alt Hacker News> We have seen what Boeing has become when it's effectively unregulated.
I think this is vastly overstated by the media. Boeing is still heavily regulated and has a pretty good safety record compared 20 or 30 years prior. The biggest disaster of recent times (MCAS) was because of the tight regulations around type certification and trying to avoid costs to carriers
> Some things need to be regulated, esp. if mistakes are costly to the planet and/or people on the said planet.
I absolutely agree. I am not for the removing ALL regulations from nuclear energy but there is a whole political servitude cycle that has taken place for a number of years to make nuclear "safer" when in actuality it has little to no influence on the technology and just adds burden and overhead especially in the new construction of a nuclear power plant
Nuclear is this big scary monster because its invisible death machine. Despite us being regularly exposed various levels of radiation in our lives most people are completely unaware of. Some people are terrified of dental x-rays but will happily jump on an intercontinental flight without any second guess.
I think arguing in the opposite of "you can never be too safe" is kind of like the whole double your bet every time you lose at the casino yes, its technically true but you need an infinite pool of chips for it to work.
Replies
> The biggest disaster of recent times (MCAS) was because of the tight regulations around type certification and trying to avoid costs to carriers
Lost me right here, MCAS may have been motivated by losing type certification (as it should), but everything they did was not a result of regulations. Including upcharging to make the system actually redundant. Had they actually engineered the MCAS properly, they would have never gotten caught in the first place.
> Nuclear is this big scary monster because its invisible death machine.
Yup: It really is big, it really is scary.
> and trying to avoid costs to carriers
Isn’t that just code for trying to violate regulations without getting caught?
> The biggest disaster of recent times (MCAS) was because of the tight regulations around type certification and trying to avoid costs to carriers
Meaning they tried to skirt around the regulations, including regulatory capture by pushing self-certification because competition caught up to them while they spent money on buybacks instead of investing in R&D, perhaps even investing in absorbing some costs of certification of pilots into a new type they could develop into the future instead of relying on a design from 60 years ago.
Mismanagement is what created Boeing's issues, not regulation.