Elizabeth Lopatto rounds out her coverage of the SBF trial with a great final piece on that asshole:
At his sentencing, I sat several rows behind Bankman-Fried, clad in prison khaki and clanking faintly when he walked from the shackles on his feet, while he gave his statement to the court. “I’m sorry about what happened at every stage,” Bankman-Fried said. “I failed everyone I cared about.”
What Bankman-Fried did not say was that he had, in fact, committed crimes and he wouldn’t do it again. Instead, he talked about the “mistakes” he’d made, how he’d assisted the FTX customers in dealing with the bankruptcy estate, that he hadn’t actually engaged in witness tampering, and that, in fact, the FTX estate had “billions” more than necessary to repay the customers, and that has been true the whole time. He didn’t say a word about his lenders, two of which went bankrupt, or the investors, whose money is gone.
It struck me that Bankman-Fried was going with the strategy he’d outlined in a document, submitted as evidence by the prosecution. He was simply going to blame the bankruptcy lawyers, as outlined in points 4, 5, 6, and 9 in his little Google Doc.
SBF reminds me of the great line from Kathleen Edwards’ song In State: “You wouldn’t be yourself if you weren’t telling a lie.” (Another lyric: “Maybe 20 years in state will change your mind” is also apropos, though this particular leopard probably isn’t going to change his spots.)
Another good piece: Mo Tkacik on Boeing’s quest to fire all their good quality inspectors and replace them with rubber stamps:
Few quality managers were as stubborn as Swampy [the Boeing whistleblower who recently “committed suicide]. A Seattle Times story detailed an internal Boeing document boasting that the incidence of manufacturing defects on the 787 had plunged 20 percent in a single year, which inspectors anonymously attributed to the “bullying environment” in which defects had systematically “stopped being documented” by inspectors. They weren’t fooling customers: Qatar Airways had become so disgusted with the state of the planes it received from Charleston that it refused to accept them, and even inspired the Qatar-owned Al Jazeera to produce a withering documentary called Broken Dreams, in which an employee outfitted with a hidden camera chitchatted with mechanics and inspectors about the planes they were producing. “They hire these people off the street, dude … fucking flipping burgers for a living, making sandwiches at Subway,” one mechanic marveled of his colleagues; another regaled the narrator with tales of co-workers who came to work high on “coke and painkillers and weed” because no one had ever had a urine test. Asked if they would fly the 787 Dreamliner; just five of 15 answered yes, and even the positive responses did Boeing no favors: “I probably would, but I have kind of a death wish, too.”
Boeing’s big customers like Emirates are demanding an engineer for the next CEO, but the next guy in line, Larry Culp, is a Harvard MBA. The new head of Boeing commercial, Stephanie Pope, began her career there as a cost accountant and also has an MBA. As the X-rays clearly show, this bone was broken long ago. The MBAs came in and fucked Boeing. The unfuck is going to be long and ugly, and it may not work.
TBone
If the Supremacist Court guts our expert agencies’ regulatory ability even further, I dunno what we’re gonna do, but something’s gotta give!
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
He should know better. Screw customers all you want, lenders and investors can get you in trouble.
OzarkHillbilly
Bury the dead.
Leto
Stop buying from them. Only way it’ll change. And if we could eliminate every MBA program in the country, that’d be great too. One of those two is feasible/practical.
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: he’s going to club Fed, low security. On top of a maybe 21 years? Gtfo of here with that nonsense. He did Maddoff level crimes, same sentencing.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Leto: MBAs could use their powers for good. The culture needs to change
@Leto: We already knew we have a two-tiered justice system. Don’t forget it just because Trump is complaining life is too difficult on the upper tier.
SiubhanDuinne
(Brought up from downstairs. Didn’t know there was a fresh thread up.)
O/T, just saw that Louis Gossett Jr has died at 87. What a really great actor he was. Don’t know much about his personal life, but he always seemed like a person I would like to know. RIP, and condolences to his loved ones and legions of admirers
Jager
I watched the MBAs destroy my old business. Under the old FCC ownership and financial rules, radio was one of the best and most profitable local businesses. Now it’s a smoking ruin.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Leto: Like many other situations where duopolies are involved, the customers don’t have a lot of choice. Both Airbus and Boeing have full order books for years in the future. Plus, airlines like Ryanair and Southwest that have standardized on the 737 are in a real bind.
