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>> "...and maybe it's even enough to deter car companies from doing something similar in the future..." As anyone who's ever been near a major automaker's test

• SwellJoe 10y ago
  Can we just line them all up against the wall? Look, this is illegal behavior that costs human lives. I'm not saying VW is unique. I'm saying VW, who have been proven to be committing a crime on an unimaginably large scale for years, should pay a tremendous cost for that...ideally, the executives who knew should be going to jail. I'm not for giving other auto-makers a pass. Pitchforks may be warranted in their cases, as well. I don't know. But, to suggest that holding a company accountable for massive crimes is a "witch-hunt" is silly. There is no question about whether they've done this thing. The question is what they need to do to make amends. Edit: I'm gonna assume the downvoting is because of the seemingly hyperbolic claim of this costing human lives...but, it's not intended to be hyperbolic. According to the research I've seen, VW killed people with this practice: "A peer-reviewed study published in Environmental Research Letters estimated that approximately 59 premature deaths will be caused by the excess pollution produced between 2008 and 2015 by vehicles equipped with the defeat device in the U.S., the majority due to particulate pollution (87%) with the remainder due to ozone (13%). The study also found that making these vehicles emissions compliant by the end of 2016 would avert an additional 130 early deaths." (Source: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/29/vw-emissions-estimated-to-cause-59-premature-us-deaths https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/29/vw-emiss... )
  • rbobby 10y ago
    Under your theory of the crime it was some form of negligent homicide? And you want to hold all the receptionists accountable (lose of job) because they negligently did/failed to do what exactly?
    • SwellJoe 10y ago
      Of course I don't want a receptionist who knew nothing of the crime to lose their job; but, the same scenario can be created for any person who goes to jail. No one wants a baby to grow up without their mother or father, but sometimes people commit crimes, and are punished with jail time, leading to suffering of their whole family. It's not good (and, I think there's a lot to be said for ending our carceral focused criminal justice system), but we as a society do seem to agree that sometimes the good of society as a whole trumps that of an individual or group. I'm not suggesting that imposing a "death penalty" on a corporation would be a nice thing, or that it would make employees of the corporation happy. I'm not even saying it wouldn't have negative consequences for more than just those directly employed by the company. But, I am saying that when someone commits a truly heinous crime, our society removes them from society by force. Volkswagen has committed a truly heinous crime. If I had my druthers, the CEO and a wide variety of other executives who knew what was going on would be spending their days in a lonely grey room contemplating what they've done. That'd be a good start toward justice. But, we also have to address the company as a whole. It was not one person who made this decision, and it's probably literally impossible to know who knew and who did what with any precision. Pretty much the entire company is suspect. We can't expect internal processes to correct this kind of malfeasance...they had years to do so, and chose profit over human lives. Finally: Many corporations have died, through all manner of faults over the years...often, they've failed due to inefficiencies, the Innovator's Dilemma, etc. Very few companies have failed because they killed people. But, it is not the end of the world when a company, even a very large one, dies. It makes room in the market for new competitors. And, in this case, a shake up in the auto industry is a great thing. We need new auto companies that don't willingly trade human and environmental health for greater profits. While VW exists, and wields political power, those new companies (or old companies that want to do right by the world) are competing with a company shown to have no scruples. Ever tried to compete in a business that has high health and safety costs with a competitor that ignores health and safety regulations? That's a part of why Chinese manufacturing destroyed American manufacturing industries. Someone else mentioned Enron in another comment. I think it's a useful example. The fallout from Enron was hard for a lot of people; and, it was painful across several industries for a little while. But, I believe we're better for killing Enron (and Arthur Andersen). And, I believe the world would be better off, in the long run, by killing VW.
  • forgetsusername 10y ago
    >I'm gonna assume the downvoting is because You're getting down-voted because you're asking for company executives, who are human beings, to be killed for something that hasn't quite proven out to be a "crime" yet. Most reasonable people find that repulsive. While we're at it, why don't we kill everyone who every bought a VW? Surely they are partly culpable.
    • omginternets 10y ago
      It's clearly intended as a figure of speech...
