On 25 Sep 2015, at 20:59, Michael Gurstein wrote:
Thanks Ted, very useful.
I guess what I'm curious about is the motivations, individual and/or
corporate thought processes/incentives etc. that underlie the initial
decision to go down this path and then the multitude of decisions at
various
levels up and down the organization to continue on this path.
<...>
Michael, your line of questions seems to be a high priority for the
media: today's NYT top story is "As Volkswagen Pushed to Be No. 1,
Ambitions Fueled a Scandal." Personally, I don't think there's been much
innovation in the motivation dept since, say, Sophocles, so the
human-interest angle isn't very interesting, IMO. If anything, it's the
primary mechanism in diverting attention from the real problem, namely,
how to address malfeasance on this scale. Corporations are treated as
'people' when it comes to privatizing profit, but when it comes to
liabilities they're become treated as amorphous, networky constructs,
and punishing them becomes an exercise in trying to catch smoke with
your hands. Imagine for a moment that by some improbable chain of events
VW ended up facing a 'corporate death penalty,' there remain all kinds
of questions about what restrictions would be imposed on the most
culpable officers, how its assets would be disposed of, and what would
happen to its intellectual property. (It'd be funny if the the VW logo
was banned, eh? I'm not suggesting anything like that could actually
happen, of course.) The peculiar details of this scandal could spark a
systemic crisis of a different kind, one that makes evading guilt more
difficult. The 'too complex for mere mortals' line won't work in this
case: VWs have come a long way since the Deutsche Arbeitsfront or R.
Crumb-like illustrated manuals about _How to Keep your Volkswagen
Alive_, but not so far that people will blindly accept that they can't
understand them. Popular understanding of negative externalities in
environmentalism is decades ahead of its equivalent in finance. And it
doesn't hurt that Germany, which has done so much to bend the EU to its
will, looks like it'll be the lender of last resort.
On 26 Sep 2015, at 10:22, Florian Cramer wrote:
The implication for "our" field are much more immediate than one would
expect, given that the Centre of Digital Cultures of Leuphana
University Lüneburg has been funded from a grant by Volkswagen
Stiftung (Volkswagen Endowment) a few years ago. Look at who's working
there - a who's who of European media studies including many Nettimers:
http://cdc.leuphana.com/people/
It'll be very interesting indeed to hear what the stars of ~German media
theory have to say about this. Maybe about as much as most US academics
have to say about their role in imposing indentured servitude on
subsequent generations...
On 27 Sep 2015, at 5:02, Jaromil wrote:
to debate this thing as if it would be just about Volkswagen is so
naive! srsly. There is nothing to be learned there.
Jaromil, I think it's a bit premature to counter claims that this is
'just about Volkswagen,' because no one said anything like that.
Obviously there are many ways in which this is symptomatic of broader
structures. But Lehman Brothers and Fukushima were symptomatic as well,
and would you really argue that 'there was nothing to be learned there'
either? *And* hold hold up Android's OEMs cheating on benchmarks as a
more illuminating example? I don't think so. Relying on open-source
metaphor-mantras ('Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?') to
analyze peculiar dynamics of the car industry is like relying on
Godwin's Law to understand neo-nazis. :^)
As to whether there's anything to be learned about the car industry, a
friend sent me this offlist (forwarded with permission):
Just wanted to say that many many auto dealerships within much of the
USA -- and I certainly don't know if this is the case in Europe or the
northern coastal (blue state or /we/ US) -- are strange franchise ops
in which a single owner has bought into multiple auto brands -- eg
[where I live] the VW dealer is also the Audi, Infiniti, Maserati,
Acura, Jaguar, Fiat dealer. While the bylaws of these franchises
typically require separate showrooms they do not always require
separate facilities for other operations. So, for example, the service
department, where one expects hypothetical but impossible repairs to
"ramdoubler" VW emissions tech would occur might be shared by multiple
auto brands. Some of those might be tiered brands fabricated by the
same financial interests (e.g. VW and Audi) but that will not always
be true. As such, we will not have the results of the capitalist
competition we may expect -- that is if VW and competing brands are
collocated and share infrastructure and personnel in terms of auto
dealerships, the falling VW dominos will knock over the dominos of
other automobile sellers and maintainers and servicers (and thus
manufacturers?) as opposed to a scenario in which VW "loses" so 'other
brand' "wins."
There's much to be learned, but not about 'motivations' or
'corporations,' IMO. And you gotta love the Ramdoubler ref.
Cheers,
T
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