In other words, Boeing is “too big to fail” since there’s no place else for their customers to go.
Captain C
@TBone:
Force the Shitty Six to fly on their own autopiloted 737-MAX everywhere, until the problem is solved for us.
Though I would settle for Alito and Thomas being forced instead to use Melon Skum’s new Rubberbandomatic Human Trebuchet instead. I’m sure that will go well for
usthem.Wapiti
@$8 blue check mistermix: Idea: open an Airbus plant in the US.
Chetan Murthy
@$8 blue check mistermix: one says to oneself that perhaps fewer people taking fewer flights would be good for all. Oh well.
Chetan Murthy
@$8 blue check mistermix:
when I went to college in Houston, i would fly back and forth to DFW on Southwest. I was a kid, so I didn’t know any better. But that’s insane: texas needs rail for such short trips. I’ve never taken Ryanair, but I’ve read that It’s an extremely low margin business, And They compete directly against rail. It’s not clear why I should shed a tear if Ryanair goes under because they can’t buy cheap planes.
Warblewarble
Bankman – Fraud was apprehended just 7 months ago. Jailing crimminals in reasonable time is possible.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Wapiti: Airbus has a plant in Alabama and one outside of Montreal to produce the A220, which was developed by Bombardier (Canadian company that bought out DeHavilland Canada) and acquired by Airbus. The A220 is nice single aisle airplane that fits in the Airbus lineup under the A319/320/321 with max capacity of about 150 passengers in a 3-2 seating configuration. Boeing doesn’t have a plane that really fits that category. They were planning a JV with Embraer to get the E-Jet (a competitor to the A220) but of course Boeing fucked that up.
But, yeah, doubtful that Airbus will build any of their bigger planes over here considering the politics of moving production of those jets to the US from Europe.
OzarkHillbilly
So… Guess who just shot to the top of the Suspect list? Yep, the guy who predicted it. Even if he didn’t actually do it he could have stopped it. Right? Right???
Leto
@$8 blue check mistermix: that’s what we always say until it happens. This would be a perfect opportunity for Airbus to expand production. Regarding RyanAir/Southwest… I mean, Boeing being a regional rump carrier is always a thing. It’s where they’re headed, even if they can fix stuff because they’re MBA led. They’re not going to fix that. To fix that they’d need to start absolutely gutting management from mid-level and up.
I’ve ridden RyanAir a number of times. They nickel and dime you for every damn thing. Their carry on size continues to shrink. If you’re going someplace for a weekend, they’re fine. Anything longer than 3 days and you might as well book with a real carrier.
Baud
@Warblewarble: He was arrested on Dec. 12, 2022.
HinTN
@OzarkHillbilly: Where do they get these people and what at did we do to deserve them?
Gin & Tonic
I am a certified Old, but I remember when my friend’s brother got his Master’s in Aero & Astro at MIT and got a job at Boeing, that was like making the major leagues.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Chetan Murthy: Southwest is now the 4th largest airline in the world, after American, Delta and Ryanair. People who fly them seem to like them since they give you 2 free checked bags and generally don’t nickel-and-dime you. Frankly I’d fly them before I’d fly United, which I think is the worst “major” carrier. Also I think a lot of the carry-on shit that delays boarding is due to people trying to avoid paying for checked bags, so Southwest has the potential to be a bit better in that regard.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic: Tesla had that reputation for engineers for a hot minute.
Geoduck
@Gin & Tonic: Yeah, I had various family members work at Boeing during its heyday, and it makes me even more sad to see it collapsing now.
HinTN
@Leto: I like to fly Southwest because I can reliably fit in any seat on the plane and the cabin crews are mostly great. (Pilots can be MAGA all they want so long as they fly right.) I tell myself that they do the maintenance…
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: I’d investigate God.
Leto
@Gin & Tonic: unfortunately that is old. I remember stuff like that as well. John Oliver’s piece of the McDonnell-Douglas/Bowing merger, with MD MBA management taking over everything, is a good place to start.
Leto
@HinTN: Back when I flew Ryan, I was extremely fit. Still a snug fit for me.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@$8 blue check mistermix:
All you say is true but easily 80% of my experiences with fucking Southworst is why I call them Fucking Southworst.
Always late, always have excuses, their processes are the very definition of Fucking Goatrope.
All airlines suck to one degree or another but the fact Fucking Southwest has coasted on a reputation for decades is beyond me.
