How Capitalism Destroyed Boeing

This week on 51/49, James examines the case of Boeing, and how an obsession with single financial metric for the sake of pleasing Wall Street destroyed America’s greatest aerospace manufacturer along with 346 innocent lives.

Founded in 1916 by a lumber industrialist named William E. Boeing, the Boeing Company has dominated commercial aviation for over half a century, and today, “more than 10,000 Boeing-built commercial jetliners are in service worldwide, which is almost half the world fleet, and about 90 percent of the world’s cargo is carried onboard Boeing planes."

But in 1997, when Boeing merged with its competitor McDonnell-Douglas, the leadership changed the company's culture to “run like a business rather than a great engineering firm.”

With laser-like focus on Wall Street, return on net assets, and shareholder value, Boeing slowly sacrificed safety and eroded its manufacturing excellence over the next two decades, culminating in two fatal crashes (Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302), killing 346 innocent people.

0:00 Introduction
1:02 Boeing's Shift from Engineering to Financial Engineering
2:26 Return on Net Assets (RONA)
3:01 787 - Building a Plane Without Actually Making Anything
5:15 737Max - Profits Over Safety
7:41 Company's Obsession with Wall Street
8:27 Conclusion

#737Max #Boeing787

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