Money talks. The head of the FAA are chosen by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Usually the heads are people who use to work for the Airline Industry or Manufactures of Airlines. So, major conflict of interest here.
No, the heads of federal agencies are external because they're political appointees. High profile jobs go to donors and those who have supported the politician in charge of the appointment.
*Some federal appointees. The head of FAA under Trump was Stephen Dickson, who was an F-15 fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, then a pilot for 27 years at Delta Airlines before becoming Vice President of flight operations [1].
The current head under Biden is Billy Nolen, a former pilot who flew the Boeing 757 and 767 and worked as an airline executive for years before joining the FAA [2].
By credentials, these two are definitely qualified.
I think the original point being made was that having such extensive airline industry experience actually makes you unqualified to lead the FAA. For instance, Dickson, through his position at Delta, has likely developed strong ties to counterparts at Boeing. This made him unable to adequately address the safety issues of the 737 MAX.
My follow-up point was that experience in regulating airlines is more important than experience running an airline when it comes to leading the FAA. However, those who regulate airlines as a career are unlikely to be big political donors, so they're unlikely to be chosen to lead the FAA.
It's knowledge you get by actually working in the field rather than reading about it in reports and white papers. It has value, it's not everything, but it is important. What actually needs to be in place are independent auditors who aren't linked to the industry and can't profit from it to review the decisions of these agencies and have full access to all data, including engineers who say "yo this is a bad idea". I have been that engineer a few times with mixed results, sometimes people listen, sometimes they don't. Never on the level of the FAA/Boeing fiasco but still it does happen all the time, everyday. That's why rules to prevent fraternizing between agencies like the FAA and Boeing are important. It's a lot harder to be tough on friend/colleague than it is someone who you don't know and are auditing.
The _entire issue_ is capture of those who regulate making planes by those making planes. Disallowing transition from one to the other seems like a good idea.
Organized sedition, maybe, but "treason" is narrowly defined in the US constitution:
>Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
>The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood¹, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
¹: "Corruption of blood" is a legal term. This passage means that treason charges cannot be carried to future generations, they only apply to the person who committed the act.
Regulatory capture is not a problem that can be solved by executing examples, because the captured officials usually don't even think of themselves as captured. The solution is to align incentives, for example by closing the revolving door
Having worked for airlines or manufacturers in the past doesn't itself present a conflict of interest. Not to say a conflict doesn't exist, but previous employment isn't itself a conflict.
Not as a strict logical consequence, no. However, it does sort of increase the probability that one has acquired insidership in social circles where people may frown if one temporarily kills off a profitable line of business.
When planes are not flying, people don't travel, so airlines don't make money, so they can't buy new planes, so manufacturers don't sell planes, so engineers don't get paid, so they leave, so they don't make better, safer planes.
It is a difficult balance to find, and sometimes the FAA gets it wrong, and sometimes people die. It is tragic when it happens, but if you want to be able to travel by plane, the industry has to keep going. Overall, the FAA has done a rather good job despite the conflicts of interest: accidents go down and air travel goes up. When they mess up, they usually take corrective action, as it was the case here.
Would you prefer that the head of the FAA have no clue about the airline industry or airplanes in general? Where do you think that these people are to be found, if not those who used to work for that very industry?
We need people ready to serve the country. Not play cozy with friends.
Nominated to work in the govt ? Elected public official ? Great! Every penny beyond your average high income (best 5-10 income avg?) is taxed at 99% for life.
Working in the government should not be a way to enrich yourself and friends... or make a "career".
Its called public service for a reason. Its not private enterprise. Its not arbitrage. Its not patronage. Not to enrich yourself and your buddies.
Government employees already face a pretty substantial pay cut compared to the private sector. For people on an engineering track, you're looking at double-digit percentage paycuts, but for the upper echelons of management track, where the comparatives are being C-suite at a medium-sized company, it's starting to look like a 90% paycut. This means you have issues recruiting people to fill these roles.
Adding on a permanent pecuniary pay element for life is most likely to result in people finding various wheezes to get around that pay cap (I suspect in the form of undeclared gifts, not unlike the recent revelations of a certain Supreme Court justice). And it would tend to increase corruption, since now the incomes of these people are more heavily reliant on under-the-table payments from patrons who now need to be kept happy.
Under the table is good. The IRS will have something to say about it.
The engineer example doesn't follow. Its also not a pay cut.
Take for example 300k comp for your avg. eng 300k avg last 5 years avg comp. Goes to Gov. High cap is set at 300k. Gets a salary of 120k while with govt. He can leave govt, and go back to earn 300k. No problem.
He can even earn the gap between 120 and 300 also during his govt job. So he can maintain his QoL
This is really not a problem at all.
It doesnt punish success before govt.
It punishes sucess after govt. (Speaker fees anyone?)
The problem currently is that govt attracts people that want to make a career (and profit) out of it. I posit, thats exactly the people you dont want in govt.
> I posit, thats exactly the people you dont want in govt.
You want highly competent people in government. If generally they can make significantly (e.g. even 10x or more, I'm talking about upper management/CEP level position of course) in the private sector more often than not they will do that. The public sector will be left with the leftovers.