When their system broke down, what, a year ago, everybody finally got to see them for the just-as-shitty-as-all-the-rest-airline that they are.
jackmac
@Jager: MBAs littered throughout evil hedge funds have also pretty much destroyed local media in this country.
Are the new hedge fund owners going to report on your local city council meeting, police and fire activity, high school basketball games or who died and who got married?
Nope.
And I saw a report today that such funds are starting to snap up veterinarian services. Plenty of profit to be made in giving your pets necessary shots or treating an illness or wound.
Rabies is too good for these vulture capitalists.
HinTN
@Leto: It’s about space for my knees. I have to pay for “Comfort” seating on Delta or I am jam up against the seat back both ways.
Also, @$8 blue check mistermix: may have applied the kiss of death. I had no idea they were 4th.
MattF
Molly White is my guide to crypto. Here, at the Guardian, on Bankman-Fried et. al.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Leto:
That basically describes Frontier. They have a deservedly horrible reputation across the board but if you have a small backpack and nothing else, plus expect the flight to be a nightmare of delays, they’re the cheapest thing around. Go into it with below low expectations (which they won’t disappoint), they’re good in a pinch.
Leto
@Baud: pretty sure SpaceX does as well.
Leto
@HinTN: when Avalune and I flew to Italy almost two years ago, it was the first time flying since my accident. I’m a disabled person now. I asked if the handicapped seats on the flight were available. They said yes, we were moved over to them. They were directly ahead of the rear starboard bathroom, which meant we spent 9 hours upright. Idk who the fuck designed that placement, but I’d like to duck punch them. With a bowling ball. I did not ask for those style seats on the return.
gratuitous
It’s been several weeks, but there was an interview on public radio with an economist journalist and blogger (don’t remember his name, sorry). He was monitoring FTX for some time, and was one of the first to spot that something was going very badly wrong there. The weekend when SBF was scrambling for a cash infusion to keep FTX afloat and somehow justify its relationship with Alameda Research, SBF invited this guy down to his Bahamas compound.
The guy remembered SBF trying to make sense of the accounting, and wondering where all those billions of dollars could have gone, because they weren’t on the balance sheet. He and SBF pored over the numbers, and as best the guy could figure is that SBF had been taking in fresh investment money and turning it directly over to shareholders who were getting out of FTX. The vain attempt to cover the cash shortfall totally crashed the company.
The interviewer asked the guy if what SBF was doing was legal (paying off older investors with the money coming in from newer investors). There was a pause for about three seconds. I thought the guy was formulating some complicated response. Instead, it was [pause] . . . “No.” Okay, end of segment.
My takeaway is that SBF either didn’t know the rules (such as they are), or didn’t know how to comply with them. It was like, “Why can’t I just take this money coming in the front end and give it to the guys who are cashing out? I’ll worry about paying off the newbies later, probably with more new money being invested.”
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly: What did this kook Green know, and when did she know it?
geg6
Lord, yes. Worst people in the world.
OzarkHillbilly
@HinTN: I was a bad bad boy. Just ask Sister Kathleen.
Eunicecycle
@gratuitous: isn’t that describing a pyramid scheme? Definitely illegal.
OzarkHillbilly
@mrmoshpotato: I’ll let you know as soon as I’m done waterboarding this God guy.
Hob
@Baud:
I’m guessing that Warblewarble noticed Bankman-Fried being taken into custody in August of last year, but didn’t understand that he’d been out on bail and had his bail revoked. A perfectly understandable thing for someone to misunderstand, assuming they hadn’t been following the case at all—in which case trying to use it as an example of how some other case should’ve been handled might not be a wise move.
Jeffro
What? No way! GOP Billionaires Are Just As Slimy As The Rest of the Party
Many Republican Billionaires Backed Away From Trump After J6. They’re Coming Back.
*oh yes, absolutely…draaaaastically cut into their wealth, fer sure (eyeroll)
* “despite” 88 felony counts and a promise to throw the opposition in jail…”despite” trying to overthrow the government and turn us into a Russian vassal state…it’s “self-defense”, what else do you expect us poor billionaires to do?!??!
*talk about the ‘banality of evil’
“How was I supposed to say no? He called me personally.” Fucking GROSS.
In a way, I’m glad they are showing their true colors like this…while I’d rather they, oh, PUT THEIR COUNTRY FIRST, at least they are helping to heighten the contrasts here.
