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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

#261

Post by codethief »

JW_00000 wrote: post #161
lucianbr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed, Dieselgate is 10 years ago. If they would've suffered badly from it, we would've seen that by now. Sure, they've had to pay fines and compensations, but that seems to have been dealt with. In fact, you could argue the opposite: Dieselgate forced VW to drop diesel and switch focus to EVs [1, 2], earlier than they would've done otherwise, giving them an advantage over other European and American competitors (ex…

> Of course, there are plenty of other issues they've faced since them (inflation, Chinese competition, tariffs, etc).

Yeah, they're actually not doing well at all right now.

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

#262

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

No. Decision making authority is concentrated in executives and managers, and likewise so should the lgal responsibility be. Spreading it evenly across the whole entity such that the janitor is punished in the same proportion as the individuals who decide to commit fraud is nonsensical. shareholders should certainly take a hit, but consequences should be administered in proportion to the degree of authority exercised in the commission of the crime.

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

#264

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

const_cast wrote: post #251
philwelch wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think that's accurate at all. It's true that rich people in Carnegie's day had more concern about organized violence against them, but most of them preferred to deal with it by getting the Pinkertons or the military to stop you from organizing anything against them. Late 1800s labor disputes killed a lot more workers than millionaires.

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

#265

Post by EasyMark »

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…

Same in USA, tons of corps misappropriated funds that were meant to help keep employees hired. Almost no prosecutionsat all and the records the government kept were abysmal

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

#266

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

jeffrallen wrote: post #183
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of fines the government should be granted an ownership percentage in companies that break that law (thus diluting ownership and directly impacting owners). That way the punishment impacts shareholders/owners, but in way that keeps corporate protections so that society can continue to function.

And for egregious behavior like Chevron in Ecuador, the government should cut up and sell the company in a million useless pieces completely destroying all shareholder value. I wish someone would give me a chance to vote to repeal the personal death penalty and create the corporate death penalty.

The Chevron Ecuador story is a great example of how impossible discussions on corporate misconduct can get. Chevron has successfully argued in both the US and an international tribunal that the Ecuadorian judgment was procured through corruption and bribery. But oil companies are very unpopular, so many people who encounter the case assume that Chevron must have been in the wrong, and the lawyer who was disbarred and jailed for his role in that corruption must be right.

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

#267

Post by appreciatorBus »

moomin wrote: post #235
Gibbon1 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kill a man you're a murderer. Kill millions and you're a statesman.

Pretty sure that’s known as The Blair Doctrine.

Or the Stalin doctrine, "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic"

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

#268

Post by wat10000 »

lkbm wrote: post #105
wat10000 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worse than that. Rich-people crimes are often codified as much less severe than regular-people crimes, or are just outright legal. This is a great example. Why is this emissions fakery illegal? Ultimately it’s because pollution kills people. Are these people going to prison for killing people? Not exactly. They’re going to prison for killing too many people. If they had stayed within the limits, they’d still be…

> Why is this emissions fakery illegal? Ultimately it’s because pollution kills people. Are these people going to prison for killing people? Not exactly. They’re going to prison for killing too many people. If they had stayed within the limits, they’d still be killing people, just not as many, and it would be 100% legal. Polluting is not a "rich person" crime. It's very much something normal/poor people do a lot, too…

As an individual, at least you can make the argument that your activities result in far less than one death. What’s the appropriate punishment for one micromort? I don’t know the answer to that but it’s probably not too much.

Large polluters don’t have that excuse. I recall that diesel hate alone resulted in dozens or hundreds of excess deaths. How many people do compliant cars kill? How many does a coal power plant kill? And all 100% legal.

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

#269

Post by an0malous »

jeroenhd wrote: post #226
diego_sandoval wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crowdstrike stock price seems to be close to an all time high.

There are two or three companies that do what CrowdStrike does on a scale CrowdStrike supports. Not necessarily on a technical level, but on a CEO-goes-to-the-same-golf-clubs level of business support. CrowdStrike was probably the worst of the bunch, but any of them can cause the problems CrowdStrike caused. It'll happen again, though probably on a smaller scale. Software like CrowdStrike's is a massive single point…

“Competition is for losers”

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

#270

Post by philwelch »

const_cast wrote: post #251
philwelch wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Gilded Age industrialists in America weren’t murdered by angry mobs, that’s just a sick terroristic left wing fantasy.
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