Everybody knows that the Magic Free Market Fairy will keep airplanes from dropping out of the skies because, well, airplanes dropping out of the skies is bad for business and thus the free market fairy's magic fairy dust will just, like, automatically keep them up in the sky, yo. So the FAA ordering inspections of all older 737 airliners just makes no sense.
Ignore those cracks in the airframes, people, Chicago economist Eugene Fama says that markets are perfectly efficient and will take care of that like, well, magically! Who needs government regulators to force inspections anyhow? According to Fama, the market would naturally weed out executives who have only short-term profit goals and reward executives who care about the long-term health of their corporations and thus who would not skimp on maintenance today for immediate profit at the expense of future profit after planes started falling out of the sky. Also according to Fama, unicorns are pink and cotton candy grows on trees. And he has equations to prove it. Which means it must be true.
Alrighty, then!
- Badtux the Snarky Penguin
The 737's being looked at now are the "Next Generation" that Boeing made improvements to after the Free Market Fairy ripped the roof off the Air Aloha 737. Boeing expected these planes to be good for at least 60,000 takeoff/landing cycles. They are now showing problems between 30,000 and 40,000 cycles. The latest models have a new roof design, but they can't make them fast enough to replace all the old ones. Thanks but I think I will walk.
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