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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

#251

Post by const_cast »

philwelch wrote: post #71
jxjnskkzxxhx wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If powerful people were afraid they would be a lot less unhinged.

This isn’t how human psychology works at all.

I mean, in the past we used to just hang or bomb rich people that got too close to the sun.

People like Carnegie built 1500 public libraries because he knew the game. He knew that his position as part of the ultra-wealthy made him a target, and he had to toe a line. He need to maximize exploitation but not too much, so as to not cause a stir. He did a pretty good job. Some people didn't do such a good job - we don't hear about them because they and their families were murdered.

Rich people today are much safer, mostly due to people being better people and technology.

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

#252

Post by constantcrying »

jacknews wrote: post #19

What about major shareholders? Presumably they were blissfully unaware, and were simply pleased when VW delivered more profits, as demanded.

>Presumably they were blissfully unaware, and were simply pleased when VW delivered more profits, as demanded.

It is kind of ridiculous to believe that either the government of lower Saxony or the UAE or the Porsche Piech family were aware of this.

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

#253

Post by Neywiny »

GuB-42 wrote: post #243
hermitcrab wrote: post #5

Good for Germany, but it is all too rare to see bad corporate behaviour punished like this. Steal £10k from a company, and you will probably go to prison for a long time. Start a company and steal billions from your customers and/or the tax payer, and you will probably get away with it. I believe Iceland was the only country to jail bankers after the 2008 banking disaster. We are still waiting for the British governm…

And I think there is a good reason for that. When a company steals billions from customers, the entire company is responsible, and the entire company profits from the crime. So why single out a few executives? Everyone shall be punished: the CEO of course, but also every employee, every shareholder. You have a single VW stock, you are responsible too. So, how do you punish everyone fairly? By fining the company for a…

My issue with your comment is that you're taking the humanity out of it. A person or group of people decided to commit crimes. Go to jail. If a group of people hired a scapegoat, that group still would've conspired to commit crimes. That's a punishable offense. Punish them. You can punish a board of directors. You can persecute a C-suite. They're all humans. That's the way justice is. Nobody is above the law.

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

#254

Post by mcv »

hermitcrab wrote: post #5

Good for Germany, but it is all too rare to see bad corporate behaviour punished like this. Steal £10k from a company, and you will probably go to prison for a long time. Start a company and steal billions from your customers and/or the tax payer, and you will probably get away with it. I believe Iceland was the only country to jail bankers after the 2008 banking disaster. We are still waiting for the British governm…

Most blatant case was when the HSBC bank was found guilty of laundering billions for Mexican drug cartels. Any person found guilty of that, would have gone to prison for years, but nobody at HSBC went to prison, and the bank was fined mere millions for the crime of laundering billions. I'm sure that taught them a lesson.

So I'm glad finally seeing some repercussions for corporate crime.

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

#255

Post by pqtyw »

GuB-42 wrote: post #243
hermitcrab wrote: post #5

Good for Germany, but it is all too rare to see bad corporate behaviour punished like this. Steal £10k from a company, and you will probably go to prison for a long time. Start a company and steal billions from your customers and/or the tax payer, and you will probably get away with it. I believe Iceland was the only country to jail bankers after the 2008 banking disaster. We are still waiting for the British governm…

And I think there is a good reason for that. When a company steals billions from customers, the entire company is responsible, and the entire company profits from the crime. So why single out a few executives? Everyone shall be punished: the CEO of course, but also every employee, every shareholder. You have a single VW stock, you are responsible too. So, how do you punish everyone fairly? By fining the company for a…

> So, how do you punish everyone fairly?

By punishing those who decided to commit the crime? Indirectly benefiting from somebody's else illegal actions is not a crime (you might be required to pay it back but that's it..).

Generally executives are the ones who benefit the most of these case and then leave the rest of of the company and the shareholders on the hook while they move on or retire.

> and execs won't get their bonus,

What if they already have their bonuses? Generally it might take years for any investigation to conclude, often executives who benefited from it couldn't care less what happens to the company they don't work at anymore anyway.

