of external and internal conflict, and the US got this for a song.

Further, there’s a strong argument to be made that the US did not last this entire time. The centralization that happened after the Civil War created a fundamentally different government than was created in 1789. Through the process of incorporation, constitutional amendments were enforced on states which created a far more uniform country.

happytiger
0 replies
20h33m

This is precisely why the Department of Homeland Security was such a bad idea.

For anyone interested, the only thing I can add of use to this thoughtful comment is a link to the paper:

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp

eduction
0 replies
18h23m

Neither this nor any of the top replies make even a cursory effort to connect these thoughts to the friggin article this conversation is supposed to be about. It’s literally dozens of irrelevant comments sitting like deadweight at the top of the post.

ed_balls
0 replies
19h53m

government that depends on human virtuousness will fail.

that was the crucial difference between communism and capitalism. Communism used virtuousness only, when capitalism used virtuousness and greed. Communism failed.

baryphonic
0 replies
21h30m

Madison elaborates also on this theme in Federalist 51, but with separation of powers rather than federalism & factions.

Waterluvian
0 replies
22h28m

Over many discussions with American friends I have been persuaded that a governmental system that is fundamentally untrusting of the various components is one of the main features of American democracy.

Consultant32452
0 replies
21h20m

The form of government is irrelevant compared to the culture that is being governed.

Japanese cities are incredible because the Japanese culture demands safety, cleanliness and beauty. You could make just about any change to the form of government you want and the result will be the same.

brink
76 replies
1d

What other industry is allowed to inspect itself? It completely ruins the point of an inspection. It's like being the judge and jury in your own trial. I'm amazed this is a thing in the first place.

dmurray
35 replies
1d

Stockbroking, cinema, accountancy, law, life insurance, financial planning, nuclear power, real estate, medicine, advertising, media...[0][1]

Self-regulation (especially at the industry level rather than delegating to individual companies) doesn't seem completely broken. Actually it can work quite well. You keep some oversight, and reserve the right for the state regulator to step in if the SRO goes bad. The people who run the SRO have an interest in perpetuating their organization, so they if anything have an incentive to be stricter than the government would. If things do go wrong, the government demands direct oversight. That's what's happening here.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-regulatory_organization

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sro.asp

rkangel
24 replies
1d

An industry regulating itself is different from an organisation regulating itself.

Self regulation of the industry is common as you say. It tends to involve one central body enforcing the standards on the members, and acting as a central point for agreement of the standards.

This is not the case with the Aviation regulation. The FAA is the regulator, and has delegated the testing to the people it is meant to be regulating.

beambot
14 replies
23h34m

Prominent examples of "Self Regulating Organizations": The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), The Financial Planning Association (FPA), Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI), Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (FINRA), Fixed Income Clearing Corporation (FICC), Options Clearing Corporation (OCC), American Institute of Certified Public Accounts (AICPA)

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sro.asp

shutupnerd0000
8 replies
23h7m

All very upstanding and incorrupt organizations

vkou
7 replies
22h48m

Would you like to tell us how the NYSE is corrupt?

Or do they just get tarred with 'Well, they work in finance, of course they are all crooks' brush?

pi-e-sigma
5 replies
20h31m

Just google what they do when they don't like some trades

mulmen
3 replies
20h8m

The standard for corruption is higher than “I don’t like your decision.”

pi-e-sigma
2 replies
18h49m

So you think anyone can get their trades reverted on the stock exchange if they ask nicely? Oopsie, I clicked the wrong button, now please revert the trade that lost me some money. If some get such preferential treatment it's clear cut case of corruption, you don't need to catch them with the proverbial smoking gun to know it

Tesl
1 replies
13h41m

Still waiting for all this evidence of yours.

Much easier to just go by gut feeling though isn't it.

pi-e-sigma
0 replies
8h18m

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-31

What now? I'm sure you are going to say that they settled because they were innocent, right? And that they halted trades 'by mistake', not on a purpose

vkou
0 replies
19h32m

The internet's full of garbage. All that'll find me is a mountain of people who don't understand what they are talking about shouting very loudly.

I'm not going to waste my time sifting through it to find evidence for a claim you're making.

Make a specific claim of corruption, and provide evidence for it.

zmgsabst
0 replies
17h37m

NYSE sells preferential access that allows favored players to skim without risk. The industry regulations around “market makers” and pay-for-order-flow are incredibly crooked.

There’s also a clear tolerance of securities fraud as long as you subscribe to certain ideologies — eg, NYSE allowing Disney to trade when they’re clearly stealing/destroying shareholder assets to advance the ideology of a cabal of executives and fiduciaries.

mattmaroon
3 replies
23h24m

By organization he clearly meant single for-profit corporation. While the language was imprecise, he surely wasn’t referring to these types of entities.

fakedang
0 replies
21h54m

NYSE is a for profit entity owned by Intercontinental Exchange. They also own Euronext. And they're regulated by the Sec, but carry out their own regulation efforts too. The parallel isn't that far off.

fakedang
0 replies
21h53m

NYSE is a for profit entity owned by Intercontinental Exchange. They also own Euronext. And they're regulated by the SEC, but carry out their own regulation efforts too. The parallel isn't that far off.

WrongAssumption
0 replies
23h3m

NYSE and CBOT are single for profit corporations.

bunderbunder
0 replies
21h49m

These examples are arguably qualitatively different from what's happening with Boeing's self-inspection.

I used to work at an organization that was governed by multiple of the SROs you list there. Here's how it worked: They set rules, we followed them, they monitored and audited us. There were also governmental organizations monitoring both them and us.

I think that the key distinction here is not actually public vs. private. It's more of a "sunlight is the best disinfectant" situation. The simple knowledge that you have some external agency that doesn't have moral hazard concerns to compromise its interests that is keeping an eye on you, and that you know is keeping an eye on you, does a lot to incentivize better behavior. Is it perfect? No, far from it. But, at least in the specific case of the financial industry, it's not clear to me that a 100% governmental regulatory system would actually fare any better. I think that the unstated major premise of such an idea is that the people in charge of the governmental regulators - elected officials - are uncompromisable ethical paragons. And if you believe that, I've got some hot penny stocks that I'd like to tell you about.

nerpderp82
2 replies
1d

Self regulation would mean that the org should face much stiffer penalties for failing in its regulation related duties. The increased agency needs to also come with increased responsibility.

Something like notaries, guilds or unions that can speak the truth without retribution ...

No, we need independent regulation. We don't have the societal norms to pull off self regulation.

mulmen
1 replies
20h7m

Self regulation would mean that the org should face much stiffer penalties for failing in its regulation related duties.

Why? How does this incentivize effective self-regulation?

No, we need independent regulation. We don't have the societal norms to pull off self regulation.

We do though. This thread even points them out.

nerpderp82
0 replies
12h23m

Because they have autonomy. By having the regulators embedded, they can continually tell them how to improve. The regulation isn't to punish, but to conform and exceed to the specifications.

jncfhnb
1 replies
1d

That’s largely fine though because the stick to enforce good diligence is the threat that the ability to self regulate is removed. As is being seen.

