>They can lose PR; enough that the company might consider this an overall loss.
When has that ever happened? I can't think of any time when a company lost enough PR to actually significantly affects its financials, much less put it out of business.
When has that ever happened? I can't think of any time when a company lost enough PR to actually significantly affects its financials, much less put it out of business.
Exactly. VW shortened the lifespan of millions of Europeans with their Diesel gate and their finances are still solid. Ikea and Oil companies destroy the environment all the time and saw no financial hit from the PR issues. Nike, Apple and other major manufacturers are known to have used sweatshop labor and also saw no financial consequences.
Consumers just don't seem to care enough about the PR of $COMPANY as long as their contempt with how the $PRODUCT they bought works and serves them well.
I don't pin this 100% on customers, because many people aren't informed and worse, it's often not just these single companies, it's all their major competitors doing exactly the same thing.
The issue is a lack of regulation and enforcement. We can't trust major companies to be good actors because capitalism does not reward honest actors. This is one purposes of government, to make the cost of being a bad actor high enough that companies behave.
Thats a bit of an over the top way of saying it!
The emissions regulations that VW was cheating to get around exist for the purpose of improving air quality. The improved air quality leads to less air quality induced health problems. Which in turn leads to longer, higher quality lives for people in Europe.
VW wasn't going around and directly pouring vials of poison into people's food like some kind of cartoon villain. But they absolutely were intentionally lying about the emissions of their vehicles, and those emissions absolutely have impacts to human health.
Saying VW directly shortened the lifespan of millions is just Hyperbole.
Why? What's the difference when the outcome is the same? Your malicious actions still lead to deaths.
"I didn't directly murder someone, I just didn't clean the radioactive residue form his house because that would have cost me time and money so now he's dead."
With the VW example, you cant quantify it at all. How much has it shortened peoples lives? 2 seconds? 10 years? nanoseconds? Its not a direct correlation, theres no graph you can plot with emissions against length of life, and so claiming that there is a direct correlation is Hyperbole.
https://theicct.org/sites/default/files/NOx%20Health%20Fact%...
> According to new research published in Nature, NOX from diesel vehicle exhaust was linked to 107,600 premature deaths worldwide in 2015. Of these, ~38,000 are attributable to excess NOX emissions.
Sounds like the graphs do exist. (Obviously VW is only a fraction of those specific numbers.)
But when you read it, literally everything used in creating those numbers is an estimation. Ther are no measurements whatsoever.
Think of the many factors that combine to determine when someone dies of "old age" or "natural causes". Think of the extra effort millions of bodies have spent dealing with the pollutants directly and the effects those pollutants have on those bodies.
Someone in VW's position could say, "well our pollutants were one cause among many" for any specific death. But they were part of the math. They contributed a share and lied about the size of it. They did indeed contribute to shortening the lifespan of millions of Europeans.
Now after my posts you have changed that to 'They did indeed contribute to shortening the lifespan of millions'
They are in no way the same sentences. Your second one agrees with my point, your first one doesnt.
Yes, they contributed, definitely. Did they directly cause a shortening of peoples lives, no they didnt.
Take a piece of string and send it around a group of people. Tell each of them to cut a bit of the string off. Each person in the group has now participated in the shortening of the string. You can, completely accurately and honestly, say both of these sentences:
"Person 1 shortened the length of the string."
"Person 1 contributed to shortening the length of the string."
These statements are not in any way in conflict. You're creating a meaningless difference then insisting that I index on that difference. I refuse to play that game.
> I refuse to play that game
You seem to be playing it pretty well from where Im standing!
> insisting that I index on that difference
Looking back on my post, I havent insisted anything. I didnt even ask you anything. I just clarified my point.
It was your choice to retort.
> Take a piece of string and send it around a group of people.
Why do you insist on trying to reduce my opinion, which you do not understand, into metaphors which have no relevance?
> "Person 1 shortened the length of the string."
This statement implies a direct influence, ie Person 1 cut or broke the string, therefore directly shortened it.
> "Person 1 contributed to shortening the length of the string."
This statement is much more vague. What part did person 1 contribute? Did they make the scissors which cut the string? Did they mine the metal for thoise scissors? Did they hypnotise or manipulate the will of the person who did actually cut the string?
There is nuance here, and you dont seem to be understanding it at all.
I could understand arguing the first one, but I think the subterfuge makes it pretty much a direct action of VW.
I don't think there's a reasonable argument that the emissions didn't directly shorten lives, even if you think the precise number is impossible to calculate.
From your post above it sounds like you're arguing the emissions->life shortening step, and you haven't really given a good explanation why.
Then I think you're in a pointless semantic argument rather than making a distinction about the real world.
No, I dont think any of that. Why are you trying to pin me down on my opinion about emissions killing people?
> I think you're in a pointless semantic argument
Yes, that is correct. This is an argument about language, and the nuance of the term 'contribute'. The difference between saying 'VW directly shortened millions of lives' and 'VW contributed to the shortening of millions of lives'.