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

#256

Post by kotaKat »

xrd wrote: post #129
Tomte wrote: post #10

And one engineer went on vacation to America. Congratulations, you‘ve won seven years in a foreign prison! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Schmidt_(engineer)

Arrested in a men's bathroom, no less!

"Conspiracy to defraud the United States" is a more dignified charge to get in an airport bathroom than what happens when you have a "wide stance" as a Senator.

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

#257

Post by itsanaccount »

Neywiny wrote: post #253
GuB-42 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I think there is a good reason for that. When a company steals billions from customers, the entire company is responsible, and the entire company profits from the crime. So why single out a few executives? Everyone shall be punished: the CEO of course, but also every employee, every shareholder. You have a single VW stock, you are responsible too. So, how do you punish everyone fairly? By fining the company for a…

My issue with your comment is that you're taking the humanity out of it. A person or group of people decided to commit crimes. Go to jail. If a group of people hired a scapegoat, that group still would've conspired to commit crimes. That's a punishable offense. Punish them. You can punish a board of directors. You can persecute a C-suite. They're all humans. That's the way justice is. Nobody is above the law.

Corporate death penalty. I want to see these groups of "shareholder value" get destroyed. Equal to a damage of a normal death penalty to an individual. Spread the organization to the winds.

If that means a "company" becomes smaller, with more isolated crews run by their own leadership, good.

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

#258

Post by triceratops »

SoftTalker wrote: post #242
triceratops wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And is treated as a criminal matter. But the manager telling employees to clock out before their shift ends is a civil matter.

Most often an employee caught stealing is just fired. If there's significant value involved perhaps the police would get a call. Telling an employee to clock out and keep working is a labor law violation, that's not just a civil matter. It happens, but often with the agreement of the employee. I.e. "I know you're about to hit overtime, so if you clock out I'll give you cash, otherwise I have to send you home."

The point is the police will take a complaint in the case of employee theft.

And the "agreement" of the employee is utterly meaningless because it's not a negotiation between equals. Coercion is more accurate.

> labor law violation, that's not just a civil matter

So people go to jail over it? It goes on their criminal record and comes up in background checks?

> I'll give you cash

This part sounds like pure fantasy. And the cash would be less than overtime pay (otherwise why even make the offer) so it's still wage theft.

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

#259

Post by Neywiny »

itsanaccount wrote: post #257
Neywiny wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My issue with your comment is that you're taking the humanity out of it. A person or group of people decided to commit crimes. Go to jail. If a group of people hired a scapegoat, that group still would've conspired to commit crimes. That's a punishable offense. Punish them. You can punish a board of directors. You can persecute a C-suite. They're all humans. That's the way justice is. Nobody is above the law.

Corporate death penalty. I want to see these groups of "shareholder value" get destroyed. Equal to a damage of a normal death penalty to an individual. Spread the organization to the winds. If that means a "company" becomes smaller, with more isolated crews run by their own leadership, good.

I could see there being an issue with too much forced collusion if companies are too small to operate. Like how a lot of companies put all the blame on a profitless, employee-less "subsidiary" and say "oh no, we can't pay a fine, we have no money. We gave all our profits to Company Inc Ltd, we're just Company Inc." We'd need to fix that first. Then corporate death penalty. Which I believe does exist but isn't used very often. I think some court rulings have forbidden operations in certain states.

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

#260

Post by lo_zamoyski »

hermitcrab wrote: post #5

Good for Germany, but it is all too rare to see bad corporate behaviour punished like this. Steal £10k from a company, and you will probably go to prison for a long time. Start a company and steal billions from your customers and/or the tax payer, and you will probably get away with it. I believe Iceland was the only country to jail bankers after the 2008 banking disaster. We are still waiting for the British governm…

> the 2008 banking disaster

We would do well to overhaul the banking system by categorically eliminating usury and much speculative nonsense. It is incredible the amount of rationalization that goes into propping up these morally indefensible practices. Criminalizing them will go a long way to eliminate many legitimized patterns of economic exploitation.

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