Neoliberalism Killed 346 People Aboard the Boeing 737 MAX 8

What was left of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet, after it crashed to the ground six minutes after takeoff. All 157 people aboard were killed (source)

by Thomas Neuburger

The essence of modern neoliberalism, as encouraged and enabled by both political parties, is the Ayn Randian notion that the greatest amount of freedom in the world should be given to capital — that the giant pool of money should be allowed to flow unrestrained into any country it wishes, seek whatever profit it wishes to seek, then flow out, again unrestrained, leaving in its wake whatever wreck it wishes to walk away from.

The poster child for neoliberal profit-seeking is, of course, NAFTA and its legacy of devastated lives in every country touched by it, but there are more examples than anyone could count. This devastation has been going on for decades, starting in my own memory with Ronald Reagan's permitted transfer of the U.S. semiconductor manufacturing industry to Asia. (Reagan "earned" two million dollars in speaking fees during a fully paid eight-day grand-tour trip to that country within a year of leaving office — clearly "thank you" money for his many gifts to the suddenly swollen wealth of Japan.)

Since the age of greed was kicked off in the 1980s, and because in those years Americans were taught to love their predators (remember breathless praise of shows like Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous), the pursuit of profit by the few at the expense of the lives of the many has only accelerated.

The latest instance of this destructive pursuit is the story of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 jet. There are many parts to the 737 MAX 8 story. This part takes us, once again, to U.S. outsourcing to Asia and $9/hour software engineers in India.

From Bloomberg:

Boeing's 737 Max Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers

• Planemaker and suppliers used lower-paid temporary workers
• Engineers feared the practice meant code wasn’t done right

It remains the mystery at the heart of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max crisis: how a company renowned for meticulous design made seemingly basic software mistakes leading to a pair of deadly crashes. Longtime Boeing engineers say the effort was complicated by a push to outsource work to lower-paid contractors.

The Max software -- plagued by issues that could keep the planes grounded months longer after U.S. regulators this week revealed a new flaw -- was developed at a time Boeing was laying off experienced engineers and pressing suppliers to cut costs.

Increasingly, the iconic American planemaker and its subcontractors have relied on temporary workers making as little as $9 an hour to develop and test software, often from countries lacking a deep background in aerospace -- notably India.

According to Mark Rabin, a former Boeing engineer whose work supported the 737 MAX project, the decision to outsource coding to India “was controversial because it was far less efficient than Boeing engineers just writing the code. I took many rounds going back and forth because the code was not done correctly.”

But outsourced U.S. jobs and greatly reduced wage costs were not the only benefits to Boeing from this decision. The company was also rewarded handsomely for it, winning, according to Bloomberg, "several orders for Indian military and commercial aircraft, such as a $22 billion one in January 2017 to supply SpiceJet Ltd. That order included 100 737-Max 8 jets and represented Boeing’s largest order ever from an Indian airline, a coup in a country dominated by Airbus."

Needless to say, in a nation dominated by neoliberal thinking and morality, more than $22 billion in new contracts easily offsets the loss of 346 lives in the two 737 MAX crashes, each of which killed everyone on board.

In a nation that abhors neoliberal morality, on the other hand, one would see trials for manslaughter instead.