Wytwwww
0 replies
23h42m

After (luckily) just a few hundreds of deaths

sircastor
0 replies
20h7m

And it's important to say that generally you want and industry to regulate itself. This prevents the regulation becoming a burden on the people, and maintains the threat that if the industry doesn't regulate itself then the government (the people) will regulate it. No industry wants oversight, so they do their best to stay in the lines.

f1shy
0 replies
21h29m

That wasnot the OP question

cycomanic
0 replies
23h13m

That's sort of the same with the SEC and (parts of) financial industry?

One can even argue the tax office is sort of like it.

bobthepanda
0 replies
23h36m

Also, generally speaking, self regulation involves a third party, like an impartial industry wide organization or a competitor.

Inspecting the self is a bit bonkers.

keenmaster
2 replies
1d

Self-regulatory bodies are usually centralized and separate from any individual corporation. They also tend to answer directly to a government agency and cannot be disciplined by a corporation. While there can still be issues such as a strong revolving door and potential indirect pressure to be nice to the regulated entities, it’s not as terrible as what Boeing and other airplane manufacturers get to do (inspect themselves in lieu of regulatory inspections). That’s strange, because lives are literally on the line, more so than some other industries with more independent examinations.

emarsden
1 replies
22h6m

Historically, the fact that lives of the public are clearly on the line was part of the argument for allowing partial delegation of safety oversight. The idea has been that any engineer/manager making these decisions will be regularly flying themselves/loved ones, so is going to be suitably cautious. This differed from the situation in coal mines for example, where the miners exposed to the risk were socially/culturally disjoint from engineers/managers.

keenmaster
0 replies
16h42m

Right, that’s just bonkers logic though. When the stakes are higher, controls should be stronger.

pleasantpeasant
1 replies
1d

SRO sounds like a middle-man in this process. And like all middle-man industries, they suck out money from both sides that they deal with.

We can easily publicly fund over-sight committees to oversee these industries instead of relying on SROs who take tax-payer money and are in the perfect financial and power position to do some really corrupt and immoral things.

Look at the National Association of Realtors, another SRO— On October 31, 2023, a federal civil jury found that the NAR had conspired to inflate commissions paid to home-buyers' real estate agents, and determined that NAR and its codefendants owed damages of almost US$1,800,000,000.

Zillow and NAR have anti-trust lawsuits coming their way too. Relying on SROs is just asking for corruption, imo.

itsoktocry
0 replies
23h37m

We can easily publicly fund over-sight committees to oversee these industries instead of relying on SROs who take tax-payer money and are in the perfect financial and power position to do some really corrupt and immoral things.

Easily, really? Why is the default position that industry players are corrupt and immoral, but the government overseers will act independently and altruistically and have no financial stake in the outcome? That doesn't jibe with my experience. People in government seem to do some of the most immoral acts out there.

poulsbohemian
0 replies
13h9m

real estate

What's funny about this is that if you were to ask a group of brokers (IE: the ones with authority over the business - terminology is inconsistent between states...), they would probably tell you that the state has a great deal of oversight, but I'd agree with you - by and large no one is actually watching them. I was with a group of fellow brokers not long ago and it came as a clear surprise to them that the state would no longer be actually auditing them. The state wouldn't make it official policy, but it was a wink and a smile that they wouldn't. There were gasps around the room and it was really rather an insightful moment. While I am new in this role, it was obvious to me the state wasn't actually auditing anything - and frankly, why should they unless they've had a consumer complaint? But the fact that very experienced brokers were surprised by this was interesting.

logifail
0 replies
23h0m

The people who run the SRO have an interest in perpetuating their organization, so they if anything have an incentive to be stricter than the government would

Except if the "people who run the SRO" are in fact employees of the very company they're supposed to be regulating... ?

Then they surely have an even greater incentive to keep quiet in order to keep their jobs?

asdff
0 replies
23h27m

Those 10 sorts of industries you cited aren't exactly models of self regulation. Well, they are, in the sense of how to abuse regulatory capture to maximize returns, but not in the sort of sense most people think of regulation which is limiting harm to consumers.

SilasX
0 replies
1d

This. It's not a problem as long as the self-regulator is kept in line with periodic checks from a higher regulator.

It's similar to how income taxes work. You self-report all the figures, and then they are sampled and spot-checked and occasionally audited. The possibility of being caught by an audit, then prods people to generally submit truthful reports, because of the risk of penalties.

And then, if that incentive ceases to work, the self-report/self-regulate status gets revoked.

JohnFen
0 replies
23h58m

Self-regulation (especially at the industry level rather than delegating to individual companies) doesn't seem completely broken.

Maybe, maybe not. But I do know that I don't have much faith when companies "regulate" themselves. There's just too much conflict of interest there. A third party doing it is, on its face, more trustworthy.

josh_carterPDX
4 replies
1d

The FAA is bad, but I would say the FDA is worse.

Any industry in which you have companies actually writing the text of the regulations used to oversee them is a recipe for disaster.

Sadly it usually takes a tragedy to highlight these egregious systems that exist in our country. We also need to get lobbyists out of Washington so that the real impactful work can begin to separate the government agencies from the companies they're meant to regulate.

randomdata
1 replies
23h25m

> We also need to get lobbyists out of Washington

You can't have (representative) democracy without lobbying. It is not that you need to get the lobbyists out, you need to convince more lobbyists in. It is likely that the average Joe has not talked to their representatives even just once, let alone on the ongoing basis necessary to fulfill the demands of democracy.

NickC25
0 replies
22h32m

Correct - but you CAN get corporate lobbyists and industry lobbyists out of Washington.

Simply mandate that lobbying must be done on behalf of natural citizens and ONLY natural citizens, and limit the lobbying to be done on behalf of citizens with only a $ net worth or under.

If a billionaire complains about not being able to buy a couple senators, well, too fucking bad. I'd GLADLY give up my ability to corrupt government officials if you gave me a billion dollars.

istjohn
0 replies
22h54m

We need to get money out of politics.

HeyLaughingBoy
0 replies
19h38m

How so? The systems I develop are subject to IEC-62304 (https://www.iso.org/standard/38421.html). What about that is written by companies? Which companies?

bombcar
3 replies
1d

The vast majority of industries are practically self-inspected, even when inspectors exist.

For example, take construction engineering; the government doesn't fully inspect every single submitted drawing, they may spot check here and there and make sure the paperwork is filled out, but the final duty rests with the engineer of record.

Same with building inspections, they're no where near detailed and long enough to catch everything, it's mainly a spot check to verify that it's not horribly incorrect.

hn8305823
2 replies
1d

For example, take construction engineering; the government doesn't fully inspect every single submitted drawing, they may spot check here and there and make sure the paperwork is filled out, but the final duty rests with the engineer of record.

This doesn't always end well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1031_Canal#Partial_collapse_du...

quickthrowman
0 replies
20h37m

It would be virtually impossible to fully review every construction drawing for accuracy, there are just too many of them. Nothing would ever get built.

