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I wish these people were treated as mass murderers. The man years taken away from many peoples lives should be estimated, and his case should be taken as seriou

I wish these people were treated as mass murderers. The man years taken away from many peoples lives should be estimated, and his case should be taken as seriously as a serial killer who took away the same amout of lives as him and other people in the conspiracy. I'm suffering from the effects of air pollution in my young age for the last 10 years (I'm 39 now), and I can't do anything to reverse my sickness.

borkt 6y ago
I drew a poignant yet very off color political cartoon the moment the scandal dropped showing German Sociopath 1940s with a gas chamber, side by side with German Sociopath 2010s with VW TDI’s tailpipe connected to a hose going into the same building, the new version with a sign above saying earth. I know the comparison is dark and compares a targeted ethnic genocide with indiscriminate killing, but the truth is that the damage diesel exhaust does to the human body is truly hard to overstate. To be pushing out 40x the legal limit for years while smugly marketing yourself as so much better than all other diesel vehicles is just a level of evil that immediately drew the comparison for me
- nexuist 6y ago
  Do you have a link to the comic? I think it would do well in today's climate, but you definitely need to get rid of the "German" and replace it with something less general, maybe "Nazi"? (It works because VW actually did work with Nazis in the 40s). Not every German worked for the specific team at VW that propagated this crisis, just like not every German even knew about the camps, so they don't deserve to be targeted by a broad brush like that.
  - hodgesrm 6y ago
    It's hard to decouple "Nazi" from "German." Nazi is the native language abbreviation for National Socialist German Workers Party. The nationality is baked into the name in a very deliberate way. Sad to report, the party and its beliefs were widely supported among German citizens at the time. Its grip was broken by catastrophic defeat followed by occupation. (To their credit Germans faced up to their history in a way that is relatively rare among nations. The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin is just one of many examples.)
    - __m 6y ago
      The abbreviation would be nsdap, not nazi. Nazi includes everybody with that ideology, not just party members
      - hodgesrm 6y ago
        German abbreviations work differently. You typically pick 2-3 significant syllables. "Nazi" comes from NAtionalsoZIalistische deutsche arbeiterpartei. Usual pattern is more like GEheime STAatsPOlizei = "Gestapo", which picks the first syllables of significant words. As to the second point, in Germany at least Nazi refers to party members or close adherents like Neonazis. The catchall term is usually Faschisten (fascists). Americans use the term Nazi far more loosely, to the extent it has lost much of its descriptive value.
        __m 6y ago
        Not all abbreviations work like that, see the Wikipedia entry for the party: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalsozialistische_Deutsche_Arbeiterpartei https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalsozialistische_Deuts... Nazi is the abbreviation for Nationalsozialist. It’s true that it’s used interchangeably but the official abbreviation is nsdap.
        hodgesrm 6y ago
        Thanks, your point about Nazi being really short for Nationalsozialist seems correct. To be honest I don't think I've ever heard anyone say NSDAP out loud in German. Perhaps I should get out more.
    - casefields 6y ago
      They faced up to it because the Allies forced them through denazification.[0] Same thing we did in Iraq.[1] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Ba%27athification https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Ba%27athification
- perl4ever 6y ago
  I'm not sure if you're aware that mobile gas vans with their exhaust piped in were used extensively by the Nazis, or whether you'd only heard of Zyklon-B and concentration camp gas chambers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_van https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_van "The gas vans were specifically designed to direct deadly exhaust fumes via metal pipes into the airtight cargo compartments, where the intended victims had been forcibly stuffed to capacity" They were used to kill "Jews, Poles, Romani people, mentally ill people, and prisoners".
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    There were two points I was making, that the analogy was more on the nose than maybe the parent comment was aware, and that it was not just "ethnic genocide".
nexuist 6y ago
This could be solved by a carbon tax. If the company lied about their emissions and got caught, you could retroactively charge them to make up for the difference, and then any profit they would have gained from skirting the regulations would be nullified. Other businesses would see this new environment and adapt or die. American businesses don't avoid (domestic) child labor because it's illegal, they avoid it because the potential charges for getting caught make the whole endeavor unprofitable.
- the_gipsy 6y ago
  But ze Arbeitplätze! (Jobs). German government is extremely entrenched with the automobile industry. Only slaps on the wrist, but it's probably profitable to risk breaking the law. Maybe these executives should be prosecuted hard for their decisions.
- amelius 6y ago
  > This could be solved by a carbon tax. If the company lied about their emissions and got caught, you could retroactively charge them to make up for the difference, and then any profit they would have gained from skirting the regulations would be nullified. Yeah, but what if the CEOs moved on? Or secured their profits? I think carbon tax is the way to go, but on top of that we need criminal justice.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > Or secured their profits? What does this mean within the context of tax evasion? > we need criminal justice There is a reason Al Capone was booked on tax evasion. Showing an executive wilfully defrauded a test is difficult. Responsibility is too diffuse. Proving tax fraud is much easier—executives personally sign off on books.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- xiphias2 6y ago
  Only criminal cases are usually prosecuted on the personal level. Imagine if somebody proposed taxing terrorist organizations for killing people. When they get caught, the CEO would get his bonus and retire, the organization would either go bankrupt or bailed out by the government because of its importance, and a VP could register the next company, hiring all his ex-colleagues who were just executing company orders.
fus 6y ago
They missed a single emission standard, for a quite short time. It's a crime, but every punishment should be proportional to the negative result. In this case, fine seems sufficient, as money from it could be used to put more filters on e.g. coal plants. I think we have much bigger issues with coal plants, iron extraction from the ore, making concrete, commercial trucks with worse emission equipment requirements, or even airplanes still using leaded gasoline, etc.
- pastrami_panda 6y ago
  You do realize they literally bought monkeys, put them in cages, piped the exhaust from their "clean" diesel cars right into the cages to desperately try to justify their lies. This was a reactionary response and a last ditch effort to try to spin the story after they were caught cheating on the emission tests. These people are straight up psychopaths and deserve punishment. Edit: Now I'm being downvoted, we live a society where companies do so devious acts that people sound crazy when they point them out. Yes, this sounds too heinous to be true, but the sad fact is that it is true, watch the documentary for full story: https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1FI0VR https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1FI0VR
  - fus 6y ago
    Well, the exhaust in reality is much more clean then presented in some media. It's not a perfect way of showing that, but I get their point. We need to keep our risk awareness calibarated to the issue at hand and with relation to other risks in our life. You are applying "psychopath" label in a very liberal way. They cheated. They tried to hide it. It's a fact. It still doesn't make them psychopaths. Please look for universal solutions.
    - pastrami_panda 6y ago
      VW devised software to detect when an emission test was being performed and blatantly cheated the testing system so more people would buy their cars in the belief that they were environment friendly when they clearly were not. They got caught but instead of admitting fault they showed a complete disregard for animal life by piping diesel exhaust into monkeys for several hours. It's one of the most sickening business practices I've heard of, it's outright evil and sets a dangerous precedent. I will never understand how people can defend these kinds of actions and resort to trivialising their heinous acts. Have we become so calloused that we freely make up excuses for this kind of behaviour? What message is that sending to these companies? Sorry for being so judgemental but I find this awful. I really recommend watching the documentary to grasp the nature of how terrible the people calling the shots on this were.