I cannot imagine a person who looks at trumpov’s bungling of the pandemic, his embrace of Putin, and all of his violent threats and actions (to include J6, obvs) and go, “oh but he’s better for my already enormous bottom line”. But then again, I’m an actual human being.
RepubAnon
@geg6: If there was some way to convince Russia, North Korea, and Iran that they could become world leaders if they had enough MBAs running things, many world problems would be resolved.
For that matter, when will one of these private equity firms start buying up mega=churches?
cain
@jackmac: they are already going after housing.
Food is next if not already there.
Marcopolo
So here’s some happy election news out of NJ:
Long time coming to reduce the influence of party insiders. Let’s hope this becomes permanent.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I know some people here are Jasmine Crockett fans. She’s the interview today (probably recorded yesterday) on Pod Save America. She’s so impressive.
geg6
All this is why I almost never fly anywhere any more. I am an old and can remember when flying was a truly luxurious experience, even in coach. These days, it’s less luxurious and comfortable than taking a Greyhound. I have decided that rail travel is the only way to travel long distances, if I must.
Makes me glad I did a lot of traveling when I was in college and my 20s.
wjca
There seems to be something of a pattern here:
The same MBAs. Clearly they are good at corporate internal politics, however bad they are at actually running a company.
See, for another example, the folks who trashed Merrill Lynch ending up in charge of Bank of America. (If you hate BofA, only consider that the new management is substantially worse.)
Melancholy Jaques
Is there a source anywhere that has a bunch of stories where Harvard MBA’s showed up and made something better? And I don’t mean made more money for the owners, I mean made a better cookie, or car, or something that people really want.
Maybe I live in a closed off world, but I never heard a story like that.
Jeffro
@Dorothy A. Winsor: thanks Dorothy! I will have to check that out =)
Taken4Granite
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
That’s the thing: my experiences on American and United (I can’t say about Delta because I haven’t had occasion to fly with them in more than ten years) are as bad or worse than anything I’ve experienced on Southwest. Flying is a miserable experience across the board.
We really need to get some high-speed rail built in this country, so that we can get rid of most flights less than 500 miles. Having some overnight trains (which need not be high speed) on routes of 500-1000 miles would also help. That would also improve the quality of air travel because so much capacity would be freed up for medium and long haul flights, for which rail would never be a practical alternative.
Sister Golden Bear
Bahahaha!
Broke AZ GOP sells its brand new headquarters that it bought just nine months ago.
geg6
@gratuitous:
That is the textbook definition of a pyramid scheme.
ETA: And I see that Eunicecycle got there first.
Gin & Tonic
@geg6: Kinda hard to get to Yurp by rail, though.
sdhays
An editor should have cut this sentence. It’s transparent bullshit, and since they wrote the previous sentence, they know it’s bullshit.
Ruckus
@Leto:
I was long ago informed that MBA is shorthand for Must Be Asshole.
Never seemed to be all that out of line. Now do understand that I’ve owned 2 businesses and one must understand that if a business does not have a positive profit, no matter how small, it is losing money and likely will not exist for long. HOWEVER. If the entire point of a business is to make money and exists for NO OTHER REASON, then big problems will arise. A company like Boeing has to make a profit or they will go out of business. At least eventually. But the point of a company is to produce a product or provide a service. Boeing’s is to produce airplanes. SAFE AIRPLANES. Not $12 wrecks that should never have been sold, let alone flown with humans in any way involved, around, in or under.
JDM
Besides this realization that Boeing’s planes are dangerously constructed and maintained, I think Boeing’s problems (compared to Airbus) could be seen if you flew each manufacturer’s plane. We had a trip 10 years ago on Emirates (coach) with two long legs – one on the latest Boeing, one on the latest Airbus. Both were pretty nice, pretty much brand new planes. But the Airbus was just a little better in every aspect. Slightly more leg room, slightly better seats, slightly better entertainment console, etc. etc.
Airbus was simply making a somewhat better airplane, and that’s before you learn about the horrific safety probs with Boeing.
Sister Golden Bear
@Jeffro: They believe the leopards won’t eat their faces — and they’re undoubtedly correct.
Baud
@Sister Golden Bear: I hope the new buyer fumigates it before moving it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jeffro: The interview is more or less the second half of the podcast.
Taken4Granite
@Ruckus:
Exactly.
