Got nothing to do with self-regulation..
....but everything to do with McDonald-Douglas management.
When Boeing and McDonald-Douglas merged in the late 1990's Boeing was the bigger of the two but McDonald-Douglas management had a well earned reputation in the industry of being the most vicious back stabbing bastards in the business. Which says a lot. Whereas Boeing was still very much an engineering / pilot driven company with equally easy going management in comparison.
Once the McDonald-Douglas sharks entered the management pool the Boeing people did not stand a chance. Almost all the upper and senior people gone with in a few years. And within a decade the McDonald-Douglas people had driven out almost all the senior Boeing aviation expertise people as well. Almost 80 years of corporate engineering and safety memory gone in less than a decade. All of it.
So by the time the Max project rolled around it just became the next in a long line of engineering debacles under McDonald-Douglas management. The bean counters said bolt big engines on a forty year old air-frame and there was no one left in Boeing who would tell the management - that will kill people.
Which it has. Many hundreds of them. And killed the civil aviation part of the company. Just like the McDonald-Douglas management did with McDonald-Douglas. For exactly the same reasons.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
