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One thing learned from: Volkswagen,airbnb,google,amazon,uber,facebook is to CHEAT. Illegal hotels, copyright infringement, skipping sales tax, fake cabs,profiting on personal data.. and now, illegal emission testing.
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Not the parent. If the company can pay for fines, fine. No need to dissolve them, but the leadership responsible still needs to face a judge. Just because you're part of a corporation, shouldn't mean you get to walk from crimes.
> but the leadership responsible still needs to face a judge There’s your problem, assuming that there is a way for leadership in a company not be responsible. Managers being ‘responsible’ is the only argument for them being paid disproportionally more than the average worker. In turn, a manager should always be responsible for the actions of their underlings all the way to the top, regardless of personal involvement…
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If you own a VW/Seat/Skoda/Audi diesel car in US, you can give your car back and get your money. In EU, VW promises to fix the car by adding a 5cent placebo plastic pipe and a software update which lowers the performance and increases the diesel consumption (physics after all). In US VW has to pay billions, in EU VW has to pay nothing to speak of. Of course the German government is involved in this company as shareho…
You ignore that emission standards in Europe were less strict when it came to diesel pollution, so that 5cent placebo plastic pipe makes the cars compliant there. Emissions standards in Europe focused on C02 emissions and not so much on the toxic byproducts of diesel combustion. That's why the scandal is not such a big issue for Volkswagen in Europe.
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How did Google, Amazon, and Facebook cheat, in your opinion?
Google: copyright infringement. [Crawling sites, taking data at will, then slapping ads on it, not paying the authors a portion of their ads] [4]. Tax evasion. [5--look for google] Amazon: sales tax avoidance (entire reason they exist) [1] later, federal tax evasion, including the double irish. [7]. Pusher of fake goods. [8] Pusher of fake reviews. Pusher of Chinese goods causing destructive env. practices. Facebook:…
One thing learned from: Volkswagen,airbnb,google,amazon,uber,facebook is to CHEAT. Illegal hotels, copyright infringement, skipping sales tax, fake cabs,profiting on personal data.. and now, illegal emission testing.
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That is fundamentally not different from a fine, which is ultimately also paid completely by the investors.
Yes, it is completely different, because the nationalization step strips the original investors from all power.
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> Is the CEO reponsible if the manager cheated and deliberately hid facts from the upper management, just to please them and make himself look better? Morally, certainly yes, that’s why they’re the CEO. Their only defence against responsibility is incapacity to fulfil their duties, in which case they should resign immediately.
It is naive to believe a CEO can know about everything. The job is to get out of the habit of running the company day to day, and focus on vision, strategy, and culture. It is entirely possible for the management levels below him to ignore orders, and cheat measures out in place to ensure this. As long as the CEO act accordingly when knowledge about this reaches him, he is doing a proper job. It will never be possibl…
This isn't just a theory. On of my companies competitors (I do not know which, I was just given it as an example) was caught bribing officials in China. After investigation it was decided that it was a rouge manager and not the CEO: they has a policy of not bribing, everyone was trained in recognizing how something (even a meal) could be seen as a bribe, and when other unethical action had been taken in the past the company took action to stop it and treated the whistle-blowers well. The CEO got off because he did everything in his power to ensure this wouldn't happen.
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You ignore that emission standards in Europe were less strict when it came to diesel pollution, so that 5cent placebo plastic pipe makes the cars compliant there. Emissions standards in Europe focused on C02 emissions and not so much on the toxic byproducts of diesel combustion. That's why the scandal is not such a big issue for Volkswagen in Europe.
I don't think that GP was ignoring it: "Of course the German government is involved in this company as shareholder and probably knew about the cheating and probably the EU laws for diesel were altered some years ago because of this company" - the point is that the EU car companies big into diesel specifically worked to have this pollution be made less critical in emissions testing...
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Not the parent. If the company can pay for fines, fine. No need to dissolve them, but the leadership responsible still needs to face a judge. Just because you're part of a corporation, shouldn't mean you get to walk from crimes.
Kind of like this? https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/volkswagen-ag-agrees-plead-gu...
Would you pay $10K for a 2 year old cheater Jetta?
Edit: removed typo
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>though I hope you're joking about the guillotine I read that remark as this: If corporations are people legally, there should be certain crimes that lead to their dissolution. I assumed this was the proposal: If a corporation does something evil enough, its leaders going to prison and paying a fine isn't enough, it should face the corporate guillotine which revokes its incorporation.
Killing off one of the largest employers in the world is a volatile maneuver. Surely there should be consequences, however perhaps a tier-based system for violations is needed. Suddenly closing the door on .... GM for example would be catastrophic for the US(hence the government bailout many economists supported). It may be that to properly punish or deter corporations from malicious decisions, the board of directors…
Because, of course, no sensible capitalist would have stood by and watched all those assests disappear. Toyota would have bought a factory here, Nissan a factory there. Robots would have been sold off, etc.
Ford and Hyundai would have ramped up production and would have needed additional employees. And somebody would have stepped in to buy what was left of GM for 10 cents on the dollar.
It would have been very disruptive, yes. But within two years or so, the market would have adjusted. And there would be some incentive to not have anyone get too big to fail. As it stands, the incentive is to not let anyone be punished too much no matter how bad they act.
Wells Fargo should have gone out of business when thousands of employees were caught stealing from customers. Every shareholder should have lost everything. Of course the shareholders didn't commit the offence, but it would teach a lesson to be more responsible in investments, and make sure that the companies you invest in play square.
It might give Boards a different set of priorities when they negotiate the contracts of CEOs.