Like most neoliberal institutions, Boeing had come under the spell of a seductive new theory of “knowledge” that essentially reduced the whole concept to a combination of intellectual property, trade secrets, and data, discarding “thought” and “understanding” and “complex reasoning” possessed by a skilled and experienced workforce as essentially not worth the increased health care costs.
Damn that's the most relatable thing I've heard in a while.
Another data point to consider is that Boeing isn't really a manufacturer any more. It's an assembler. The actual work of manufacturing is done by contractors, I think mostly in Japan? Boeing owns the patents and assembles the finished pieces into a cohesive airplane, but they haven't constructed anything in decades now.