There used to be a saying: “If it’s not Boeing, I’m not going.” Boeing have thrown that reputation away. A company that fails to make a product customers are willing to buy will not remain profitable for long.
And that is specifically where MBAs are a problem. They have a tendency to pursue short-term profits at the expense of the long term. Few of them stay at a company long enough to reap the benefits of setting the company up for $50M of profits per year for the next twenty years over $100M this year followed by massive losses starting in three years.
sdhays
Boeing’s results are what Boeing’s Board of Directors desired, and they will get the same results as long as the Board doesn’t change. The current CEO isn’t even being fired – he’s going to hang around to shit all over the company for another eight months.
Jeffro
@Sister Golden Bear: not their literal faces, no.
But trump’s tariffs alone will dramatically hurt the economy. So would a clampdown on immigration, which is actually helping power our current boom. I know our blessed billionaires can ride out any downturn, but Donnie Dumbass will cost them big bucks.
Record stock market, inflation continuing to come down…I think Team Biden knows how to deal with the ‘news’ that certain GOP billionaires are returning to their usual #PortfolioFirst ways. Given their media team’s response times lately, we may well hear from them before the day is out. =)
Baud
@sdhays:
To be fair, I’m sure what they desired is to increase profits by cutting costs without harming quality. Since by definition, all costs are wasteful.
Melancholy Jaques
@Jeffro:
If memory serves, Trump’s trade war with China really hammered soy bean farmers in Iowa. Nevertheless, when NYT’s reporters interviewed them at various diners, they all reported that they still loved Trump and since he was put in the White House by Jesus, then they just had to trust that whatever he did was the right thing.
I do not recall if anyone followed up on that story or soy beans, but it did show that belonging to the cult means that policies just do not matter.
Leto
@Sister Golden Bear:
Oh, I caught you! Have you seen the new Spider-Man short animation? They just released it! 7 mins.
frosty
We went to Key West last year via the AutoTrain. Amtrak sleeper cars in front and car carriers in back. The train takes you and your car from Lorton VA to Sanford FL. 19 hours, about 900 miles. No need for a car rental when you get there, no need to cram everything you need into a couple of bags.
This is the only such route in the country. I bet there are others where it would be a success.
Leto
@Ruckus: agreed with all of it. The long term health of a business (slow, steady profits/growth) has been replaced by short term/immediate profits even if that’s unsustainable/detrimental to the overall growth of the company long term. Again… MBAs.
TBone
@OzarkHillbilly: good plan, sunshine rots those fuckers. Oh, I thought you meant bury the Supremacists 😆
TBone
@Captain C: good thinking.
TBone
@Warblewarble: you’d think, and yet the J6 fake electors AND the entire top layer of criminal conspirators (looking at you Rump and all of your minions, especially the traitors in Congress) walk free.
geg6
@Gin & Tonic:
Meh. I’ve been almost everywhere I wanted to go in Europe (France and England). If I miss Germany and Ireland, I’ll live.
Barbara
It takes a real failure of imagination, like bottom level cluelessness, for even the most numbers oriented, literal minded MBA not to understand the importance of reputation for safety for the manufacturer of airplanes. Apparently Boeing executives are up to the challenge.
Also, not to diss South Carolina too much, but once upon a time I was seconded to a client with a manufacturing facility in Charleston, and let’s just say that they had a very hard time hiring locally for all the reasons alluded to in the comments on Boeing workers. Thankfully, they did not make airplanes.
ETA: The problem for the MBAs at Boeing is that in most of the companies they have worked for previously, their downshifting on quality control results in the deaths of “only” one or two people at a time, and even if that adds up to many more people over time than a one-time airplane incident, it comes across very differently to the public. Pharmaceutical manufacturing is a clear example of an industry where “cost benefit” analysis means something very different to MBAs than it did to the clinicians who founded and used to manage these companies.
TBone
@RepubAnon: ❤️
sdhays
@Baud: There’s no need to be fair. Management went on a decades long warpath against reporting quality issues. That doesn’t happen without the Board knowing and approving. And I don’t feel like people who are very well paid to do practically nothing get to claim that they were “naive” or “too trusting” or whatever. The entire board should be forced to resign in shame.
I wonder what happens if the Board tells Emirates to go fuck themselves and hires the GE asshole to move around some deck chairs on the SS Boetanic and Emirates decides to respond by canceling its orders while Airbus starts building another factory in France or wherever. Does that get the Board’s attention?
