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posted by martyb on Saturday December 08 2018, @04:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the What-harm-could-a-lie-do dept.

After VW was outed for falsifying environmental data in its cars hundreds of thousand of VW vehicles were taken off the road now sitting in storage sites. Hundreds of thousands of cars now lie in lots in the Mojave Desert, a shuttered suburban Detroit football stadium, and a former Minnesota paper mill in America alone. These vehicles are now in the open slowly breaking down with pollutants entering the environment. Is the the modern cost of corporate greed? What can we do to ensure this never happens again?


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  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday December 09 2018, @03:57AM (6 children)

    by sjames (2882) on Sunday December 09 2018, @03:57AM (#771787) Journal

    It may never be eliminated, but it can be curbed. Step one, we as a society must stop celebrating greed and those who champion it. The rich executive that made a fortune on the backs of others is to be shamed and shunned. The person who gouges after a disaster deserves your spittle, not congratulations.

    It's fine to make a fair profit, it even helps our society, but those who make obscene profits due to circumstance or outright lawlessness need to feel a palpable scorn wherever they go.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09 2018, @05:16AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 09 2018, @05:16AM (#771818)

    shamed and shunned

    Dismembered and eaten?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @11:47AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @11:47AM (#772323)

      I heard this in the voice of the narrator from Darkest Dungeon.

      "Executed with Impunity!"

  • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday December 09 2018, @03:59PM (3 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Sunday December 09 2018, @03:59PM (#771959)

    I'm sure they'll be heartbroken. Crying all the way to the bank.

    As an alternative, perhaps we should take a good hard look at the rules of social participation we have created - particularly economics, and try to think of some changes that don't emphatically reward wealth as the greatest virtue. It does seem to contribute an impressive driving force, but there has to be some way we can incorporate social responsibility as a competing virtue into the incentive structure.

    • (Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday December 09 2018, @06:27PM (2 children)

      by sjames (2882) on Sunday December 09 2018, @06:27PM (#772033) Journal

      As I said, step one. It includes shaming and shunning in the marketplace (less to take to the bank). Suddenly behaving better is an advantage in the market. Spreading the shaming and shunning to those who enable the shamed and shunned (including at the polling place) removes the support system for screwing society over for a profit.

      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday December 09 2018, @07:57PM (1 child)

        by Immerman (3985) on Sunday December 09 2018, @07:57PM (#772071)

        That's penalties rather than incentives - and unfortunately pretty much requires tens or hundreds millions of working-class stiffs taking a hit to their own lifestyles and pocketbooks on a regular basis to get their point across.

        It's also not particularly effective against monopolies and oligopolies, unless their product is something everyone can relatively easily do without entirely. Nor against businesses who don't sell to the general public - even if they're just up the manufacturing stream a ways the chain of responsibility (and power) gets diluted. Consider - public shaming pressured Apple into pressuring their suppliers to improve conditions in the phone-making factories - but it would be much harder to bring pressure to bear that way against the producers of the microchips used in them. Much less against the manufacturers of the silicon wafers the chips are made from.

        It's also not particularly effective if a large part of the customer base doesn't care - e.g. there's basically nothing you could do to bring market pressure against a strip mining operation next door, if they're selling all their ore to China.

        If we want something with long-term potential, it can't rely on the masses being both well-informed enough and willing to suffer enough en-mass on a regular basis to keep things in check.

        • (Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday December 09 2018, @09:57PM

          by sjames (2882) on Sunday December 09 2018, @09:57PM (#772092) Journal

          You're talking about corporate shaming. I mean PERSONAL. People spitting on CEOs shoes in the street. CEO to give a keynote speech, someone poops at the entrance to the convention center, perhaps smears a bunch of windows and the sign.

          That kind of personal shaming used to actually happen, and it kept people in line. Tarring and feathering could actually happen.

          More to the point, in that sort of climate, a politician would rather punish the bad guy on the hill than face that treatment in the streets.Bribes look a lot more expensive when the cost is practical exile.