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Comment on What's Gone Wrong at Boeingparent

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The only real competition is for shareholder "investment" and returns.

In the absence of effective external oversight and regulation - clearly a problem across the economy, never mind here - you can guarantee a race to the bottom where only the beans matter.

If the company stops making quality products that usually creates a bonus, because cheap. Lower headcount? Bonus. Union busting? Bonus. Low wages? Bonus. Indifference to worker welfare? Bonus. Cosy revolving door relationship between lawmakers, regulators, and senior management? Mega payout!

The incentives are all aligned towards making payouts for owners bigger, while lowering objective quality of service, worker conditions, and worker pay.

Airbus is less terrible because the EU regulatory regime isn't quite as toothless, and the EU has a very slightly less competitive and exploitative financial culture.

You find the same human-hostile forces right across the economy - from landlords who send rents into an exploding price spiral, to utilities that monopolise infrastructure while investing as little as possible, to pork barrel government spending at inflated prices, to startups whose only real USP is an app and a plan to sidestep existing regulations, to tiny restaurants that expect customers to tip generously, because they're certainly not going to pay waitstaff a living wage.

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