Earlier quoted context omitted.
Luigi as privatized accountability?
If powerful people were afraid they would be a lot less unhinged.
This isn’t how human psychology works at all.
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
#72I always thought there was a tremendous irony in Germany’s far left heavily protesting Tesla for Elon’s speech while their own corporate giant committed widespread emissions fraud for years
There were multiple protests in 2016.
They protest every time a company fucks up like that.
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#73Earlier 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.
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.
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really, it's just that rich people are mostly above the law most of the time
Rich people are above the law precisely because they use corporations and corporate laws as shields to deflect personal liability of their actions as a actions of "the company" which is a faceless entity. "You see, I didn't steal your money, the company I ran stole your money, but that's actually on you because you didn't read the fine print I put in the contract you signed. And don't worry, justice was served, the c…
“Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like.”
Edward, Lord Thurlow c.1850
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#75Good 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…
Because with large companies, blame and accountability gets spread thin over a wide area till it evaporates, so everyone gets away with it.
Someone floated on here that the punishment should be partial government ownership stakes instead of weak fines. It doesn't syphon off funds and risk damaging important national companies that are 'too big to punish'. Instead it dilutes shareholder value and DIRECTLY impacts the company owners. It also gives the government an inside place in the company which no company wants to deal with. If a company doesn't change ultimately the owners lose ownership.
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#76Earlier 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.
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…
I could be wrong but I think BMW and Mercedes still make diesel engines. So maybe it's only impossible at a lower price point? Although the difference isn't that large.
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe "knew or should have known" is the legal statement. Ignorance (either deliberate or accidental) doesn't get you off the hook.
But negligence is fundamentally different from mens rea. Fine to punish both but I am not a fan of justice intentionally ignoring context.
> But negligence is fundamentally different from mens rea
It differs in that mens rea is the legal concept of a culpable state of mind, and negligence is one example. More fully, a crime is generally defined by a prohibited act (actua reus) and a wrongful state of mind (mens rea), though there are strict liability crimes with no mens rea required.
For, say, murder (in common law, specific statutory schemes may diverge from this somewhat), the actus reus is homicide, and the mens rea is “malice aforethought”.
While “malice aforethought” is sui generis and seen only in murder, the common kinds of mens rea used in defining crimes, in descending order of the severity with which they are usually treated, are intent, recklessness, and negligence. (The same mental states are relevant in tort liability, though strict liability in tort is more common, and the civil and criminal definitions of negligence, particularly, are somewhat different.)
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#78What about major shareholders? Presumably they were blissfully unaware, and were simply pleased when VW delivered more profits, as demanded.
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.
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zuckerberg profits by replacing normal human social interaction with ad-infested parasitic addictive pseudo-socialization that drives a sobering % of the population to worse mental states
Unfortunately, a immoral as that sounds, it's not illegal.
True. It would benefit society to come up with a new framework of thinking about widespread forces on society enabled by tech. It’s not something we’ve needed to deal with in the past. And it’s clear that so much harm can be done.
Re: German court sends VW execs to prison over Dieselgate scandal
#80Can we so CrowdStrike next?
While CrowdStrike was incompetent, this is remotely not the same thing as what VW did. What CrowdStrike did should be best punished by the market and in court by companies who were their customers.