From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Sun May 26 2002 - 14:22:52 MDT
On 5/26/02 7:49 AM, "Charlie Stross" <charlie@antipope.org> wrote:
>
> I find it inconceivable that even a national government with a competing
> product (and none exist -- see point about Airbus being privately owned,
> above) would stoop to blowing up the competition, for much the same reason
> that I find suggestions that the Apollo project was faked ludicrous. It
> implies a conspiracy, and a _big_ one, and it can be blown wide open
> by just one disgruntled employee who feels like joining the US Federal
> Witness Protection Program. And if blown open, such a conspiracy would
> backfire badly. Quite simply, the costs -- potential and actual -- far
> outweigh any possible benefits.
To clarify, I wasn't actually proposing a conspiracy theory for the 747
failure. And I wasn't talking about "blowing up the competition" either,
but engaging in activities to undermine confidence in a company. I only
mentioned this because I have heard from a couple different sources that
Boeing has apparently been having problems with industrial sabotage in their
replacement part supply lines. An accident may be the result of a parts
failure where the part was intentionally rendered defective. Or it could
just be a routine failure due to age, which sounds just fine to me too.
National governments DO routinely stoop to industrial espionage and
sabotage. I've seen it firsthand at a number of different companies and
times, and heard lots of other stories secondhand. When people get hurt, it
is usually as a side-effect rather than by intent though. I've always
assumed this fascination with industrial sabotage was a nutty European
cultural thing because they seem to be behind most of it. In a way it is
kind of humorous because many times it has less to do with anything that
would make business sense and generally reflects many of the historical
rivalries between European countries. At one very large company I worked
for briefly, a longstanding problem was that the French subsidiary and the
UK subsidiary were actively engaged in campaigns of sabotage against each
other even though they were theoretically part of the same company. It was
irritating to the American management, who saw it going on and were
absorbing the damage caused by both, but the best they could do was to
minimize the damage. I've never seen much sabotage when working with or for
companies that were almost purely American in scope, but it seems to be part
of the landscape in European business.
BTW, in some European countries (e.g. France) the delineation between
privatized companies and government run companies is very fuzzy. The
problem is that the executive positions are essentially held by politicians
with very strong ties to the government. Ironically, after a few centuries
of bloody revolutions and changes of government, the families of the old
aristocracies are still running much of Europe re-badged as politicians and
business executives and with what amounts to hereditary title discretely
enforced in practice, though structured in a manner suited to the current
environment. From an American perspective it is very interesting to see how
that all worked itself out.
Cheers,
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
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