Most jurisdictions will do plan review, but it’s not a thorough check of the engineering.

I would assume structural drawing sets are checked a bit more closely than say, the interior architectural drawing set, but mistakes still happen.

Plus, whoever was the PE of record on the structural drawings for the hard rock parking ramp will never sign another set, they’re done as an engineer, possibly they’ll see prison if they were negligent. That won’t bring any peace to the victims families, but it’s something.

bombcar
0 replies
1d

Nothing always ends up well every time, it's about making the balances and allocating resources where they best serve. This is the perpetual policy problem around things like OSHA and other regulatory bodies.

One question might be if the airlines should be able to inspect their own equipment, or be required to pay the government to do the inspections, instead.

Way more planes have fallen out of the sky due to bad airline maintenance/inspections than have crashed because of Boeing stupidity.

wnevets
2 replies
1d

What other industry is allowed to inspect itself?

Movies. The ratings you see before a movie starts is assigned by the industry after inspecting the movie [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Association

kmeisthax
1 replies
23h44m

Not a great example. The 1st Amendment prohibits literally anything more strict.

phone8675309
0 replies
23h2m

Not true.

The government could rate movies; what they cannot do is to prevent a movie from being exhibited if it is otherwise legal.

bryanlarsen
2 replies
1d

A lot of industries self-inspect with regulatory oversight. For example, the SpaceX Starship mishap investigation that required 63 corrective actions from SpaceX before they were allowed to fly Starship again was done by SpaceX with FAA oversight. It seems that the oversight was effective; I highly doubt that SpaceX would have imposed 63 corrective actions on itself without effective oversight.

It's hard to see how it could be any different. SpaceX engineers are the only ones with enough knowledge of Starship to do an effective investigation.

burnerthrow008
1 replies
23h22m

I highly doubt that SpaceX would have imposed 63 corrective actions on itself without effective oversight.

Eh, I don't know if I agree with that. Most of the actions were very straightforward "stuff we need to fix to make the rocket do what we want it to do and not do what we don't want it to do".

Like, one of the actions was "make the launch pad not explode when the engines turn on". That was the root cause of the engine failures that led to the flight termination. Was SpaceX really not going to do that anyway?

Besides formalizing the process and writing down a list of 63 bullet points and using the legalese of "corrective actions" for them, I think the result would have been basically the same without the FAA looking over their shoulder.

But the main reason for my belief is that the Falcon 9 launch success streak is currently better than any other rocket in history (by a large margin), at 241 launches and counting (and 180 launches since the last landing failure). To put this in context, other launchers with a similar or greater number of launches go 30-50 launches between failures. Unless SpaceX is just incredibly unbelievably lucky, they seem to understand how to do RCA to build reliable rockets.

shermantanktop
0 replies
21h46m

Rocket launches have to be close to the ideal candidate for COE-driven improvement. Any actual problems are going to be problems that need solving in the short term, and if they aren't solved, there will probably be short term pain. The costs of each launch are high enough that they have to take low-probability/high-severity risks seriously.

Other industries have incentives to defer problems into future years, to externalize the costs, or to just plain hide or ignore them based on things like "accepted industry practice" or "within prescribed safety limits". Somebody needs to balance out the short-term incentives by decision makers to get promoted on the back of a press release about a splashy success, because that success may have a metric ton of failure disguised inside.

throwup238
1 replies
1d

Clinical diagnostics, for example. Any time you take a blood test and send it off somewhere (Quest, LabCorp, etc.) to get assayed, chances are it goes to a self-regulated and self-inspected lab. These labs hire FDA certified "lab managers" as consultants or employees who are then responsible for all QA/QC procedures and certifying that the lab is capable of doing what they claim. They can be held criminally liable and have quite a bit of authority (a bit like professional engineers) but it's still a cozy employer-employee relationship.

The FDA steps in when something goes really bad but I've never seen them do official spot checks without cause.

alasdair_
0 replies
18h37m

Would the Theranos debacle have progressed as far as it did if the FDA inspected at the beginning?

moomin
1 replies
1d

Famously, in the UK, Railtrack outsourced basically its whole operation. Including inspections, often to the same firms doing the work. This culminated in the Potters Bar crash. I worked with someone who survived it. He was, by his own estimation "not quite right" afterwards.

People don't often make the connection, but at that point the government of the day started pressuring Railtrack to fix the rails. Railtrack's countergambit was to demand money from the government, saying they couldn't afford to do it. This did not have the effect they had hoped for and ended up with Tony Blair, a man who had made a name for himself by changing the Labour party constitution so they no longer were about nationalising industries, having to nationalise a section of the railway industry. And to this date, no-one, even a conservative government in power for the last 14 years, has suggested privatising it again.

pi-e-sigma
0 replies
20h28m

Alternative explanation is that there is no money to be made by privatization, not because anybody cares if there would be another accident and a lot of people would die

halJordan
1 replies
23h34m

You got a laundry list of responses, the take away is that even with modern technology and abilities it is completely impractical to do the sort of inspecting that people seem to think is common place. Even for just one industry, but people seem to think every industry has regulators inspecting every factory. There just aren't enough people or money and if you did somehow do that the bureaucracy would collapse down onto itself in the same way imperial China repeatedly imploded.

Edit: the promise of the blockchain and self executing contracts was to overcome this bureaucracy problem.

turquoisevar
0 replies
15h13m

This seems to excuse poor enforcement of regulations (or worse, lack of the government regulating to begin with) with the premise that it’s impossible to do right.

Yes, sure, it’s impossible to inspect and regulate every single thing all the time. But the US is doing a piss poor job where other nations at least have a decent baseline.

This is by design by the way, underfund agencies so that politicians keep getting money from their corporate buddies.

Even essentials such as food production is abysmally inspected in the US due to too few inspectors being available.

Most EU countries don’t have these issues and their “bureaucracy” hasn’t collapsed down onto itself.

Your comment is just another “this is an uniquely American issue and if we were to do it right the sky would come falling down” type argument that is trotted around everytime a fundamental issue, that has been solved elsewhere, is exposed.

game_the0ry
1 replies
1d

Finance.

As proven by the 2008-2010 Great Financial Crisis, self regulation does not work well.

shermantanktop
0 replies
21h44m

...in all cases. You've got a great counterexample, but it doesn't invalidate the successful use of self-regulation in other areas.

bonton89
1 replies
23h2m

After Mattel shipped in a bunch of lead painted toys from China a law was passed requiring inspections for everyone except Mattel who were deemed large enough to inspect themselves, even though their negligence was the cause of the law.

7thaccount
0 replies
18h8m

Holy cow...if that is true

turquoisevar
0 replies
15h21m

Car manufacturers self-certify I learned pretty recently.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/12/23998308/tesla-cybertuck...

tomohawk
0 replies
17h55m

I live in an affluent community, but the last time I had electrical work done, the government inspector missed 5 serious problems that I found, 3 of which were obvious.

