Of course it's a problem with capitalism and regulation. The particular form of capitalism we have today provides a strong financial incentive to concentrate on

Of course it's a problem with capitalism and regulation. The particular form of capitalism we have today provides a strong financial incentive to concentrate on short term returns. And the particular form of regulation we have today created an environment where automakers felt there were few consequences, if any, for gaming the emissions system. These cheating programs didn't spring up de novo all of a sudden, they came as the result of years of incrementally gaming the system more and more with no regulatory consequences. Particularly in Europe automakers have been tweaking the vehicles they send for emissions to improve performance in tests. It's easy to rationalize this sort of thing as just "making sure" that the emissions results are accurate and reflect the best the vehicle can do. But once you get into that mindset it's easy to fall into the trap of pushing the envelope on gaming the system more and more. And once you do something like VW did of building different emissions behavior into the vehicle software you can create an enormous divergence in emissions between the test state and the regular operating state. Sure, other systems can have similar problems, but that's no excuse.