borkt 6y ago

I drew a poignant yet very off color political cartoon the moment the scandal dropped showing German Sociopath 1940s with a gas chamber, side by side with German Sociopath 2010s with VW TDI’s tailpipe connected to a hose going into the same building, the new version with a sign above saying earth. I know the comparison is dark and compares a targeted ethnic genocide with indiscriminate killing, but the truth is that the damage diesel exhaust does to the human body is truly hard to overstate. To be pushing out 40x the legal limit for years while smugly marketing yourself as so much better than all other diesel vehicles is just a level of evil that immediately drew the comparison for me

nexuist 6y ago
Do you have a link to the comic? I think it would do well in today's climate, but you definitely need to get rid of the "German" and replace it with something less general, maybe "Nazi"? (It works because VW actually did work with Nazis in the 40s). Not every German worked for the specific team at VW that propagated this crisis, just like not every German even knew about the camps, so they don't deserve to be targeted by a broad brush like that.
- hodgesrm 6y ago
  It's hard to decouple "Nazi" from "German." Nazi is the native language abbreviation for National Socialist German Workers Party. The nationality is baked into the name in a very deliberate way. Sad to report, the party and its beliefs were widely supported among German citizens at the time. Its grip was broken by catastrophic defeat followed by occupation. (To their credit Germans faced up to their history in a way that is relatively rare among nations. The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin is just one of many examples.)
  - __m 6y ago
    The abbreviation would be nsdap, not nazi. Nazi includes everybody with that ideology, not just party members
    - hodgesrm 6y ago
      German abbreviations work differently. You typically pick 2-3 significant syllables. "Nazi" comes from NAtionalsoZIalistische deutsche arbeiterpartei. Usual pattern is more like GEheime STAatsPOlizei = "Gestapo", which picks the first syllables of significant words. As to the second point, in Germany at least Nazi refers to party members or close adherents like Neonazis. The catchall term is usually Faschisten (fascists). Americans use the term Nazi far more loosely, to the extent it has lost much of its descriptive value.
      - __m 6y ago
        Not all abbreviations work like that, see the Wikipedia entry for the party: https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalsozialistische_Deutsche_Arbeiterpartei https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalsozialistische_Deuts... Nazi is the abbreviation for Nationalsozialist. It’s true that it’s used interchangeably but the official abbreviation is nsdap.
        hodgesrm 6y ago
        Thanks, your point about Nazi being really short for Nationalsozialist seems correct. To be honest I don't think I've ever heard anyone say NSDAP out loud in German. Perhaps I should get out more.
  - casefields 6y ago
    They faced up to it because the Allies forced them through denazification.[0] Same thing we did in Iraq.[1] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Ba%27athification https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Ba%27athification
perl4ever 6y ago
I'm not sure if you're aware that mobile gas vans with their exhaust piped in were used extensively by the Nazis, or whether you'd only heard of Zyklon-B and concentration camp gas chambers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_van https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_van "The gas vans were specifically designed to direct deadly exhaust fumes via metal pipes into the airtight cargo compartments, where the intended victims had been forcibly stuffed to capacity" They were used to kill "Jews, Poles, Romani people, mentally ill people, and prisoners".
- perl4ever 6y ago
  There were two points I was making, that the analogy was more on the nose than maybe the parent comment was aware, and that it was not just "ethnic genocide".