The revolving door is a problem, but your proposed solution is…let’s be charitable and say it’s something that would be proposed by an academic, rather than a realist.
They already have a hard enough time finding highly qualified, competent, motivated people to staff government agencies without adding super life-limiting conditions. We really don't need to make that problem worse. Government jobs don't pay well enough to get great employees.
Great way to further disincentivize the most talented people from choosing a career in government.
I'd any day pick somebody whose highly qualified, experienced and generally 'intelligent' but somewhat corrupt over someone who "chose" to serve the country because he couldn't get a job in the private sector or is strongly motivated by his ideological beliefs but has no clue what he's doing.
>Would you prefer that the head of the
FAA have no clue about the airline
industry or airplanes in general?
Not being an industry expert shouldn't necessarily be a disqualifier. For example we don't insist that the secretary of health should be a doctor, or that the defence ministry should be run by generals. The main qualities needed is being a good manager and able to listen to alternative views and being a good politician (yes, it's important to have good politicians). If anything being an outsider actually helps the organisation more because it avoids conflicts of interest like op and it keeps the head humble.
> or that the defence ministry should be run by generals.
This is a weird exception to the rule. It's a case where there is a strong argument to be made for sacrificing competence in exchange for minimizing the risk of a coup by bringing in an outsider without close relationships with the people below him.
There is no other department where we have to worry in quite the same way that they might just choose to start ignoring the rule of law, courts, and congress, and that if they do there is nothing that could really be done about it.
You don't have to look very far to find examples of militaries seizing power. Meanwhile I'm reasonably confident in saying that no aircraft regulation agency has ever seized power in the history of the planet.
It boils down to trust. A head needs to win the trust of his political overlords as well as, in more limited circumstances the general public. That's why he needs to be good at politics. It's no point appointing a supremely qualified individual if he's poor at communications and relationships.
> For example we don't insist that the secretary of health should be a doctor.
I'll definitely want my country's Secretary of Health to be a doctor who understands public health and its related policies, not a politician whose primarily skill is being popular and getting elected.
>The main qualities needed is being a good manager and able to listen to alternative views and being a good politician.
A Health Secretary who's not a doctor would find it difficult to judge if they're being fed the right information by their advisers.
Remember that Boeing's woes began when the company ceased to be run by the engineers and aviation experts, but instead by the arrogant MBA counters who likely pitched themselves as good managers. It turns out they mostly cared about management and printing cash, but lacked engineering expertise, leading to screwups like the 737 Max.
> I’ll definitely want my country’s Secretary of Health to be a doctor who understands public health
If by “doctor” you mean, as people usually do in general conversation, an MD (or DO), why? Public health is an entirely different discipline from medicine, with its own series of professional degrees. As is public administration. As is public policy. Why would a top-level public administrator and public policy professional in the field of public health need to have a professional degree in medicine more than one in public health, public administration, or public policy?
OTOH, your Surgeon-General or equivalent should definitely be a medical doctor.
>A Health Secretary who's not a doctor
would find it difficult to judge if they're
being fed the right information by
their advisers.
That's the point of being a good manager. Being able to forge personal relationships and to trust your underlings. Having experience in an industry isn't that helpful when dealing with policy that lies outside a heads direct field of expertise.
Being a doctor doesn't automatically provide a greater insight into what would make policies more successful. Yes he might have first hand knowledge of conditions on the ground, but the longer he's been out of doctoring the less up to date he will be and he will just be stuck with old notions
of what things were like years ago.
Your point about boeing is irrelevant, because the managment these had motives beyond engineering excellence, i.e making money.
> I'll definitely want my country's Secretary of Health to be a doctor who understands public health and its related policies, not a politician whose primarily skill is being popular and getting elected.
Why not? The head of the WHO is not a medical doctor, he's a doctor in the sense that he has a PhD.
There is probably no organization more trusted than the WHO.
Boeing is basically part of the USG at this point and has been for decades. There is almost nothing they could do that would cause significant disruption to them.
This is probably the root of the reason for the problem in the first place - Boeing can ship bad planes and they won't get stopped until they fall out of the sky multiple times - and even then nothing real will change.
It's not that he knew nothing about aviation (he ran Denver International Airport), he didn't have first-hand experience as a pilot. But here's the thing - that's okay. FAA is a mess right now, and Phil Washington has experience cleaning up messy organizations. That works perfectly find for a Federal administrative position where you're generally only on the job for a few years and move on. You can argue that it's even fine in the long term - how much software or hardware engineering experience does Tim Cook have again?
Sometimes the only way to escape regulatory capture is to hire an outsider, at least temporarily.
Unfortunately the administration did Washington dirty by not properly preparing him for his confirmation hearing.
If a guy who ran an airport is qualified to regulate air safety, then a guy who owned a parking lot is qualified to regulate auto safety.
Running an airport is running a business. An airport parks airplanes and collects rent from airlines and concessionaires. It wouldn’t teach you what you need to know to regulate airlines or air safety.
