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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday June 05 2018, @03:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the sticking-it-to-the-consumer dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow8317

Car makers like Jaguar Land Rover and Peugeot have been accused of using special software to raise spare parts prices.

Source: https://www.engadget.com/2018/06/04/car-makers-used-software-to-raise-spare-parts-prices/

Ever had the nagging suspicion that your car's manufacturer was charging outrageous prices for parts simply because it could? Software might be to blame. Reuters has obtained documents from a lawsuit indicating that Jaguar Land Rover, Peugeot, Renault and other automakers have been using Accenture software (Partneo) that recommended price increases for spare parts based on "perceived value." If a brand badge or other component looked expensive, Partneo would suggest raising the price up to a level that drivers would still be willing to pay. It would even distinguish parts based on whether or not there was "pricing supervision" over certain parts (say, from insurance companies or focused publications) to avoid sparking an outcry.


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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 06 2018, @04:57PM (10 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday June 06 2018, @04:57PM (#689387)

    My personal feeling is that a quasi progressive income tax (and yes, Petunia, capital gains IS income, and if you are an artificial entity like a corporation your artificial self also makes demands on the infrastructure of the country and needs to pay taxes too...) should be both sufficient for the bulk of revenue collection, and a driver of economic growth.

    When I say quasi progressive, what I mean is a flat tax that kicks in somewhere around the poverty level, coupled with a UBI sufficient for food, shelter, and occasional modest transportation sufficient to hold some kind of job. The people on the bottom have no excuses of desperation to justify crimes of theft/fraud, the people just above them have negative and then very low effective tax rates (providing purchasing power to the masses) due to their receipt of UBI, and even the wealthiest also receive UBI, but of course pay it back many times over with their flat tax on income.

    Of course that will just turn the country into a pile of dope smoking TV addicts, but the present system doesn't seem to be avoiding that fate very effectively, anyway.

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  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday June 07 2018, @03:10AM (9 children)

    if you are an artificial entity like a corporation your artificial self also makes demands on the infrastructure of the country and needs to pay taxes too...

    Foolish statement. They already do pay for infrastructure even without income taxes. They pay their bills and the taxes on them, they pay gas tax for roads, they pay to tag their vehicles, they pay extra to be DoT compliant, blah, blah, blah... The idea that income taxes are needed for infrastructure is simply a lie that you got fooled into believing.

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    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday June 07 2018, @12:35PM (8 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday June 07 2018, @12:35PM (#689830)

      They pay their bills and the taxes on them

      I thought we were trying to abolish VAT and other consumption taxes... sure, if we go consumption tax based, then everybody can quit paying income taxes: people and corporations.

      If the people pay income taxes to cover federal expenses like social health care, military defense, roads, etc. I don't see why corporations get a free ride on that train. Well over 50% of my road use is in service to my corporate employer.

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      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 09 2018, @11:34AM (7 children)

        I don't see why corporations get a free ride on that train.

        Look, man, if you want corporations not to have rights like people, you can't tax them like people. The desire to tax abstract concepts like corporations instead of sticking to human beings is why we have this corporate personhood bullshit to begin with.

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        • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday June 09 2018, @12:01PM (6 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday June 09 2018, @12:01PM (#690757)

          if you want corporations not to have rights like people

          Fine, the day a corporation can no longer sue me in court, they can quit paying taxes.

          The desire to tax abstract concepts like corporations instead of sticking to human beings is why we have this corporate personhood bullshit to begin with.

          See, from where I stand, it looks like the idea that a corporation can dodge taxes and deflect personal liability is why we have corporate personhood bullshit to begin with.

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          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 11 2018, @02:01AM (5 children)

            Can't drop the suing thing or you'd have to be unable to sue them to maintain parity. You can absolutely remove their ability to take any part in politics though.

            Dodging taxes and deflecting personal liability is not a corporations thing, it's an anyone who can afford the accountants and lawyers thing.

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            • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 11 2018, @02:53AM (4 children)

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday June 11 2018, @02:53AM (#691269)

              You can absolutely remove their ability to take any part in politics though.