It's really hard for the government to hire and retain competent people to inspect something as easy as residential wiring, even in an affluent community with plenty of money being spent to operate the government.

thsksbd
0 replies
23h42m

Pharmaceutical.

ponty_rick
0 replies
1d

TV channels have self-regulation as well - admittedly it doesn't directly kill people. There's also police departments, I suppose.

nielsbot
0 replies
21h8m

Pretty sure the meat industry is

newsclues
0 replies
1d

Congress

nashashmi
0 replies
21h47m

Every industry self inspects. The city inspects its utilities. The construction companies inspect their own work. The only time an outside inspector is used is when the company is doing the work for a client, so the client uses an inspector..

If you screw up inspection repeatedly, then you get replaced. This article is about a weird govt flex.

mrfox321
0 replies
22h49m

the police in America

empath-nirvana
0 replies
1d

Well, the theory is that what is being regulated by federal government is the inspection process of the company, rather than the inspections themselves.

Mostly the government doesn't want to get involved in checking if bolts are tightened, they want to make sure that the company has a process to check that the bolts are tightened and is following it. It would be extraordinarily expensive and inefficient for government inspectors to do all this work themselves.

emarsden
0 replies
22h11m

There are several good reasons for allowing it. One is that it's difficult for a public inspectorate/regulator to maintain the necessary levels of expertise to assess such complex systems (and increasingly so with technological progress). Furthermore, people working inside the industry have much better access to information about the risks than an outside inspector has.

A second reason is simply costs to the public. In 2019, the interim FAA director Dan Elwell testified to the US Senate after the 737 Max disasters that bringing all delegated oversight back into the FAA would require 10000 extra staff and USD 1.8B in costs. There are fairness/democratic arguments to having the costs borne by the industry (and thus indirectly by the privileged portion of the taxpayers who consume air traffic) rather than by all taxpayers.

class3shock
0 replies
1d

This is pretty common in aerospace, defense and, I imagine, alot of other government facing industries. For something like this the inspection procedure is likely approved by the government and verification it's being performed properly is done with lots of submitted and retained paperwork. So maybe less judge and jury and more private vs public attorney filing the same motion. Yes, they could have biases but they both are performing the same task, based on the same laws.

Of course that doesn't always stop mistakes/negligence (see this incident) or bad actors (see below): https://news.usni.org/2020/06/19/navy-has-mitigated-risk-of-...

I will also add that just because something is inspected by the government does not insure quality. Usually failures in inspection are due to inexperienced and/or overworked inspectors, higher ups pushing to "get things through" or to reduce costs, or other banal reasons just as possible to occur whether it's Uncle Sam or Boeing writing the inspectors checks.

asylteltine
0 replies
22h43m

The ones that pay off the government which is… everyone! Except you, the private citizen.

arrosenberg
0 replies
23h10m

As others have noted, this is fairly common, and I would argue the correct way to do it. The US government sucks at compliance regulation. I'm sure some countries are better at it, but Americans don't follow rules very well, so trying to police them is a losing affair.

What US regulators ARE good at is investigating and prosecuting. The current issue is that they are not doing what they are good at. In the NCAA if a staffer (say Connor Stallions) commits a major rule violation, the head of the program (Jim Harbaugh) serves a punishment for "failure to supervise". We need the Boeing CEO to spend sometime in a concrete cell for "failure to supervise". Maybe threaten to break them up a bit with the Antitrust division. The next CEO will do a better job of self-regulating.

akira2501
0 replies
21h36m

It completely ruins the point of an inspection.

What is the point of an inspection?

AceyMan
0 replies
23h55m

The FAA / Aircraft Manufacturer relationship has been oft criticized in the past several decades as being a canonical example of 'regulatory capture.'¹ This incident is just more grist for the mill.

¹–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture?wprov=sfla1

strangattractor
14 replies
1d

Many people seem to think this couldn't/wouldn't have happened if someone else had been doing the inspections. This problem was likely caused by a flaw in the process. A mistake a 3rd party could also make. It is not a mistake where Boeing is doing nefarious cost cutting and needs to hide it or has made a huge engineering mistake affecting all the aircraft. Somebody put the plug in - got a phone call, or shift change, put your diversion here - and forgot to put in the bolts. The inspection - if it occurred - failed to notice. I suspect the documentation on the plane will help identify how and by whom. It could just as easily been some other 3rd party mechanics doing routine maintenance.

treesknees
3 replies
23h51m

I was with you until midway. You're making quite an assumption while the NTSB's investigation is still ongoing. We don't know the root cause - Those bolts may have very well been in place and passed an inspection during install, but rattled loose and fell out (and then subsequently were blown out of the plane when the plug failed.)

United reported loose bolts, not missing bolts. This indicates a more systemic issue and not just a miss by an Alaska Airlines maintenance worker taking a phone call. If the systems involved in the failure are all "Boeing", it doesn't seem unreasonable to consider changes, such as requiring a 3rd party with no self-interest in rubber-stamping the go-ahead, to inspect the work.

graton
1 replies
23h22m

Those bolts may have very well been in place and passed an inspection during install, but rattled loose and fell out (and then subsequently were blown out of the plane when the plug failed.)

The bolts the NTSB can't find are not the ones that have been found to be loose. The bolts they can't find are the ones with the castellated nuts and cotter pin. Very hard to imagine those vibrating loose. And for the door to transit in an upward direction it would really require all four of those to fail or for them to not exist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maLBGFYl9_o at around the 7:26 mark has a great explanation of how the door is secured and it seems like as long as there is at least one of the four bolts installed the door can't move.

51Cards
0 replies
23h12m

Agreed, those are not going to rattle loose. Even if the cotter pins were all missing, 4 nuts would have had to back off fully and 4 bolts would have had to wiggle out, not to mention they would likely be under pressure from the guide pin during flight. Again, the final report will tell all but it really seems to me that they were just not there.

strangattractor
0 replies
22h57m

I do not think using words such as "likely" and "I suspect" constitute asserting anything. Those doors and plugs are designed to wedge themselves against the seal when they are in place. Just looking at them from the outside will not give any indication as to whether they are bolted. A few rapid vertical jolts (which might occur in flight) could jar them loose without the bolts. There is no damage to the structure of the plane. Bolts on planes are either carter pinned, safety wired or have a nylon ring to prevent loosening. They generally don't just fall off - not to mention having several fall off simultaneously.

janice1999
2 replies
23h48m

The company responsible for the door installation is Spirit AeroSystems. They've been sued for "widespread quality failures" before [0]. The workers raised issues and were ignored [1] and allegedly told to falsify records.

[0] https://news.yahoo.com/maker-boeing-door-plugs-sued-00335449...

[1] https://jacobin.com/2024/01/alaska-airlines-boeing-parts-mal...

sschueller
0 replies
23h14m

Let's not pretend that Spirit AeroSystems isn't just basically a sub devision of Boeing.

lamontcg
0 replies
23h7m

They were spun off from Boeing though and I think focusing on them as an entity separate from Boeing for finding fault is the kind of reason why Boeing spun them off. We shouldn't take that bait and should be considering them a division of Boeing (yeah, even though they also sell parts to Airbus).

