This article is purposely emotional and vague, it also assumes government is going to somehow fix the problem. Where was government in preventing it? And in terms of financial markets and our speculative, debt-fueled, financialized society, government is directly responsible
As you pointed out, it seems that aircraft engineering and quality took a back seat to marketers and especially financial engineering in a desire to boost stock prices. Certainly top management made out like bandits
I read somewhere that Boeing’s share buy-backs, which were in the end “wasted” by the crash in its share price anyway, would have easily paid for investment in 2 or 3 completely new aircraft programs which the company could ride for another 25 years
“Where was government in preventing it?”
The problem was that government trusted Boeing to look out for its own interests...and it did work for decades. The idea being “Plane crashes are bad for all, so let’s do all we can to prevent them”
...that morphed into “Plane crashes are bad for those involved (and their families), but if we (Boeing) can blame the pilot (or airline), then we’ll get off unscathed”
Boeing should have figured out that didn’t work after the first crash, and had they, the damage to them would have been far less. Same for the FAA. In fact, the first country to ground the Max was China.