Move fast and lose door plugs
Aircraft accidents are the great American metaphor
Quick confesh, I’m obsessed with airplane crashes. There’s a rubbernecking element (I’m only human!) but there’s also gratification (a morbid kind) in tracking accidents back to human error.
They’re seemingly innocent mistakes on their own, but you if you turn over a few more rocks, you can see the darker forces of capitalism — corporate greed plus the erosion of government institutions — wriggling like dirty worms in the mud.
This Boeing door-plug debacle is the latest example: It’s the third major incident in 5 years that can be tracked back to the leadership of former CEO Dennis Muilenburg, who took the company on a cost-cutting, compliance-evading, shareholder-value-increasing joyride that resulted in about 350 deaths.
The software glitches that eventually killed all the passengers and crew on two separate flights were initially glossed over by Boeing executives in safety reports as they readied the 737 Max for release. Once the product was shipped and being used by pilots all over the world, its problems were flagged over 200 times to the FAA.
But the Federal Aviation Administration had been gutted since the Reagan administration and has continually bled out since. So, during the Trump administration — when these issues cropped up and every federal agency was on the chopping block — the FAA probably didn’t have the capacity to handle these complaints properly.
The decimation of the FAA has not only resulted in todays’ air-traffic control crisis, it’s also made it easier for manufacturers like Boeing to de-prioritize boring stuff like safety in exchange for short-term gains and maximum shareholder value.
Simply put, this airplane fuckery is the perfect illustration (unlike my deeply imperfect illustration above) of a republic in decline: It’s rich corporations vs. everyone else. Buyer beware. The cabin is depressurizing and you’re responsible for your own oxygen. The metaphors are unlimited!
Everything is Illuminated Deregulated
Startups are often in the short-term gain/long-term disaster trade, whether they realize it or not.
On branding projects, I’ve seen fin-tech founders baffled by softball questions about compliance. When I’ve flagged the legal risk of certain messaging, I’ve had teams roll their eyes at me like my 5-year old when I make him wash his hands.
On the other (dirty) hand, young founders have grown up in a de-regulatory environment where it’s much easier to ask for forgiveness later rather than permission ahead of time. Aside from the occasional Sam Bankman-Fried or Elizabeth Holmes, they’ve never seen a CEO go to jail — not even during the financial crises of their formative years — so why should they listen to a Debbie Doomsday like me?
Besides, what’s a promissory statement on Instagram when it can generate a 25% conversion rate? The minuscule fine they might get from the SEC could be considered part of their marketing budget.
Whether it’s politicians or “visionary” business leaders, no one seems to be thinking long term, much less looking out for their end-consumers/constituents.
They’re focused on reelection/acquisition at all costs to boost their value and ensure a lucrative exit. Let a new owner/future generation deal with the eventual fallout. They’ll be on their next project by then, so I’m the asshole who pushes de-risking when the “risk” is as fake as their “mission” and “vision.”
Epilogue: Dennis Muilenburg evaded criminal prosecution, just like you and I would if our negligence and coverups killed two packed movie theaters’ worth of humans, lol.
He went on to start a VC firm in the Cayman Islands, which failed and folded early last year. His net worth is estimated to be around $80-to-$100 million, according to a Google search.
Moving 2024-ward…
I always bring this stuff back to startups because 1) it’s the community I’ve operated within for nearly 20 years. 2) Each one is an amplified/accelerated version of late capitalism in a microcosm, and while capitalism is the main cylinder of our economic engine, when it’s left unchecked by regulatory bodies it’s straight-up dangerous. 3) Collectively, we have a responsibility to do better even if no one in charge is paying attention.
I don’t mean using more sustainable cotton or fair trade vanilla beans, I mean choosing not to stand on the shoulders of Silicon Valley giants who’ve built products and services that:
Fuck with kids’ mental heath (Meta), exploit their workers and actively intimidate them from unionizing (Amazon), get young men hooked on “day trading,” i.e., glorified gambling (RobinHood), take users down extremist rabbit holes with algorithmic content (YouTube), refuse to moderate hate-speech on their platforms (X), literally poison their customers, then blame hospitalizations on their customers’ failure to read cooking instructions correctly (Daily Harvest), and so on.
We need more founders focused on bringing value and utility in real people’s lives (including their employees), and we need politicians who actually give a shit about people and the future. We need fewer cost-and-corner-cutting business leaders whose sole aim is to blitzscale their way to billionaire-hood, and fewer politicians who treat their office as a corporate lobby cash cow.
The only way to get there is to reanimate the stodgy old institutions that keep us honest.
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