Comment by mschuster91
Comment by mschuster91 3 hours ago
> Are you saying higher prices would lead to better safety?
Higher prices and regulations.
With no floor on pricing, there will always be enough greedy executives who are willing to cut corners to make money in a ruthlessly competitive environment, fully knowing that it is very hard to prosecute a C-level executive personally.
The other possible result will be that eventually the market "agrees upon" a minimum price floor while being in compliance to regulations - but that usually means that the company will be as bare-stripped of assets and reserves as possible, which means in turn that the slightest external shock can (and will) send not just one but multiple companies crashing down hard. We've seen this with Covid - an economy that has optimized itself for decades on running as lean as possible is very sensitive to all sorts of external interruptions. Of course, that's not directly relevant to safety... but indirectly it is, as the inevitable result of that is an oligo-, duo- or monopoly and then, we've seen with Boeing where that ends, incentives aligned too much to cut corners.
I kiiinda see where you're coming from but I guess I just don't buy it, TBH.
I think greed is what's causing cut corners.
You mention Boeing, and they were quite healthily profitable during the entire time they were cutting corners on the 737 MAX. Airbus wasn't an existential threat. It still isn't, in fact, even after all the fallout.