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German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

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Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#121

Post by throwpoaster »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #73
jxjnskkzxxhx wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually it happens only if you steal from investors. Stealing from consumers is fine.

Stealing from employees is just normal business in the US. $1.5 billion in stolen wages were recovered for US workers between 2021 and 2023. Imagine how much wasn't recovered. It is often the least able to take action/most in need of every dollar of their income that are stolen from. You can tell a lot about a society by how it treats those with the least power versus those with power. https://www.epi.org/publication…

Let's be conservative by taking GDP for only the middle year. In 2022 American GDP was 26 trillion (rounded down). Let's also gross up the stolen wages from your comment to 2.6 billion.

That's 0.01% -- one percent of one percent. That's a background noise level, or simple error rate level, or rounding error level. And because of our conservative assumptions, over those three years GDP is actually maybe 3x higher and the reported wage theft per year maybe 20% of the figure used, so it's more like approx 0.002%.

If wage theft is "just normal business in the US" it's not a very big business!

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#122

Post by AshleyGrant »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #104
FridayoLeary wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have kind of abandoned diesel engines, which the whole scandal was based around. It became clear that it would be impossible to create diesel engines which would comply with enviromental standards, which is a shame since they are more efficient and it is consumers who are losing out. They are still one of the main automotive conglomerations today. If anything American car companies are losing the market in Europ…

Consumers still have to breathe though. I'd be totally fine if diesel engines were completely phased out. In the US we somehow can't even get rid of those idiots that retune their engines for "rolling coal".

Because, for the most part, we aren't doing damned thing about it. "Rolling coal" is inherently a very public act of law breaking, but I doubt a single person has ever been pulled over by any American cop for it. The EPA and certain states were trying through other enforcement mechanisms to fight it, but with Trump in office, it's basically encouraged to "delete" your Diesel emissions equipment if you aren't in commercial operation.

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#123

Post by paganel »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #104
FridayoLeary wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have kind of abandoned diesel engines, which the whole scandal was based around. It became clear that it would be impossible to create diesel engines which would comply with enviromental standards, which is a shame since they are more efficient and it is consumers who are losing out. They are still one of the main automotive conglomerations today. If anything American car companies are losing the market in Europ…

Consumers still have to breathe though. I'd be totally fine if diesel engines were completely phased out. In the US we somehow can't even get rid of those idiots that retune their engines for "rolling coal".

You can’t wage modern war without diesel engines, those trucks won’t drive themselves close to the front-lines (and, no, electric-powered trucks in times of war are a terrible idea, and the ones powered by gasoline are a lot less efficient and don’t provide the same torque numbers).

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#124

Post by pqtyw »

darkwater wrote: post #100
DocTomoe wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all fairness, in the general European perception, with the Cougar, the Puma, and the Focus, Ford is not really seen as an "American" brand. Especially the Focus has virtually nothing to do with what Europeans would consider 'an American car'. It is the quintessential low-to-mid-tier Eurocar: small, cheap, does what it is supposed to do. Compare that to e.g. Chevrolet, which tried - and failed - to get a foothold i…

Didn't Chevrolet just bought and rebranded some Korean automaker?

AFAIK they were selling rebadged Daewoo models which were built on platforms developed by Opel. I suppose they wanted a budget brand and manufacturing and importing from Korea was cheaper back in those days than just using Opel's factories..

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#125

Post by [deleted] »

try_the_bass wrote: post #110
Teever wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't theft. If an employee completes all the work assigned to them and passes performance reviews then what you're describing is a suboptimal use of the employees on the part of the employer.

> If an employee completes all the work assigned to them I don't think this was implied in their statement?

[deleted]

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#126

Post by bhelkey »

MortyWaves wrote: post #38

The last time I read any updates on this, everyone on both sides of the legal process were trying to single out scapegoat individual software engineers and rake them over the coals. Did something change?

When the VW scandal broke, the US indicted seven senior executives [1]. Germany did not cooperate. None of these seven were extradited to the US to stand trial.

One more mid level engineer involved in the scandal made the mistake of taking a vacation to Florida. He was arrested in the airport awaiting his flight home to Germany [2]. He was sentenced to 84 months in prison but was let out after serving half of that sentence [3].

[1] https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-ceo-volkswage...

[2] https://money.cnn.com/2017/03/17/news/companies/volkswagen-e...

[3] https://www.autonews.com/automakers/ex-vw-manager-schmidt-ge...

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#127

Post by squigz »

throwpoaster wrote: post #121
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stealing from employees is just normal business in the US. $1.5 billion in stolen wages were recovered for US workers between 2021 and 2023. Imagine how much wasn't recovered. It is often the least able to take action/most in need of every dollar of their income that are stolen from. You can tell a lot about a society by how it treats those with the least power versus those with power. https://www.epi.org/publication…

Let's be conservative by taking GDP for only the middle year. In 2022 American GDP was 26 trillion (rounded down). Let's also gross up the stolen wages from your comment to 2.6 billion. That's 0.01% -- one percent of one percent. That's a background noise level, or simple error rate level, or rounding error level. And because of our conservative assumptions, over those three years GDP is actually maybe 3x higher and…

I'm sorry, but I don't quite understand your point? Does it being a small % of the GDP matter to those stolen from? Does it mean we shouldn't attempt to remedy it?

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#128

Post by rurban »

lucianbr wrote: post #55
izacus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, whether VW as a German company is now going to end up being beaten by US competitors which could do even more nasty stuff unpunished.

It has been some years since VW had to give up cheating on emission tests. Were they beaten by US competitors during this time? I have not read any news about it.

VW? Everyone who used the Bosch ECU cheated. VW was just the biggest who got caught and had to go to jail therefore. All the others, which were more guilty than the VW execs are still free.

And the politicians which sanctioned these special diesel tests were not even named. Nor all the other countries who also choose the European Standard (not testing diesel engines) over the US Standard.

Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal

#130

Post by bilekas »

jxjnskkzxxhx wrote: post #52
SoftTalker wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SBF is in prison, so it happens sometimes.

Usually it happens only if you steal from investors. Stealing from consumers is fine.

This comment is so on point, reminds me of the old one about if you owe the bank 500k they own you, but if you owe then 2Billion you own them. Something along those lines, maybe I'm only noticing it more recently but it seems to me that there's also a higher prevalence of "Non class actions" clauses in terms and conditions these days too.

It's amazing how badly customers are willing to be treated but at the same time, you're not obliged to buy a service so I can't really rant too much.

Edit : Found the quote and unironically it's credited as an American Proverb.

> If you owe the bank a hundred thousand dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a hundred million dollars, you own the bank. — American Proverb.

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