              I'm all for this, but consider it an impossibility. Natural persons within corporations can directly or indirectly channel corporate funds to natural persons who act on the corporation's behalf. As it stands today, my employer (a corporation with 100K+ employees), has a whole political action department that does nothing other than monitor world politics and lobby for the corporate benefit. A former, smaller ~1K employee company made a point to hire an attorney who was the campaign treasurer for a prominent congresscritter, and used him exclusively for access to the congresscritter's ear - raising medicaid reimbursement for the company product, lobbying the FDA for additional approvals, etc.

              Dodging taxes and deflecting personal liability is not a corporations thing, it's an anyone who can afford the accountants and lawyers thing.

              See, this is one thing that Trump sort of is blowing in the right direction on (as randomly as he blows, some of it has to go the right way just by chance...) Reduction and simplification of laws and tax structures is a good thing. Simplify it to the point that there aren't "legal dodges" that you just have to hire an army to find and justify - o.k. that's the goal, at least start moving in that direction.

              Anyway, what do the accountants and lawyers do with rich people's money to help them dodge taxes and personal liability, and so many other things like obfuscation of ownership, etc.? They set up corporations within corporations within corporations - as complicated as need be to achieve the goal. This is where your money really can buy you additional personhood, you don't have to employ real people, you can just rent an accountant and/or lawyer to set up a fake person or 50 for you, and let them deflect everything you would rather not have stick on you.

              I'm not saying we should abolish corporations overnight, they're too entrenched in the world's systems - but turning the tide toward gradual dismantlement of them would be a good thing.

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              • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 11 2018, @03:09AM (3 children)

                Nah, man. There's ways around all those problems if you stop thinking of corporations as people. I mean even you are doing it. Corporations should be for being owned not for owning other things. Remove their ability to own anything intangible.

                As for abolishing them, no way. They're the best way to organize a business that you don't want a single owner of for whatever reason. Stockholders could use more control over the boards but other than that the organizational aspect is fantastic compared to any other distributed ownership method.

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                • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 11 2018, @03:57AM (2 children)

                  by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday June 11 2018, @03:57AM (#691280)

                  Remove their ability to own anything intangible.

                  That's a start, sounds like a major dismantling already.

                  They're the best way to organize a business that you don't want a single owner of for whatever reason.

                  So, keep the multiple natural persons' ownership, but retain personal liability for the actions of the corporation. These multiple owners may all want to be "silent partners" with no liability for whatever might go wrong, and that's O.K. up to a point, but we've gone beyond the O.K. point long ago - somebodies within the corporation have to retain liability for the corporate actions. When Union Carbide gasses a major city, the corporation should be required to put forward the responsible parties to stand trial for manslaughter and whatever other crimes have been committed.

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                  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 11 2018, @04:30AM (1 child)

                    For the owners? No. They should never be able to lose anything but their investment unless they had some actual part in illegal activity. Guilt isn't communicable like that. You either had an actual part in or knowledge of the crime or you didn't. Anyone who did, crime's crime and they go to jail. Anyone who didn't, didn't and that's the end of it.

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                    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 11 2018, @11:06AM

                      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday June 11 2018, @11:06AM (#691345)

                      For the owners? No. They should never be able to lose anything but their investment unless they had some actual part in illegal activity.

                      Yes, up to that point that they had actual part in illegal activity, such as demanding that a chemical plant be put online before adequate (legally required) safety checks can be performed: if members of the board are presented with information that legally required safety checks have not been completed and they vote to commence operations anyway, that's a responsible act.

                      This kind of responsibility wouldn't start and end with the owners, it would start with the line workers responsible for the safety checks and proceed upward through management to the level which "the buck stopped here" and they demanded go ahead to meet schedule against the law. Needless to say, today's normal levels of transparency and recordkeeping would need to increase to make this actually work - it's more than technically feasible and no more onerous than current regulatory compliance, just not practiced in a sufficiently transparent manner to find, for instance, exactly who within VW decided that cheating on emissions tests was in the company's best interests.

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