[HN Gopher] Boeing and the Dark Age of American Manufacturing
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       Boeing and the Dark Age of American Manufacturing
        
       Author : fortran77
       Score  : 13 points
       Date   : 2024-04-20 20:50 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
        
       | FrankWilhoit wrote:
       | One important factor that the article does not engage is
       | financialization. For financialized business, doing what is says
       | on the sign is only a cover. This of course affects many other
       | industries as well.
        
         | Terr_ wrote:
         | Yeah, I was expecting to see the, er, F-Word somewhere around
         | where it said Boeing "slowly but very deliberately extracted
         | itself from the business of making planes."
        
         | s1artibartfast wrote:
         | One thing that I see in my industry is replacement of knowledge
         | with systems and engineering degree inflation.
         | 
         | Boeing had all the required systems in place. Even 2x the
         | quality systems they needed.
         | 
         | None if this matters if people are playing legal word games
         | with quality requirements instead of basic engineering.
         | Technically following a rule might win in court, but it wont
         | win over physics.
        
         | arp242 wrote:
         | Three out of four of Boeing CEOs of the last 20 years came up
         | under General Electric's Jack Welsch. These people are actively
         | hostile to engineering and seem to think financial markets are
         | the only truth that exist.
         | 
         | One of the former CEOs called engineers who care too much about
         | quality "assholes" because they don't care about the stock
         | price, so he actively made efforts to chase them off. How can
         | you possibly think that the quality of the products and stock
         | price are completely disconnected?
         | 
         | These people really are the Tommy Wiseau of running a business.
         | They kind of know what it looks like, but get so many details
         | wrong and the end result is completely absurd and doesn't work
         | at all, so all you can do is laugh at it.
        
       | zer00eyz wrote:
       | Sears, at the top of its game, built a tower.
       | 
       | It isn't called Sears Tower any more.
       | 
       | In a moment of decline sears sold it. Because it was a liability,
       | not to the company but to the stock price. Sears Tower was going
       | to be bought at the bargain basement price of sears stock.
       | 
       | Hell all of the robber barons of the 80's (the gordon gekos) were
       | doing the same thing. We're still doing it now with private
       | equity. Only now there's nothing to sell so we're stacking debt
       | on the companies.
       | 
       | You could have an anti capitalism rant here. It would not be
       | productive. Stronger regulation, and different corporate
       | structures are needed (See Mondragon). The latter is on everyone,
       | myself included, CoOps aren't new in America. (See everything
       | between the coast's that involves farming intersecting with
       | CoOps.) We just need more of them in urban areas.
        
         | AlbertCory wrote:
         | Actually, the test of a true Chicagoan is, "Do you _still_ call
         | it  'Sears Tower' even though that's not its official name?"
         | 
         | I don't live there anymore and even I know that.
        
         | cpursley wrote:
         | I had a finance professor who once did a study that correlated
         | the construction of new fancy new office building with a major
         | decline in stock price. Hubris before the fall.
        
           | cpursley wrote:
           | Counterpoint: Apple
        
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       (page generated 2024-04-20 23:01 UTC)