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from the Copies-Everything-Including-Cheating dept.
The US Justice Department (DOJ) on Thursday announced a $305 million civil settlement between Fiat Chrysler and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a lawsuit over illegal software found on certain diesel Dodge Ram models and diesel Jeep Grand Cherokee models.
[...] The settlement comes two years after the EPA accused Fiat Chrysler of installing undisclosed and illegal software on 104,000 vehicles, including 3.0L diesel Dodge Ram 1500 trucks and diesel Jeep Grand Cherokees between model years 2014 and 2016. The EPA claimed the software would sense when the vehicle was being tested under laboratory conditions and implement the full emissions control system so that the car could pass the EPA's emissions tests.
I guess the Volkswagen cheating was considered a feature by the Chrysler engineers, and they were just copying what the customers demanded?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @09:41AM (4 children)
Where do you people get this stuff?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @10:08AM (3 children)
Where do you people get this stuff?
Sit down, we're gonna do a bit of thinking. Imagine 2 competitors like, oh I don't know, Toyota and VolksWagen, two very large automotive conglomerate with cars in every category selling millions of cars yearly all over the world. Okay, got that in your pea brain? Now imagine some asshole government paper pusher decides he likes his job and seeing as his constituents keep bring up this environmental crap, said bureaucrat decides to take a shot at building a platform plank in the form of sticking those rich douchebag automakers with a little regulation. If all goes well, maybe the air'll end up smelling a little better at the post election ball you're sure to be attending next term when your voters see how wonderful a job you're doing listening to their whining and sticking one to Big Auto.
So far so good? Okay, we're almost there. Going back to Toyota and VW, we're a fly on the wall in both executive suites.
Toyota CEO sweating and gesticulating wildly: FUck fuck government assholes cost us $600 more per car. Oh well, we'll just have to jack up the rebates, try to work on reducing the expense of the emission tech
VolksWagen CEO smoking a cigar lit with 100 Euro notes then rubbing hands together gleefully: No worry Hans, fix is in. Our cars now cost at least $600 less than the competition thanks to a little something Franz in engineering cooked up.
Do you get it now? Regulations cost money and it has to come from somewhere, i.e., from the price of the products you sell. As a result the cheat's production costs go down, margin goes up and as long as no one's the wiser the con just goes on and on. Imagine opening up a lemonade stand across the street from the other kid except your lemons are significantly cheaper. You either price your drinks the same and rake in all the additional profit or sell under your competitor's cost and drive him out of business.
Now imagine if this had just continued unabated and then new more onerous reg come into play. Just cheat those too. YOLO! Free market capitalism is a great thing and has contributed enormously to global wealth in recent history but it's constantly under attack by bad actors and it's government's job (under the current system) to nip that shit in the bud. Otherwise, the market breaks, literal illegal products win the day and the cost in lives, property, and social distortion are paid for by the general population, your customers, the very people who collectively make it all possible.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @02:41PM (2 children)
You have no idea what free market means:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market [wikipedia.org]
I really wonder sometimes what percent of people even understamd ehat capitalism entails; The US is not a capitalist country... not even close. The economic system im the US is a form of crony-socialism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @03:49PM (1 child)
Effort free contradiction and a wikipedia link. You posted less than nothing. I could just detail your spelling errors and be more germane to the discussion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @06:38PM
Like I asked, I just want to know where do came from? Where did you learn the meaning of "free market"? I'm not interested in debating with you...