Audi CEO Stadler Taken Into Custody in Diesel-Cheating Probe
The European auto-manufacterer test cheating is really, really pernicuous. It is mistake to view this as simple test cheating. These tests are a greater part of the &quot;green&#x2F;carbon reduction&quot; policies that is europe&#x27;s primary  industrial policy of the last decade.<p>Domestic auto manufacturers have been primary authors of these policies. The bootlegger and baptist dynamic has been very strong here. The &quot;baptist&quot; objective has been carbon&#x2F;pollution reduction. The &quot;bootleggers&quot; wanted to sell more European cars by (A) giving them an advantage over imports and (B) shortening the lifespan of older cars. They have had an extremely favourable regulatory environment, EU &amp; locally. Pollution-centric tax bands favouring local manufacturers (based on these tests) are just a piece of that. To cheat the tests on top of all this is beyond the pale.<p>All that said, I think we have no way of holding corporations accountable. Prosecuting individuals is important (and effective), but it also  semi-absolves the company. It makes it seem like individual bad actors acted against the law, and against the company. There aren&#x27;t really ways of holding the company accountable, and limited liability becomes no liability in this sense.<p>I don&#x27;t even know what should be done. &quot;Justice&quot; (IMO) would be fairly harsh. Volkswagon Group have annual Revenue &amp; Gross Profit of 230bn &amp; 40bn respectively. Trillions and hundreds of millions over the life of this scam. Some nontrivial portion of these sales were unearned in the sense that they would not have happened without fraud. €1bn-€2bn isn&#x27;t even meaningful.<p>I think that shareholders should get a haircut, with a meanigful portion of the company&#x27;s current value being turned over as a fine. Of course, this would only encourage a restructuring from equity to debt. IDK....<p>An individual business owner acting under full liability would have (in addition to jail time) almost certainly lost her entire business over something like this. To Volkswagen Group, it&#x27;s a bump in the road. This is not fair.