Comment by andrewflnr
3 hours ago
But as you've made clear, the root of the problem is not with the engineer.
Personally I think a corporate death penalty strikes a nice balance of holding companies and individuals responsible. If a company exercises sufficient malfeasance, it gets nationalized with no compensation for shareholders. Watch the incentives align real fast.
Yeah that sounds great! A company guillotine is absolutely something I could get behind. Problem is I don't think there's any way it could possibly happen politically. Whereas we have a really strong existence proof for e.g. the Professional Engineer certification and other professional coherence mechanisms. That seems to work, albeit not without its own inefficiencies. I doubt anyone, though, would advocate for some kind of laissez-faire situation where the profit incentive aligns with the regulatory one. Historically that hasn't gone well. A lot of people died.