I am not arguing anything about opinions of emissions or how harmful they are. Just peoples use of correct language.
You call the argument pointless, yet you are still replying!
You said neither, I thought you meant you disagree with neither, not "I'm phrasing it differently".
> You call the argument pointless, yet you are still replying!
That sentence started with a "then", and apparently the premise of that sentence wasn't correct in the first place.
Also it's perfectly reasonable to say "Oh, I thought the discussion was X, but it's Y, now I am leaving." "still replying" by making that final post is not foolishness.
> I am not arguing anything about opinions of emissions or how harmful they are. Just peoples use of correct language.
It sounds like you just hate the word "direct".
If enough people disagree with you about a word, then you're wrong. Words are defined by consensus.
That's all I have to say, I think. Sorry for trying to talk about the actual evidence since that's irrelevant to your argument.
-
Except, wait... the original post you replied to didn't even use the word "direct" even though half your posts are harping on that word. What is going on.
"Contributing" is still doing in this situation (unlike with the string). Why are you fine when that word is put in, but not fine when it's omitted? Especially when it's clear that nobody is blaming VW for all emissions. The contribution is implied.
Time to put the keyboard down and go outside :)
I can't tell from your wording if you'd tell me to go outside if I didn't have that habit. But if you would, isn't that a generic putdown for responding to anything you say? My piece of advice is if you ever find yourself writing a comment that isn't worth responding to, the appropriate action is to not post it.
It's all in your head, dude.
No its not. The dictionary definition of 'contribute' is 'help to cause or bring about'. Emphasis on the 'help'.
> but still does not declare that other contributions must exist
By definiton of the word 'contribute', yes it does.
> One phrasing is slightly more active in acknowledging that other contributions could exist
No it isnt, by using the word 'contribute' you move the repsonsibility from directly being caused by that person, to being shared by multiple entites, each with different amounts of cause/blame. See the definition of 'contribute' above.
>Dude
>LMAO
Why am I arguing language nuance with somebody who talks like this?!
Why? Excess of fine particulate matter in the air we breathe, like the one coming from diesel soot, does reduce life expectancy.
(Unfortunately emissions are not the only culprit and a lot of particulate matter that has negative impact on overall population health in cities comes from brakes and tires but nobody figured a feasible way to deal with that yet.)
2) There are substantial costs to avoiding all the brands known to be doing bad things, both in time and money, even if you could keep up with it.
3) Ok, so you’ve decided the cost to you and your family is worth it: congrats, your efforts harm you more than all these companies unless a whole bunch of other people do the same thing, and keep doing it (i.e. it’s a coordination problem)
There are reasons boycotts and such are all but entirely ineffective as a means of keeping megacorps in line, and it’s not really “consumers’” fault things are how they are. It’s structural.
Companies only started putting gay couples in commercials regularly years after gay marriage was legalized nationally.
Almost no one is picking a non-Tesla car because of the CEOs unrelated tweets.
I don’t think that makes them good or bad people, per se. I’m not here to lay down a judgement. It is what it is.
It's disingenuous to lay down a judgement, then follow up with this. It is what it is.
You're rather taking the agency out of these folks' hands, are you not? It seems entirely likely that they could have independently came to the conclusion to dislike the company's CEO without the need to be "conditioned" by some external narrative.
I did
Disney's product (though not their core, I would argue) allegedly killed this poor woman - however it is the lawyers' behaviour, not the death itself, that is an additional PR liability for Disney; death from an allergy is tragic, but could have potentially happened at any restaurant in the country. Only Disney (and a select few other large corps) could pull this particular bad act in defence.
As an aside, the entire line of argument from Disney is an absurd legal fiction. No reasonable person reads terms and conditions, and so they should not be bound by the terms. I hold a weak hope that this case is bad PR for the practice as a whole that raises the profile of this injustice.
Disney own the mall, where a resturant chain rented a unit from them. The mall is free to enter and does not require buying a ticket from Disney. The 3rd party resturant hired the staff, made the menu, cooked the food and served the guests. Nothing to do with Disney at all.
The only part disney has in it is they published the restuarants menu on the malls website, which reads 'Allergen Free'.
This is the basis for the entire lawsuit.
And this should be their line of defense, not "but you clicked on a trial of a streaming service 5 years ago".
The exception are distinction level events like Enron's fraud, of course. But I don't think Crowdstrike is anywhere near that.
It just have to affect enough to offset the cost of the lawsuit (which probably won't be much because they probably do have plenty of in-house lawyers) + the estimated cost of future lawsuits that might come their way if they appear to be "soft" and/or set precedence.
How many future lawsuits about allegedly killing someone by failing to properly take into account their medical conditions after repeated warnings are Disney going to face? If the answer is greater than zero then it seems they have bigger problems than whether they can move this particular legal action to arbitration.