If proper hardware modifications were established in the 737, you likely could have had a safer plane. But there was nobody there in the FAA to pick that up, because nobody had the expertise, and in fact nobody was monitoring this. What 'self-certification' meant was one guy from Boeing doing the checklist on behalf of Boeing, and the other guy from Boeing doing the job of the FAA. There was no early warning system in place.

Economist Marshall Auerback connects the Boeing 737 disaster to the larger crises of late capitalism - as the failing aviation giant lifts above the reach of labor and regulation, a merge into the military industrial complex guarantees shareholder profit despite the company's decade of failing, and deadly, products.

Marshall wrote the article Boeing might represent the greatest indictment of 21st-century capitalism for Salon.