The funniest thing is that Boeing is barely industry, with all the two-way regulatory ties and of course the monopoly, it's like a nationalized company that just happens to be nominally owned by investors. The only ideology that Boeing makes look bad is the Soviet system! :-)
Yes, that's right. The free market has no horses in this race, it's a comparison of the relative corruption of different governments and societies. Our military-industrial complex, of which Boeing is an important member, is one of the most corrupt institutions in the world.
>The only ideology that Boeing makes look bad is the Soviet system!
Boeing is 100% a product of the American system. All the acquisitions, mergers, lobbying and loss of engineering culture in favor of short-term profit seeking that got it to where it is today happened under capitalism. Nothing resembling Boeing ever existed on the USSR, its airplane manufacturers worked very differently, with different incentives and under different constraints.
Seems sort of like the opposite—a lot of the regulation is done by people installed by lobbying, sort of like a privately owned and operated part of government.
Of course it's terrible for everyone but shareholders there isn't really any domestic competition.
It's great for the entrenched leadership, but bad for the shareholders who would benefit more from a variety of investment opportunities in a diversified and growing market. I don't think all of these problems are good for the airline industry.
The shareholders in a company have no reason to want the government to kill off the competition - they could just as easily invest in that competition. Shareholders care about the size of the whole market and corruption steals from them as much as it steals from anybody.
