[brc]

I am constantly amazed at what gets written in the comments section of a site ostensibly focussed on startup companies and the tech industry. Quite frankly it can often be scary to see what people come up with in their outrageous outrage.

[umanwizard]

This forum is not ostensibly focused on startups. It is focused on anything that "hackers", broadly construed, would find interesting.

It happens to share a second-level domain name with a startup accelerator. That's the extent of it.

[SwellJoe]

Do you genuinely find my comment "scary"?

[brc]

I find all calls to use the power of the state to destroy commerce unsettling. Seems to me the system, imperfect as it is, is functioning well enough in this case.

Certainly there should always be a constant review of regulation in light of events like this, but to confiscate and destroy an entire company for this type of cheat would be chilling for future investment and company formation. That directly leads to a lower level of living for everyone, far worse than the relatively minor increase in emissions in this case.

There seems to be an attitude around that corporations are some evil thing, and that is not healthy at all.

[roel_v]

Not yours specifically, but yes, I find the 'herd stupidity' as displayed in your post and the many like it to be the single most scary/worrying trend and greatest threat to a prosperous, peaceful future.

One post like yours, I shrug my shoulders and/or roll my eyes and move on. A continuous barrage of populist drivel like it, anywhere 'the average voter' gets a chance to express their 'opinion' on anything really - I worry what goes through the minds of all those people I see out there walking through the city when I look out my window, and how stable they really are; and if that collective instability might culminate into a real societal upheaval given the right circumstances.

[SwellJoe]

I think it's interesting that you consider my drivel "populist". I don't think I'm a populist, in the general case. And, I'm not sure I would put this in that category, either.

I'm not, at all, anti-corporation. I'm anti-criminal behavior. How is wanting the rule of law to apply equally a "populist" notion?

"Equality" is, admittedly, pretty tricky when talking about a fictional construct. But, when a company kills people we can't put the company in prison to protect people from it and to dissuade other companies from doing similar things. So, I think there should be other tools that can strip away the corporate veil that executives are hiding behind and stop the criminal company from being in a position to cause further harm.

Here's my "free market" question for you: Do you want to be in an industry where you're competing with companies that cheat on health and safety standards? They have lower compliance costs because they're cheating. What do you do? How do you deal with that? Do you want to have to cheat, break the law, and lie to customers, in order to compete effectively with them?

[duncan_bayne]

Dunno about the OP, but I do. I look at some comments and actually get the chills imagining what the poster would come up with, if he or she got hands on the reigns of power.

[comex]

Personally, I think what was being proposed would be an awful idea, but not so odious that merely hearing idle conversation about it is disturbing. I mainly save that category for ideas with racist undertones and the likes. I suppose that's because in most such debates, an appropriate or at least plausible approach exists along similar lines to what's being discussed, albeit less extreme - in this case, what actually happened, fining a company over ten billion dollars, could be seen as a less extreme version of a corporate death penalty, and there are points in between that are at least not completely unthinkable - so the basic emotions behind the debate are a reasonable framework. Whereas with ideology motivated by prejudice, I think usually you should essentially throw the whole thing away and start fresh, because the premise is fundamentally irrational.

YMMV. (Especially if you have a Volkswagen.)

[SwellJoe]

Luckily for all of us, I guess, I have no aspirations to politics.

[duncan_bayne]

I'd still for you, sight unseen, over Trump or Hillary. Not sure if you should take that as a compliment ;)