What's really driving the Toyota controversy? | Hacker News Reader

What's really driving the Toyota controversy?

washingtonexaminer.com

16 pointsdwwoelfel14 comments

Asides from the lobby groups, there's also that the issue is wear flaw (ie, gradual issue) but being presented as a sudden behaviour, and the mean age of those who have apparently been affected is 60+.

Toyota sell a lot of cars all over the world. Nowhere in the west has covered this to the state I saw while In the US, nor with the same vitriolic language - NBC news talking about how Toyota might be called in front of congress to explain the flaw. The only think I can think of to explain this is bitterness at the demise of the US auto industry in the 80s.

The mean age of new Prius buyers is 53, so 60+ is not astonishing.

"This is not what Madison and Jefferson had in mind. Their vision was of a strictly limited government, which would perform one basic function, guard individual rights. Its role was to protect the individual’s rights to life, liberty, and property from infringement by thugs and frauds, while otherwise leaving people free to produce and trade in a free market."

I don't recall having read anything by Madison or Jefferson that mentioned "free market trade". It certainly isn't spelled out in my constitution. Was such a concept even recognized as we understand it today at that point in history?

tl;dr: A perspective on corporations, governance, politics and stakeholders from an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center.

An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument toward the person" or "argument against the person"), is an argument which links the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person advocating the premise.

http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

Unfortunately in this case the attack was accurate. The article starts with a correct but not novel explanation of dumb political games, then veers abruptly into libertarian cheerleading. The author mentions things like "too big to fail" but ignores the fact that companies got this way through deregulation in the first place. All in all, a disappointingly shallow argument.

The argument against 'too big to fail' presumes that such a thing doesn't exist. I.e., it isn't government's role to prop up corporations, regardless of the effect their failure _might_ have on the economy. In that view, deregulation, even if it encourages companies to become large, isn't a 'problem', so there isn't any inconsistency.

Eh? Disagree? The author of that article +is+ associated with the Ayn Rand Center.

there is 0 new interesting factual information in that article. it's just usual pro-market anti-government libertarian mantra all over again.

"there is 0 new interesting factual information in that article."

I didn't submit it because it had new interesting factual information, but because of the new interesting analysis of the factual information.

"it's just usual pro-market anti-government"

It is anti-government in the same sense as exposing police corruption is anti-government. This article would be more accurately described as anti-government-stepping-outside-of-its-proper-bounds. You'll notice that the article states that the judgment of Toyota should be "left to the objective assessment of the police and courts." The police and courts are government entities.

Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, the authors of the article, are not a Libertarians. They work for the Ayn Rand Institute, which advocates Ayn Rand's ideas. She had this to say about Libertarians:

"Libertarians are a monstrous, disgusting bunch of people: they plagiarize my ideas when that fits their purpose, and they denounce me in a more vicious manner than any communist publication, when that fits their purpose. They are lower than any pragmatists, and what they hold against Objectivism is morality. They’d like to have an amoral political program."

I totally agree with article's idea that politicians are not supposed to be lynching private companies - there's government regulator for this purpose. But it can be said in single sentence without needless hyperbole.

It doesn't matter whether autor is objectivist, libertarian, socialist, communist or whatever. Doesn't make article any more valuable.

Thanks. I'm sure it'll be fair and balanced.

Sure, first someone took out a hit on Tiger Woods... apparently next in line was Toyota.

much better skeptical article with numbers to back it up minus libertarian bs http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1186609

Reply on news.ycombinator.com