I feel like Boeing won’t actually try to change unless the stock price loses half of its value, and that probably won’t happen until it’s clear a death spiral is nigh.
Jager
@jackmac: my engineer got into a shitfight over a $4500 dollar roof repair to protect a couple 100 grand of transmitting gear.
Martin
The right of ways are owned by the freight operators and they fight passenger rail tooth and nail. Congress needs to smack them down hard. My view is that the right of ways need to be nationalized. Have the fed buy them out (since the Feds gifted the right of ways to them in the first place) and fix the problem. There’s two problems:
A *big* reason why CA high speed rail is so expensive is that the state could not rely on any existing right of way to operate and had to buy out all of its own (except for the San Jose to SF leg where we’re upgrading CalTrain to nearly high-speed).
You’re not going to be any really viable passenger rail unless Congress intervenes and fixes these fundamental problems. I wouldn’t count on it happening giving how much deference Congress already gives to the freight operators.
Leto
@Barbara: as a native Carolinian, specifically Charlestonian, yes most of the population is dumber than a box of rocks/hammers/gnats/etc. When BMW first came to Greenville to setup shop, they had to invest heavily in just… basic education for the local population to make sure they could meet minimum requirements. Beefing up the local area schools, as well as the technical schools there. For a few years there, the cars coming off the line were just… a whooooole lot of QA/QC was needed. They eventually got it sorted but it took a whole hell of a lot to get done.
And that’s just a damn car. A plane? Where safety/reliability need to be 100% all the time? Boeing moved there, as well as numerous other huge companies, because it’s an anti-union state. They get massive subsidies/tax breaks, and they get to reap more profit via Right to Work laws. In short: fuck them. Like Ruckus, and others have said, short term profits over long term growth. And the hit to their reputation? Incalculable. Again: fuck’em. NO company is too big to fail.
gene108
Stephanie Pope’s education from the OP article:
I really don’t get the hatred of having an MBA on this blog. People get MBA’s to broaden their overall business knowledge, and be able improve their resume with a graduate degree.
I get it’s used as a catchall term here, like conservatives use “woke” or “CRT”, to dump everything they disagree with into one ambiguous term, but I really think some of y’all really believe the degree turns people evil.
Carl Icahn, one of the fathers of buying a company and stripping it of its assets to payoff shareholders, has a Bachelor’s in Philosophy from Princeton.
gvg
@$8 blue check mistermix: If airbus ends up the only one left, their quality will go down too. In fact only 2 plane companies is really just a problem and it was only luck which failed first. this is not a safe market. Needs multiple more companies.
Possibly the government should require boing to break up like they did ATT or A&P
Ramalama
That SBF google doc is as bad as you all suspected.
Here’s a gem:
(Emphasis mine.)
Also +1 for the Kathleen Edwards song. I love her songs and her singing and need to listen to her more.
Dan B
Until the Boeing execs are back in Seattle where the engineers can meet with them regularly and with the board the company will go downhill. They just don’t know it yet.
NotMax
@Martin
Yup. Without extant abandoned or underused rights of way, the Interborough Express in NYC would never have gotten the green light. Update to the linked video: Gov. Hochul has since announced the decision to go with light rail.
As I understand it, the present proposal is still to make use of parallel lines along some sections to keep freight and passenger traffic separated.
Ruckus
@Leto:
I use to own a high precision specialty machine shop that my dad started, manufacturing tooling for customers to make plastic products with – molds. I owned and ran it longer than dad did and made a lot of specialty items, like bone saw blades. If I gave you the names of companies or the products they made with our tools, you’d recognize many of them. My last 7 or so years of working I worked at a shop that made high precision parts. The last job I did had a tolerance of +/- .00025 of an inch. That’s not very much….
My point is that I’ve spent most of my life making things that made things and most/many of the products those tools made would be recognized by most of the people here. Toys, bottles of all kinds and sizes, aircraft parts, and I’ve forgotten more than I can remember.
