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My mother has been in the market for a new car for the last few months. I was keen on a Tesla until the shitposter in chief took the reins. We bought an Audi la
by hrrsn 4y ago
My mother has been in the market for a new car for the last few months. I was keen on a Tesla until the shitposter in chief took the reins. We bought an Audi last week instead.
- alvah 4y agoWait until you find out the history of Audi (and its parent company VW)
- werdnapk 4y agoAny reason why people have to keep bringing this up? At this point, who really cares.
- alvah 4y agoAudi or VW are poor choices if virtue signaling is the aim. Almost any other Western car company would have been better.
- FatActor 4y agoComparing corporations from 80 years ago under a regime that was toppled to a shitty CEO from today is utterly meaningless. The point of conscientious spending is to affect change. Not buying an Audi today does not send a message to Nazi Germany because it no longer exists (and it wasn't even Audi, it was their predecessor). Not buying a Tesla today sends a message to Tesla, because it exists. Make sense?
- alvah 4y ago"Didn't buy a Tesla" = sends a message to Tesla "Didn't buy a Tesla, bought an Audi" = poorly-executed virtue signal attempt.
- hrrsn 4y agoIf I was attempting virtue signalling, I wouldn't have bought an ICE over an EV.
- alvah 4y agoAudi sell EVs as well as ICEs. You said you’d bought an Audi after considering a Tesla. As I said, poorly-executed virtue signal.
- watwut 4y agoReally not. Only full on anti-capitalist care about origins of companies deep into last century. And even they are doing it for larger capitalism bad reasons. Plus there is nothing wrong with virtue signaling, really. It beats vice signaling by miles and it beats passivity too.
- FatActor 4y agoWhy is virtue signalling bad? It's demonstrating that you care about something related to human dignity. Do you really think that is so awful that you laugh at it? What would have been better virtue signalling?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pwinnski 4y agoDo you realize that sometimes people make choices because they have moral or ethical concerns? It is not always about sending any sort of signal to others. It is very rarely about sending any sort of signal to others. In fact, the phrase "virtue signaling" was initially primarily used by people who seemed to lack moral or ethical concerns of their own and couldn't fathom that other people were guided by such. It's not a great term to throw around when it doesn't clearly apply.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- meepmorp 4y agoBecause they don't have a better point to make, so they're going for a gotcha
- hef19898 4y agoDepends on what history you talk about? The Nazis are gone for 80 years and quite a few of the emission scandal managers are in jail.
- vadym909 4y agoThis makes no sense. VW is a public company, employing regular people, making good cars in Germany and elsewhere. No one brings up the past for Japanese, so not sure what the logic for punishing VW is?
- alvah 4y agoWho is punishing VW? I drive one (my 3rd) & it's a great car. I'm not using it to signal my virtue though, and I am suggesting it's a poor choice for that purpose.
- voltaireodactyl 4y agoHaving and/or abiding by personal principles is hardly virtue signally — to the best of my understanding, it’s just called having a moral compass.
- plorkyeran 4y agoThere is a certain kind of person who does not believe that anyone actually has morals, and so interprets any form of having a moral compass as "virtue signaling".
- MrMan 4y ago"moral compass" is something leftists invented to try to constrain the freedom of value creators. morals are an imaginary thing - ever read Atlas Shrugged? We all need to wake up - the left are trying to destroy capitalism and free speech with their "morals". Next they will say its wrong to cull the weak en mass to make room for more fit individuals.
- voltaireodactyl 4y agoOf course I read Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, et all -- basic high school reading, hasn't everyone? I actually won first place in that stupid prize they set out, and all I had to do was pretend Rand wasn't a total dunce (which happily turned out to be excellent training for the business world). Both novels, like the majority of Rand's work, are absolutely cracking as wish-fulfillment fantasies for folks without social skills who dream of having kinky, angular sex while demanding that they be made BusinessPapa for perfecting some mechanical process. Ignoring, of course, that perfection in a vacuum means very little; it is the ability to use said process in the context of society that makes it 1) useful and 2) profitable (although I suppose Rand would order those different :) Who is John Galt? The kid who took his ball and went home when the other children didn't let him make all the rules. In short, I do not find Objectivism to be a useful rubric when it comes to morality. Frankly, Objectivism is incoherent except when read as a wish-fullfilment fantasy as described above, as the life of the originator handily demonstrates. Success does not come from minimizing the contributions of everyone else -- that way lies loneliness, hypocrisy, and a reliance on the teat of the State. As I deeply value my freedom and lack of debt, I could never adhere to such a unprofitable and vacuous quote unquote philosophy. With regard to "moral compass" being a leftist invention -- such an accusation betrays precisely the sort of total willful ignorance I have come to expect from self-proclaimed Objectivists (akin to RATM being Atlas Shrugged devotee Paul Ryan -- aka the literal machine --'s favorite band). Suffice it to say that the phrase "moral compass" appears long before the current political paradigm -- and the concept to which it refers is literally older than written language itself. Have you read any books OTHER than Atlas Shrugged? If not, I would be happy to provide a few suggestions to get you started! And while I'm dispensing unsolicited-but-potentially-life-changing advice: If I were you, I'd hesitate to out myself in public forums as being unfamiliar with an inner sense of morality. Most people prefer a social circle that views their friendship as something greater than a business arrangement built on symbiotic profit. I would ALSO hesitate before living my life in the accordance with the principles of an parasitic welfare queen like Ayn Rand, but that's an entire conversation in and of itself.
- bongoman37 4y ago[dead]
- skinnymuch 4y agoHow many people are alive who worked for VW in 1937? I skimmed Audi’s wiki. What does it have to do with Nazis? Because it was an active company during the rise of Nazis? Yeah of course. The company was run by capitalists. Just like most companies. We know socialists weren’t running stuff. They were executed.
- alvah 4y agoVW was founded by the Nazis, and the SS ran labor camps where prisoners were forced to work for Auto Union. I'm surprised that wasn't mentioned in Audi's wiki, they did make an announcement about it several years ago. I find it amusing that this company seems to be the go-to for those refusing to buy a Tesla for ethical reasons (see also: Alyssa Milano recently announcing she sold her Tesla to buy a VW).
- karmakurtisaani 4y agoI don't think VW has benefited any (openly) Nazi people in several decades, so this argument seems just really silly.
- jacquesm 4y agoPlease. If you want to make this particular argument you'd be better off doing it for Opel than VW.