And Spirit seems entirely financially screwed as a company, they haven't had a positive gross margin since before Covid and on top of that they're now spending half their revenue on interest on their debt. Having Spirit eat those losses is probably great for Boeing's financials and stock price. They should likely be forced by the government to take Spirit over again.

mattmaroon
1 replies
23h13m

The same problem has been found on several plans. Far too many and too high a percent to not be a systemic issue. A phone call or shift change might explain one or two errors, not the same error in many planes across multiple airlines.

They don’t build 100 of those things a day. They don’t even average one a day. Whatever the issue, it went on over quite a period of time.

Given the other issues with the 737 Max line, it is reasonable to believe there would be a good chance of improvement if regulators were more heavily involved.

51Cards
0 replies
22h59m

Just a note that the bolts problem on other planes is not the same as this one. This plane it seems that the locking bolts were missing entirely, not just loose. Their design requires a cotter pin and castelated nut to disappear and then for them to be completely removed, all 4, before the door can move. They act like a pin locking the door in place so all 4 have to no longer exist vs. just being loose. Of course the final report will tell but it looks like they were just not there. The other loose bolts found do however indicate a lack of attention and inspection in this area on a whole which may have contributed to this slipping through.

roody15
0 replies
21h42m

Hmm they have already found 7 other planes with loose bolts in the same section. On other airlines besides Alaska. Don’t think distracted 3rd party is the issue… seems more like a production problem considering the Alaska airlines 737 was only 2 months old

janice1999
0 replies
23h39m

It is not a mistake where Boeing is doing nefarious cost cutting and needs to hide it or has made a huge engineering mistake affecting all the aircraft.

Is this sarcasm? If not you really need to read the notes from the MAX 7 crash investigation, starting here [0]. That is exactly what Boeing did. MCAS was a hack to fix a plane badly designed to save costs. They rushed to release, ignored incomplete testing, hide information from the FAA, buried MCAS inside another features notes and forced engineers to say that only computer based training was needed for pilots for the new MAX planes despite big differences, all to save themselves and airlines costs.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_certification

feedforward
0 replies
23h42m

I agree 100%! As a proud, patriotic American I don't want BIG GOVERNMENT interfering with the free market either - even if the windows of airplanes are being blown off mid-flight.

However, do not take this to mean I want the end of the billions of dollars the government gives to Boeing every year, for the R&D to build planes for the military.

asdff
0 replies
23h17m

This entire narrative about Boeing in the media to me just screams of insider trading. The stock went up 68% in a month, then held flat for two weeks, only breaking down the day the screw story breaks. People definitely knew this was coming in December and were selling off what they could without triggering a panic sell off. Perhaps even that November pump and favorable headlines about order sheets at the time was also orchestrated. Interesting to speculate.

EasyMark
0 replies
19h36m

That seems doubtful since it's not happening on airplugs in other planes. Sure a third party could have failed as well, but Boeing's currently suspect inspection standards are far more likely to fail (if true and with the incentive to cut costs as much as possible) than a 3rd party whose sole reason for survival/earnings is to get paid for doing inspections. I trust greed more than I trust a "gentlemen's agreement" to do the right thing.

game_the0ry
14 replies
1d

Finally, after a couple of plane crashes, fantastic investigative journalism, and a door blowing off mid flight (thankfully that was caught on video and shared).

Too little, too late.

We should regulate the regulators, bc I don't trust them either.

wolverine876
4 replies
1d

We should regulate the regulators, bc I don't trust them either.

We should have oversight, and we do, but it's hard to pick a worse example of bad regulation (or a better example of good regulation) than the FAA. Air travel safety is extraordinary.

game_the0ry
3 replies
1d

Air travel safety was extraordinary.

FTFY

The regulators and regulations are being stress-tested by Boeing's 737-max problems, and we are seeing the regulatory holes in the process.

ApolloFortyNine
2 replies
22h28m

Even with the two crashes air travel was still the safest form of travel those years (as it is every year, it has quite the buffer actually).

This kind of fear mongering doesn't help anything. If airplanes were invented today people like you would have had them outlawed after the first accident.

peyton
1 replies
22h14m

The FAA requested $19.8 billion this year. For just under $20bn the doors should not be falling off planes.

Powdering7082
0 replies
18h6m

FHWA requested 68.9 billion for 2023. How many car crashes should there be?

https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2022-03/F...

For the curious: https://www.transportation.gov/mission/budget/fiscal-year-20...

mardifoufs
3 replies
1d

The plane crashes had nothing to do with inspection. You could've inspected a 737max down to every single bolt back in 2017 and not have prevented the crashes that happened after that.

dogman144
1 replies
23h47m

737 crash was software and training quality. I think if you included those i. a mission critical systems inspection, under which software on planes is about as important as the bolts and metal, then you’d find preventions.

Or, just talk on ex-BA SWE and learn about it from them.

mardifoufs
0 replies
21h56m

I don't disagree that the 737 crashes involved tons of systemic issues at boeing. I just don't think that federal inspections would've helped. There's almost no way a federal inspection system would be more effective than even the lacking software inspection Boeing had.

You could get the systems to comply perfectly well with standards and certifications, like the 737max did, but still have issues. I don't think the 737max didn't meet federal standards or requirements (which a hypothetical federal inspector would have to apply and check for). the issue was more so that they weren't enough in those specific situations.

throwup238
0 replies
1d

It's clearly a systemic problem regardless.

SoftTalker
2 replies
1d

Do you think Boeing would have (or could have) swept that under the rug if there was no video of the incident?

I don't think it makes sense for any manufacturer to be solely responsible for their own safety inspections. Too much incentive to cheat. Must be verified or at least randomly spot-checked independently.

game_the0ry
1 replies
1d

Do you think Boeing would have (or could have) swept that under the rug if there was no video of the incident?

Yes. It is way more powerful to actually see what happen than to just hear a report about it. I think it was more powerful than even a plane crash that is not caught on film, even though many people would die.

Do not underestimate the power of photo and video evidence.

danaris
0 replies
23h36m

I dunno; I think that in a case where you can see photos of a guy holding up a blown-off plane door that fell on (or next to? I don't recall the exact details) his house, video of the incident as it happened is just the icing on the cake.

mc32
0 replies
1d

Better late than not at all. I welcome a stringed regime of regulation for aircraft manufacturers and operators.

ActionHank
0 replies
23h47m

Calm down, they are just considering it.

gmerc
13 replies
1d

What’s there to consider even - political connections?

thatguy0900
7 replies
1d

Does the faa have enough qualified staff and budget to review boeings planes? Does anyone other than Boeing have them, since noone else does it? Legitimate question. Would you poach a bunch of engineers from the airlines/military?

tuetuopay
2 replies
1d

hire airbus to inspect boeing, and hire boeing to inspect airbus?

nottorp
1 replies
1d

That would be fun... or end with both manufacturers being completely grounded by the other and we back to canoes and horse carriages :)

tappdarden
0 replies
23h28m

I would love for trains to get more attention in the US. ...

nottorp
0 replies
1d

If you read the analysis published after the MCAS disaster, self certification is something recent so the FAA at least used to have people.

jgeada
0 replies
1d

Isn't this the whole point of the "defund the government" approach?