    • SwellJoe 10y ago
      "You're getting down-voted because you're asking for company executives, who are human beings, to be killed for something that hasn't quite proven out to be a "crime" yet." Did you really interpret it that way? I'm speaking of companies, not people. Apologies for not being clear. I am speaking of a "corporate death penalty"; one for companies. The person I was replying to said other car companies are doing the same thing, and I would hope they would face consequences as well, if so. I explicitly stated in my first comment that I oppose the death penalty for humans in criminal cases.
  • moptar 10y ago
    The extent to which it cost human lives is a function of the arbitrary emission standards that governments have set. Those standards are obviously chosen as a trade-off between too many harmful consequences of pollution and being too expensive for car makers to comply with. So it's not as clear as "VW killed people" but more like "VW killed more people than we expected them to." The standards themselves still allow some harmful emissions to be released. If had more relaxed standards then all the extra harm caused by the VW cheating would simply evaporate.
    • SwellJoe 10y ago
      But, we have the standards we have (which are already weaker than they need to be to avert a climate and air quality disaster going forward). If one company is permitted to fake results, it means all companies will have to fake results to compete. My argument is that cheating our already lax air quality and environmental standards should be a tremendous deal. It shouldn't be something that can be swept under the rug or written off as a cost of doing business.
  • the-dude 10y ago
    "Line them all up against the wall?" Flagged
    • SwellJoe 10y ago
      I'm curious, are you a native English speaker? When you read my comment, do you genuinely believe I'm suggesting killing people (despite my explicitly saying in the previous comment that I oppose the death penalty for people)? I don't think you're alone in interpreting my comment that way, but I'm not sure I understand why it's been so misinterpreted. I'd like to do better in the future (without giving up entirely on humor, though perhaps I shouldn't quit my day job).
      • the-dude 10y ago
        Your rationale is appreciated but it is about the tone of the discourse. The sentence just makes one think about readers comments on some newspaper sites I guess every country has.
    • deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  • jacquesm 10y ago
    > Can we just line them all up against the wall? No. I am assuming you meant this as a figure of speech, but it is a very unfortunate one. As for your edit: I am assuming that the downvotes are because you express yourself in a way that doesn't help at all. The statistic being what they are you are either unware of the statistical insignificance of that number or you are but you are inflating it to make it seem more important than it really is. Yes, statistically speaking there may be 59 'premature deaths', but that does not quantify just how premature those deaths were, nor does it acknowledge that transportation carries an enormous cost in lives over and beyond that tiny little bit extra because of these emissions. Yes, VW did a really bad thing, yes, they should be punished. But the cost of transportation already being what it is the punishment seems to be roughly in line with the extent of the crime. If you're really concerned about this you should campaign for us all to stop driving, that will really move the needle.
    • SwellJoe 10y ago
      "If you're really concerned about this you should campaign for us all to stop driving, that will really move the needle." I do that, too, to the best of my ability. And, whenever given the chance I argue for self-driving cars, too. Yes, the entire auto industry (and our addiction to it as a society) is terrible. But, my point is that even the mild environmental and health regulations we have were defeated for years for VW profits, all while they advertised "clean diesel" and went head to head in the market with technologies that are actually superior and safer (unless those companies are cheating, too), claiming to be better than them by using falsified data. My point is really that when a company in an industry that already kills on an unprecedented scale decides to willfully harm even more because they'll profit, there should be truly dire consequences. BP is another great example of a company that consistently made decisions that knowingly endangered entire communities over a long period of time. Their only regret seems to be getting caught.
      • jacquesm 10y ago
        Transportation is a fact of life, no amount of wishing is going to make it go away and you'd not be able to make a world without it work at the level that we're at currently. Of course we can do better, but that's likely going to be marginal rather than some kind of revolutionary change. VW messed up, sure. I've been pretty explicit about my criticism of what they've done, and I would happily see Winterkorn serve jailtime (fat chance of that ever happening). But I think you are magnifying the damage done way out of proportion. FWIW, 15B for 59 premature deaths is a very large premium compared to what we, the western nations typically think a life in some Oil rich country is worth, and those people too are indirect victims of our transportation. Proportionality is what it is all about and I really miss that element in your comments here.