The Roots of Boeing’s 737 Max Crisis: A Regulator Relaxes Its Oversight.

No. This was only the proximate cause. The deeper cause is the idea of “shareholder value” dominating all other concerns, stemming in turn from the overarching dominance of neoliberal thought, of which shareholder value ideation is a subset. This better explains both the regulatory lassitude and regulatory capture of the FAA and Boeing’s billions and billions in share buybacks in lieu of designing a plane that did not routinely crash into the ground.

But that sort of analysis is not one you’ll find, ever, in the NYT.