Deliberately sabotage the regulatory authorities, then use the fact that they no longer have the expertise and staff as a justification to outsource the regulation function over to the companies that were supposed to be inspected.

And when it goes wrong, which it always does, make shocked pikachu face and claim that nothing can be done because we no longer have the capacity to regulate industry.

This would be less infuriating if this was the first time, but it keeps happening again and again and people keep falling for it. It is immensely profitable for the few though, that might be why it keeps happening.

The fix is easy, just requires time and budget: rebuild that expertise and refuse to certify anything until you have the necessary capabilities.

burnerthrow008
0 replies
1d

As a practical matter, the FAA might designate someone outside of Boeing to do the inspections (like maybe people from Lockheed or Grumman, who are not directly competing in the commercial airliner space).

When you take a checkride at the end of training to earn your pilot certificate, it's not an FAA employee riding with you... it's a "DPE" or Designated Pilot Examiner, who is a private individual designated by the FAA to conduct check rides (and who often charges you a fee to administer the test).

Occasionally an FAA employee will ride along with the student pilot and DPE to evaluate how the DPE is evaluating prospective pilots.

bombcar
0 replies
1d

You build it up over time by hiring direct from colleges (or even trade schools).

It has to be a complete plan, not just a slap-dash "we can hire some people and the problem is solved".

To do it best you do NOT hire from the industry, and if necessary you hire from unrelated industries (perhaps, for example, oil rig/pipeline inspectors).

iamtheworstdev
3 replies
1d

The problem is that the FAA doesn't have the expertise. The people with the expertise all work for aircraft manufacturers. And odds are the FAA will never pay anyone enough to leave the manufacturers to do the job.

wolverine876
1 replies
1d

The problem is that the FAA doesn't have the expertise.

Do you know a basis for that? My understanding, though limited, is that they have incredible expertise - and we can see their outstanding results. Also, IME, this claim is used by many industries to assert that they shouldn't be subject to regulation, and (IME) it's always false.

randomdata
0 replies
23h8m

> Also, IME, this claim [...] it's always false.

Of course it is false. Even if the regulation ultimately can't be enforced due to lack of the right people, the players can still be subject to the regulation. The two are not logically associated.

Nobody is making that claim, though. What is the significance of this fun anecdote you pulled randomly from a hat?

ajcp
0 replies
1d

There are other ways to solution for the same outcome, or get closer to it.

Pass regulation that requires audit and certification by a rated and licensed authority that isn't necessarily the government itself. As a publicly traded company Boeing already has to do this with its books; why not with its product too?

I'm sure that E&Y, Deloitte, KPMG, or PwC would love a crack at a new market and they've certainly got the money to hire away from manufacturers.

hindsightbias
0 replies
22h5m

Well, there are over 400K parts in a 737 and they're building more than one a day. How many of those need more inspection? How many inspectors do you want to apply to this problem? How much growth of the FAA? How many/long to do a ground up review of every Boeing inspection process? How much more do you want to pay for every flight? What will be the impact on Boeing pricing vs Airbus worldwide?

HN is pretty strange these days. One day gov't is the problem, the next it is the only solution. We need "streamlining" of regulation for more nukes, but more regulation of Boeing because a door blew off over 100's of millions of flights. We need to get rid of the FAA and ATC and automate everything with software controls to prevent runway incursions. But we need to ban autonomous cars.

cromka
10 replies
22h31m

Can someone explain why the focus is on FAA, while there's also EASA and others? Do they also allow Boeing to self-inspect and self-evaluate themselves like FAA does?

Can FAA and Boeing be really the only ones to blame here? If Boeing was in bed with FAA that much and they were dropping the ball on safety, shouldn't EASA's own process take note of that and extra-scrutinize Boeing planes during certification for European sky compliance? Especially that it would play in Airbus' advantage, and I am sure some allegiance between the two is definitely in place to some extent at least.

How did, for example, EASA allow the MCAS on 737 Max? I mean we know Boeing abused the FAA trust in their process, but why did EASA not raise concern over the same?

Something is missing here and I don't appreciate that somehow everyone seems to forget that those planes are absolutely not certified by the FAA for use by the rest of the world. At the very least, EASA is as shitty at certifying those planes as FAA is. Or, actually, is even worse, considering that in theory the reason FAA allowed it is because Boeing took advantage of them, meanwhile EASA should have done the full re-certification?

yyyfb
2 replies
22h28m

I don't know if that's at play, but the specific door configuration that Alaska 1282 had is apparently not that common in Europe. I'm sure EASA will take note though.

jeffrallen
0 replies
10h8m

Pretty sure airplanes in Europe have safety critical bolts in them, and pretty sure they need to be torqued right and double checked.

So the doors are kind of a distraction from the apparent fact that Boeing has forgotten how to make airplanes which do not threaten the lives of all those in and below them.

cromka
0 replies
22h18m

I'm sure EASA will take note though.

There are no 737s operated in that configuration in Europe, so while EASA accepted FAA's grounding notice, it didn't really affect the EU.

But that's beyond the point. The point is those flawed quality controls that Boeing does on behalf of FAA could in theory affect other areas, not just the plug door. And so I wonder if EASA also allows Boeing to self-certify, or do they perform the checks themselves?

xenadu02
2 replies
22h19m

I don't recall if it is just by handshake agreement or in an actual treaty but the country where the manufacturer of a plane operates is the one designated authority over that manufacturer.

FAA issues Airworthiness directives and sets rules Boeing has to follow. EASA largely defers to the FAA (not always but in almost everything).

Similarly the FAA follows EASA when it comes to issues with Airbus.

Both FAA and EASA requirements are roughly alined anyway so it doesn't make that much difference.

Boeing has been coasting on their engineer-led culture from the past. They're only allowed to self-certify on things that are not "safety critical" so having the FAA review that designation seems more useful.

FWIW when Boeing merged with McDonnel-Douglas the GE protégé crew took over. The decision to move headquarters was done deliberately so the machinists and engineers couldn't go complain to the bean counters in person.

Also think about Boeing setting up a factor in South Carolina and fighting so hard to prevent that factory from unionizing. They're focused on giving labor a smaller share of the pie... on some of the most expensive (and formerly profitable) things humans build, with a decade-long order book where every single unit they make is pre-sold years in advance. (Recent screwups have hurt them badly though).