nexuist 6y ago

This could be solved by a carbon tax. If the company lied about their emissions and got caught, you could retroactively charge them to make up for the difference, and then any profit they would have gained from skirting the regulations would be nullified. Other businesses would see this new environment and adapt or die. American businesses don't avoid (domestic) child labor because it's illegal, they avoid it because the potential charges for getting caught make the whole endeavor unprofitable.

the_gipsy 6y ago
But ze Arbeitplätze! (Jobs). German government is extremely entrenched with the automobile industry. Only slaps on the wrist, but it's probably profitable to risk breaking the law. Maybe these executives should be prosecuted hard for their decisions.
amelius 6y ago
> This could be solved by a carbon tax. If the company lied about their emissions and got caught, you could retroactively charge them to make up for the difference, and then any profit they would have gained from skirting the regulations would be nullified. Yeah, but what if the CEOs moved on? Or secured their profits? I think carbon tax is the way to go, but on top of that we need criminal justice.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > Or secured their profits? What does this mean within the context of tax evasion? > we need criminal justice There is a reason Al Capone was booked on tax evasion. Showing an executive wilfully defrauded a test is difficult. Responsibility is too diffuse. Proving tax fraud is much easier—executives personally sign off on books.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
xiphias2 6y ago
Only criminal cases are usually prosecuted on the personal level. Imagine if somebody proposed taxing terrorist organizations for killing people. When they get caught, the CEO would get his bonus and retire, the organization would either go bankrupt or bailed out by the government because of its importance, and a VP could register the next company, hiring all his ex-colleagues who were just executing company orders.

fus 6y ago

They missed a single emission standard, for a quite short time. It's a crime, but every punishment should be proportional to the negative result. In this case, fine seems sufficient, as money from it could be used to put more filters on e.g. coal plants. I think we have much bigger issues with coal plants, iron extraction from the ore, making concrete, commercial trucks with worse emission equipment requirements, or even airplanes still using leaded gasoline, etc.

pastrami_panda 6y ago
You do realize they literally bought monkeys, put them in cages, piped the exhaust from their "clean" diesel cars right into the cages to desperately try to justify their lies. This was a reactionary response and a last ditch effort to try to spin the story after they were caught cheating on the emission tests. These people are straight up psychopaths and deserve punishment. Edit: Now I'm being downvoted, we live a society where companies do so devious acts that people sound crazy when they point them out. Yes, this sounds too heinous to be true, but the sad fact is that it is true, watch the documentary for full story: https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1FI0VR https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1FI0VR
- fus 6y ago
  Well, the exhaust in reality is much more clean then presented in some media. It's not a perfect way of showing that, but I get their point. We need to keep our risk awareness calibarated to the issue at hand and with relation to other risks in our life. You are applying "psychopath" label in a very liberal way. They cheated. They tried to hide it. It's a fact. It still doesn't make them psychopaths. Please look for universal solutions.
  - pastrami_panda 6y ago
    VW devised software to detect when an emission test was being performed and blatantly cheated the testing system so more people would buy their cars in the belief that they were environment friendly when they clearly were not. They got caught but instead of admitting fault they showed a complete disregard for animal life by piping diesel exhaust into monkeys for several hours. It's one of the most sickening business practices I've heard of, it's outright evil and sets a dangerous precedent. I will never understand how people can defend these kinds of actions and resort to trivialising their heinous acts. Have we become so calloused that we freely make up excuses for this kind of behaviour? What message is that sending to these companies? Sorry for being so judgemental but I find this awful. I really recommend watching the documentary to grasp the nature of how terrible the people calling the shots on this were.