My point is that many of the wealthy believe that they DESERVE to be far wealthier than the majority of us lowly scum. Some of them actually might, most of them not really, and some, like SFB absofuckinglutly not. But the Forbes 400 is all billionaires, every damn one of them. And we still have people that don’t get 3 squares or medical care, and many even have an only a less than semi normal place to sleep. That may be someone’s take on democracy, it isn’t mine.
rosalind
am now remembering a magical puddle jump aboard Ozark Air – served us a 3-flight wine tasting w/cheese and cracker plate. *sigh
Ruckus
@gvg:
That likely wouldn’t work well for specialty manufacturing like aircraft. Could there be more companies? Very likely but the process to get from one end to the other is immense. Checks and balances for design, engineering, and especially for manufacturing. And then the basic knowledge about exactly what they are building. Boeings fuck up was likely that they got big, bought out competitors or were just better on some levels and thought that meant all levels were taken care of. It doesn’t, and likely didn’t. But getting everything just right in a company the size of Boeing is a very big job, and everyone from the president to the janitors has to be included, watched (even if internally) and trained on the special needs of what, how and why. It appears that humanity and greed took over. Which of course it often does.
Another Scott
@Ruckus:
Not to get too much in the weeds, but how did you check tolerances like that? Did you have some NIST-traceable micrometers or go/no-go gauges? Or did you find Starrett or Mitutoyo measuring tools were “good enough”?
(I ask because I’ve seen nominally decent quality digital calipers at work be off from brand to brand by a thousandth over 4″ or so and it’s disconcerting…)
Thanks!
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
I’m going to ask the question – what in the fuck does one need a billion dollars for? To make up for the world’s tiniest dick? Are NYC cabs that expensive? How much does a limo and driver cost?
We had a concept in this country and that was that a lot of money in one hand meant that your personal taxes would be just a tad higher than the guy that carried your bags at the airport. You’d still have a lot more than that guy did but the world could be a better place. But now we have a “billionaire” being tried for how many felonies, all because he thinks that he deserves whatever he can grab, steal, screw someone out of……? And what has any one of these uber wealthy ever done for anyone but themselves?
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
Micrometers that are accurate to +/- 0.0001 and gauges blocks to set them to. It takes time, effort, experience to do it, but it can be done. I have 60 yrs experience under my belt, making stuff to close tolerances. (I started rather young) That was just my last experience. Would never use calipers for a job like that but some brands of micrometers are more than good enough with the right experience.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
It isn’t easy, please do not take my reply as it is. But given modern machines, effort, care and TIME, it can be done. My boss had extra pieces in case I screwed up. It also took 12 hrs to make 6 pieces. And that was just grinding/cooling off/checking/grinding/cooling off/checking….
And I doubt seriously that my boss would even have attempted it. He could do it but he had his job to do and this really took effort and concentration.
TaliesinWW
@Another Scott: Hi, not the person you addressed this to, but I’m here and I was a lathe machinist before I became a member of quality department at a place that makes helicopter masts.
Calipers are calipers, I don’t expect them to be accurate better than a thou or two simply because they are too responsive to thumb pressure and no wear on the mating edges. Micrometers I expect to be accurate to half-tenth, and I requalify on a jo block throughout the afternoon if I’m doing final inspection on a helicopter mast, to allow for temperatures fluctuations in the building (said jo blocks get qualified out of house once a year).
Back to calipers, when we qualify them in house, we expect up to +/- .002 variation between 4 and 12 inches, +/- .004 between 12 and 24 inches, but not cumulative. I always felt pleased when I got the same discrepancy pattern as the original certificate detected when it left the manufacturer.
Jager
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
We flew to Honolulu on American last year, left LAX on time, and arrived on time. Great crew, they called themselves Hawaii 5-0, because you have to be over 50 to hold the trip. They had a ton of experience, so they ran the cabin like the pros they were. My wife is an American retiree, so the crew gave us so many free drinks we got the girl in the window seat drunk and gave a couple of bottles of wine to the couple with three kids across the aisle to drink at their hotel later. The crew made the trip great.
Another Scott
@Ruckus: @Ruckus: @TaliesinWW:
Thanks very much.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
You are welcome.
With experience, work like this isn’t all that difficult, it just takes an attitude and that experience. A lot of jobs, maybe the vast majority are like that, they sound hard if you don’t ever do that kind of work. But experience is often the best teacher. Take being a teacher. Very, very few are good at it right off. One has to learn to relax when doing new things, when you might just get something wrong or not really present things correctly, thoroughly or in this case manufacture something without the prerequisite knowledge to take the proper amount of time, that some things can just not be rushed. Experience is the great divider. It reduces the pressure to perform. It can make the “impossible” possible.
Paul in KY
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I don’t like Southwest either.