Do you want an airplane built by an accountant-run company that cares about finding the cheapest most disposable workers to build the airplane? Whether it matters or whether the union sucks is irrelevant. The fact that Boeing management was so determined to screw the workers who assemble these planes says a lot and none of it is good.

stevehawk
0 replies
17h58m

I believe that's only true for planes flying over/through other countries, and it is not universal. In order for a plane to be sold in EASA governed countries it has to be certified by the EASA. So in effect, the 737 is getting certified twice. In general aviation there's this common misconception that the Cirrus SR line can't recover from a stall, which is because the FAA drops spin recovery testing if you ship with a BRS (parachute). Reality is, when the SR line was certified by the EASA it was required to demonstrate spin recovery. Another discrepancy is that the EASA does not recognize "experimental" has a category of aircraft, so an FAA classified home built experimental that flies to an EASA country would not be allowed to take off after unless the national government has rules that allow it (also applies to ultralights).

cromka
0 replies
22h14m

FAA issues Airworthiness directives and sets rules Boeing has to follow. EASA largely defers to the FAA (not always but in almost everything).

Similarly the FAA follows EASA when it comes to issues with Airbus.

Both FAA and EASA requirements are roughly alined anyway so it doesn't make that much difference.

Thanks. That then explains it. Although I have a feeling this mutual trust has its expiration date and I would be surprised if EASA didn't actually start raising concerns over the FAA's credibility.

emarsden
1 replies
22h23m

There are indeed several other examples of this partial delegation of authority for decisions concerning safety, either to industry players or to third parties, though the FAA "ODA" mechanism is probably the most prominent. EASA's mechanism is similar in many respects, but more focused on properties of the oversight entity within the designer-manufacturer firms than on properties of the individuals doing the work. I wrote a discussion paper on precisely these issues a few weeks ago, which discusses some of the questions related to independence from commercial pressure, access to expertise, and so on:

https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ALZ0IuyZGHImolY&id=D37...

cromka
0 replies
22h10m

Woah, amazing!

MilStdJunkie
1 replies
21h56m

EASA generally respects FAA activities unless something's extraordinarily fuggity fuggity boop. The reverse is also true, so you can get EASA auditors in a US plant. . but woo boy, there is no way to express the sheer panic we would all feel when we learned our pet FAA DER was going to be replaced by some steely-eyed Aryan bastard from EASA with his micrometers and tiny little notebooks. Those guys did not screw around. Speaking anecdotally, of course.

I suspect that the EASA/EUROCAE guys were often "accidentally" brought in when FAA was getting sick of us trying to slip stuff by them. Sort of like, "Try that Consumables trick with me again, and I'm sending Hans"

jamwil
0 replies
11h6m

Not much of a sense of humour around work, the Germans.

voakbasda
9 replies
1d1h

Dear regulators,

Do it.

Do it now.

Sincerely,

Everyone

jillesvangurp
8 replies
1d

Easier said then done. Inspecting planes is job that requires a lot of skill and knowledge. Most of those people aren't cheap and they tend to work for airplane companies that need their skills and can pay their salaries. Which in the US means Boeing basically employs all the best people for this.

IMHO, the system actually works just fine. Accidents are extremely rare and companies tend to learn from them.

A better fix would maybe be to just make it really expensive for Boeing to cut corners here and put mechanisms in place to verify that they aren't. And you could argue that is the case already. Their reputation suffered and it probably shows in their order books. So, I'm guessing they are very eager and well incentivized to move on from that.

And looking at the Airbus and Boeing stock price suggests that Boeing stock has never recovered from that. Both stocks went down a lot at the beginning of Covid. But the Airbus stock has basically recovered from that and Boeing hasn't.

Even the mere threat of regulators getting more strict is probably making investors really nervous. That could end up being more effective than any actual inspections.

Dalewyn
3 replies
23h49m

For all the criticism the American aerospace industry gets, Boeing is the only one clearly suffering the problems they have. If stricter regulations mean Boeing can't do business, tough luck.

Boeing's entire business is to make good aircraft, and they are grossly failing to do so; their problems extend far beyond just the 737 MAX. A business that can't sell good products shouldn't be in business one way or another.

123pie123
2 replies
22h57m

Boeing's entire business is to make good aircraft,

it looks like from the outside that Boeing c-suite of people think... "Boeing's entire business is to make good profit"

without understanding the consequences of cutting corners in the process

Dalewyn
1 replies
22h3m

Good profit stems from good products, in this case aircraft.

Boeing's entire business is to make good aircraft.

123pie123
0 replies
11h3m

thats was my (not very well made) point

they're cutting corners in pusuit of profit and thus the planes are developing fault

protastus
2 replies
23h51m

Inspecting planes does require a lot of skill and knowledge. But one doesn't need deep expertise to detect loose bolts.

My experience is that when quality breaks down, the effects are visible at multiple scales and multiple places. Who knows what else is non-compliant in the 737 MAX assembly line (surely this is why the FAA announced an audit).

Loose bolts happen because multiple layers of protection were bypassed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model

chx
1 replies
22h43m

But one doesn't need deep expertise to detect loose bolts.

Oh yeah you do.

Because some bolts should be lose and some shouldn't be. They would be studded or welded together if you never wanted to loosen it, after all.

richwater
0 replies
21h33m

Not to mention specific torque ratings

mathverse
0 replies
23h34m

Poach people from Airbus. Just pay them well and bring them over.

mattcantstop
6 replies
21h19m

40,000 deaths each year in the United States resulting from cars, and nobody lifts a finger. The side of a plane pops off a few miles up in the air and everybody loses their minds.

nickvec
1 replies
21h3m

And almost all of these deaths are the result of user (driver) error, whereas passengers on a flight have no say in Boeing's design of their planes and/or whether the door gets ripped off mid-flight. You're comparing apples and oranges here.

philipwhiuk
0 replies
20h21m

Because passengers are incapable of choosing not to fly?

ironmagma
1 replies
21h16m

You're making your (our) cause look bad. There are a lot of issues with cars but this isn't one of them. Cars essentially work as intended, and when they don't there are recalls, lawsuits, and NHTSA investigations.

error9348
0 replies
21h0m

There are all kinds of externalities, including safety, which are ignored. US tax policy which allows write offs only for large vehicles which are more likely to cause deaths. Tire emissions. Congestion pricing -- common in Europe -- needs years or reviews and lawsuits. NHTSA doesn't require bicycle test devices.

karaterobot
0 replies
18h35m

There are lots of safety regulations around cars. Not only manufacturers, but drivers themselves are regulated. People who sell cars are regular. Streets are regulated. Signage is regulated. Every aspect is heavily regulated, and this regulation is enforced by police tens of thousands of times a day. I'm not even sure what you could mean when you say nobody is lifting a finger. Do you imagine there's some scenario in which nobody ever dies in a car, and this is what would be required to declare that a finger had been lifted?

jsight
0 replies
20h33m

I wouldn't say that nobody lifts a finger. There's a lot of analysis going on each year to try to improve the situation. And vehicle automation is seemingly starting to make progress on reducing various collision types, especially with pedestrians.

But the fixes are much more complex and will necessarily take a lot more time.

If your point is that we don't think enough about vehicular deaths, except for the ones that are in some way newsworthy, then I think you are completely right. Even worse, we don't account for lives saved and this skews perception in odd and potentially detrimental ways.

ryanisnan
3 replies
22h53m

I posted this because I was curious to learn that indeed, aviation companies were doing this.

