Former VW Executive Is Arrested in Croatia in Emissions Case
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I'm suffering from the effects of air pollution in my young age for the last 10 years (I'm 39 now), and I can't do anything to reverse my sickness.
I know the comparison is dark and compares a targeted ethnic genocide with indiscriminate killing, but the truth is that the damage diesel exhaust does to the human body is truly hard to overstate. To be pushing out 40x the legal limit for years while smugly marketing yourself as so much better than all other diesel vehicles is just a level of evil that immediately drew the comparison for me
I think it would do well in today's climate, but you definitely need to get rid of the "German" and replace it with something less general, maybe "Nazi"? (It works because VW actually did work with Nazis in the 40s). Not every German worked for the specific team at VW that propagated this crisis, just like not every German even knew about the camps, so they don't deserve to be targeted by a broad brush like that.
(To their credit Germans faced up to their history in a way that is relatively rare among nations. The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin is just one of many examples.)
As to the second point, in Germany at least Nazi refers to party members or close adherents like Neonazis. The catchall term is usually Faschisten (fascists). Americans use the term Nazi far more loosely, to the extent it has lost much of its descriptive value.
Nazi is the abbreviation for Nationalsozialist.
It’s true that it’s used interchangeably but the official abbreviation is nsdap.
To be honest I don't think I've ever heard anyone say NSDAP out loud in German. Perhaps I should get out more.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denazification [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/De-Ba%27athification
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_van
"The gas vans were specifically designed to direct deadly exhaust fumes via metal pipes into the airtight cargo compartments, where the intended victims had been forcibly stuffed to capacity"
They were used to kill "Jews, Poles, Romani people, mentally ill people, and prisoners".
American businesses don't avoid (domestic) child labor because it's illegal, they avoid it because the potential charges for getting caught make the whole endeavor unprofitable.
Maybe these executives should be prosecuted hard for their decisions.
Yeah, but what if the CEOs moved on? Or secured their profits?
I think carbon tax is the way to go, but on top of that we need criminal justice.
What does this mean within the context of tax evasion?
> we need criminal justice
There is a reason Al Capone was booked on tax evasion. Showing an executive wilfully defrauded a test is difficult. Responsibility is too diffuse. Proving tax fraud is much easier—executives personally sign off on books.
Imagine if somebody proposed taxing terrorist organizations for killing people. When they get caught, the CEO would get his bonus and retire, the organization would either go bankrupt or bailed out by the government because of its importance, and a VP could register the next company, hiring all his ex-colleagues who were just executing company orders.
I imagine the money from taxing power companies and such could go back into helping pay a portion of the bills of those who've had their rates increased.
In this case, they were emitting less carbon than advertised. Should we pay them a refund?
Details: outside of test scenarios, the engine control system ran the engine hotter and with less diesel emissions fluid which resulted in better fuel efficiency (less carbon) and more conversion of atmospheric nitrogen and oxygen to Nitrogen Oxides (bad for people).
I think we have much bigger issues with coal plants, iron extraction from the ore, making concrete, commercial trucks with worse emission equipment requirements, or even airplanes still using leaded gasoline, etc.
Edit: Now I'm being downvoted, we live a society where companies do so devious acts that people sound crazy when they point them out. Yes, this sounds too heinous to be true, but the sad fact is that it is true, watch the documentary for full story: https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1FI0VR
You are applying "psychopath" label in a very liberal way. They cheated. They tried to hide it. It's a fact. It still doesn't make them psychopaths.
Please look for universal solutions.
I completely agree with you in this, I was writing the same thing. That's why I wrote that the total amount of time taken away from people must be estimated. If it turns out to be less than 100 lives, I agree with you as in that case the cost savings are justifying switching to newer cars, even if they are not hybrids. The problem here is that we're talking about a much higher number of man years taken away.
And yet they bought monkeys to prove their point, rather than breathing it in themselves.
You're right about the psychopath thing, though. They could simply be cold and cynical.
Carelessness? Germans migrate to the beautiful Croatian coast en masse during the holiday season, most of them passing through Slovenia. He may have thought he was safe in Croatia or simply didn't give it a second thought.
What component of this sound system took up so much space? Modern amps are so small.
> It's not just a moral burden, either. Sometimes technologists pay very directly for their actions. For instance, the first person who was jailed as a result of the Volkswagen scandal, where the car company was revealed to have cheated on its diesel emissions tests, was not the manager that oversaw the project, or an executive at the helm of the company. It was one of the engineers, James Liang, who just did what he was told.
https://github.com/fastai/fastbook/blob/master/03_ethics.ipy...
Everyone is an independent agent and would like to avoid the most obvious Godwin here.
I lost my TDI because of this fraud as VW wasn't going to have an acceptable correction available and while I could have kept it outside of others who just enjoyed TDI my ability to sell it later would have resulted in vastly reduced value.
Total aside, this is something that bothers me about my dishwasher. It has all the certifications for energy and water efficiency, but "for best results" the manual also recommends getting the water hot beforehand, by running the hot water in the sink. I wonder if the energy and water rating would still be as good if the dishwasher did that itself.
For hot water have a 180L solar water heater on the roof. Never paid for hot water since. It even works in freezing winters, -20C.
I also have an awesome dryer that's lasted over 10 years. It's a thin rope across my balcony accompanied by some wooden pegs. Does the job every time. When it rains, have a rack.
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-much-water-do-dishwashers-us...
You are using more water than a dishwasher would.