This type of self-evaluation is pretty common in software, though audits of compliance are also common.

I wonder what sort of scenario might unfold if a company had a team of developers who's sole job it was to test other teams' software in a red-team fashion. I am all too familiar with QA organizations, and the problems in that environment, and am all for developers conducting their own testing as a fundamental part of development, but what if we took it a step further?

htrp
2 replies
22h39m

I wonder what sort of scenario might unfold if a company had a team of developers who's sole job it was to test other teams' software in a red-team fashion. I am all too familiar with QA organizations, and the problems in that environment, and am all for developers conducting their own testing as a fundamental part of development, but what if we took it a step further?

You get a lot of infighting between the development and validation teams. Big US banks have this for (statistical) models already.

ryanisnan
1 replies
22h16m

Is the infighting you speak of politically motivated? Is this a QA vs. Dev mentality?

denimnerd42
0 replies
21h48m

Development slows to a crawl and nothing gets done. We have audit teams up our ass at my job and you can't do anything due to the 100 layers created by previous audits. There has to be someone that says "work needs to get done" we don't really have that.

pdonis
2 replies
17h32m

My question would be, what bonehead gave manufacturers [edited] the right to self-inspect planes in the first place without having their "fox guarding the henhouse" alarms go off?

We're lucky that our aircraft safety record has stayed as good as it has for this long.

mcswell
1 replies
17h26m

Airplane manufacturers--which means Boeing--not airlines.

pdonis
0 replies
16h42m

Oops, yes. I was able to edit the post to correct this. Thanks for the catch!

feedsmgmt
1 replies
19h45m

At this point why allow anyone to self inspect or self report anything? What's the upside to allowing the risk?

EasyMark
0 replies
19h40m

The upside is obviously that it's cheaper for the government. However, given Boeing's failures, that is no longer a reasonable bet to hedge on. We need to stop it before air travel becomes even more dangerous than car travel. Self-regulation with occasional friendly audits did work for a few decades, though, but Boeing got lazy and cocky and the FAA got too friendly and incestuous.

Scoundreller
1 replies
1d

Have we concluded that the bolts/nuts/door was assembled incorrectly and not faulty metallurgy or faulty assembly instructions?

Still unsure if the recent door issue was a matter of sloppy assembly (which inspection should find) or sloppy specifications/equipment (which inspection would reinforce, possibly making things worse).

MobiusHorizons
0 replies
18h8m

Obviously the NTSB report is not finalized, but I think we can rule out metallurgy. Even just from the photos you can see that the tabs in the airplane that the door plug rides up against and the corresponding tabs on the door (even though it fell out of the airplane) are still intact. The only other faulty metallurgy issues remaining would be if certain bolts that have not yet been found had failed. The likelihood of that is extremely low given how new the plane is, and there would be evidence of wear on the corresponding parts, which has not been reported. This pretty much guarantees some level of faulty assembly with incorrectly torqued or (most likely) missing bolts. Very much the sort of accident for which aerospace has a process to prevent.

will5421
0 replies
21h14m

Who said show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcome?

whiplash451
0 replies
18h48m

Wait, the inspection of planes is not done by an independent 3rd party?

stuckkeys
0 replies
14h23m

Any public facing service should not be allowed to certify internally. Other than quality assurance ofc, external certification should be mandatory and be done by certified agents.

sokoloff
0 replies
1d

It's not clear to me which aspects of Boeing's authority are in question even after reading the FT article.

Boeing has both have Designated Engineering Representatives (DERs) who are involved in design certification questions for airframe type certificates and quality inspectors who are involved in certifying individual already-built airframes for airworthiness (conformance to type certification and in condition for safe operation).

The former are usually not called inspectors, but many of the comments here are covering topics that are the domain of DERs rather than inspectors/A&P w/IA.

shadowgovt
0 replies
21h42m

FWIW, it did NASA wonders when they created the IV&V program to strip individual facilities the right to self-inspect missions.

sfifs
0 replies
16h54m

My guess of what may have happened reading between the lines of many reports is - Boeing originally instructed Spirit to loosely fit the plug and not secure it because they planned to remove it to fit out the interiors. In this case Boeing would be accountable to secure the plug door after the interior is done to the right specs.

Somewhere down the line, Boeing probably decided not to remove the plug to fit the interiors and instead just load them through the main bigger openings only. They probably did not document/log this change in practice and think through implications and probably did not update instructions to Spirit to secure the plug door going forward (or maybe they did but Spirit didn't pay attention)

Hence we have many planes with Spirit assuming Boeing will secure it as per the previous practice and Boeing not securing it because they didn't remove it while fitting out.

Now the obvious question is if Boeing or Spirit has deviated from documented production practice in this area, have they deviated in other areas and hence the entire production process of max lines will probably need to be re-audited

rramadass
0 replies
1d1h
psychlops
0 replies
1d

I guess they could always use inspectors from Airbus since I doubt the US regulators are qualified.

nielsbot
0 replies
21h8m

Please f*cking do it

nickvec
0 replies
20h49m

It's absurd that Boeing even has the right to self-inspect their planes. Logically, it makes zero sense, but money talks I guess.

nashashmi
0 replies
21h41m

It is sad to see the number of commments here and no one mentions that a manufacturer not inspecting their own work is like an employee who does not check his own work, or an engineering team that does not check its work.

Boeing is great! It does great work. But yes, it lost several moments of pride, and that does not work great for Boeing.

In order for a company to do better, you need to take an honest multi-year review of their processes and cite multiple issues, and see through multiple corrections. Then we will have a well corrected company. And that is what Boeing needs, along with a bifurcation for increased competition.

inglor_cz
0 replies
20h56m

"Nemo judex in causa sua" - "No one should be judge in their own cause"

Technology has changed a lot since the Roman Empire, but human nature is still the same. We shouldn't ignore such old principles just because it is 2024.

iancmceachern
0 replies
22h30m

Should have never been given.

baskint
0 replies
20h21m

you got to be kidding me!!! is this for real? wtf!

aviat
0 replies
4h28m

how about getting SpaceX to disrupt the airliner market?

Or how about US Govt can funding a second airliner manufacturer?

InTheArena
0 replies
20h14m

While you at it, do what the Biden Administration threatened to do to Musk - remove Boeing's CEO's ability to be CEO of a large public company.

Guzba
0 replies
23h25m

Seems like an empty threat. The obviously best position for gov is to always have the "you all messed up don't make us come regulate" line available to them. It sounds good. The moment they start regulating, all the mess-ups are mud on their face. Who wants that?

EasyMark
0 replies
19h43m

That would be a very logical step to take given their recent history, they don't seem to be able to police themselves since the bean counters are in charge rather than engineering/long-term centered executives.

Dowwie
0 replies
22h2m

[January 2021] Boeing Charged with 737 Max Fraud Conspiracy and Agrees to Pay over $2.5 Billion: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged-737-max-fraud-...

Animats
0 replies
23h57m

That should have been done years ago, with the first 737-MAX problems.