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i'm baffled that german media is still trying to call everything you learn about the WEF by reading Schwab's books a 'conspiracy theory'. It's like when twitter banned you for citing official WHO covid news.
Havel on this topic:
> "The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his or her ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power; and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development … Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing."
- cool_boy_mew and Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks like this.
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@lain I'm somewhat curious about the actual end goal of the "Stakeholder Capitalism" which is more or less what I've been actually whining about, corps are all about the shareholders getting their cash quick and fuck everyone else, fuck the company burning down, fuck the employees and fuck the customers
Stakeholder capitalism, according to sources I've read quick quick on the subject was practiced like about 100 years ago, but no more
However it sounds like nothing more than outright utopianism here. From the stuff I've heard and read Schwab sounds like a scary utopianist with really fucked up views and I don't trust that the top 500 global companies are just somehow going to start acting reasonable
Hilariously, ESG, which is also supported by the WEF, would be an apparent example of this in action and it's already a complete abject fucking failure. It's all fake and gay, it's once again fucked up bourgeois social justice du jour, and it's all corpos sending fake ass virtue signaling like Microsoft Update saying it's "green", ADN, a French anime streaming company claiming it is a "green company" (fucking how???), Disney giving pamphlet to employees asking them to be less "white", and producing utter garbage that won't sell now and won't sell in the long run to beg for dat sweet phat blackrock investment money, basically bringing everything to 0 and it being all about the shareholders again, but even worse
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@lain Forgot to add, another article I read was basically saying this is just the corps attempting to solve the PR crisis because everyone fucking hates the corps lately
And yeah, all of this is just fake and gay x10, how is it solving any problems?
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@coolboymew @lain dieselgate was just an early example of this tbh. Their mistake was they got way too cocky about it.
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@PhenomX6 @lain Probably heard of that at some point, but quick deets?
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@Nudhul @lain My mood would sour immediately and I would actively fuck with the company as much as I could without getting me into trouble
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@coolboymew @lain >disney asking employees to be less white
i would unironically go to work with blackface
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So the tl;dr is a car company found a quick easy cheat code for emission rules, decided to then sell the cars as eco friendly, tried paying a university to do a study, only for the study to backfire spectacularly and lead to more criminal charges for VW for making polluting cars than car companies that make unsafe cars get (see Kia and their engine fires and Kia Boyz scandals right now). The end result is You Will Be Happy.
The longer version? Diesel cars were being shilled as eco and wallet friendly for years, except as it turns out they produced more NOx emissions instead of CO2 leading to smog. So both the US EPA and EU came up with stricter emission standards.
VW in the 2000s was notoriously way too high on their own supply and made several fuckups: but namely aside from having a program in the ECU to detect when the car was being tested and cut emission levels, VW also sold cars without DEF tanks as the competition asked "how did they do this" or not selling a diesel-electric hybrid. Nope, they went full on "this car is better than a hybrid".
So they pushed hard on this marketing in the USA (as nobody else in the USA tried to sell diesel cars and simply expected VW to carry the market, ditto with hybrids and the prius and whatnot) and even paid some university to do a study and they found out that VW was lying about emission numbers. This went all the way to the EPA, CARB, the EU, and led to some insane media coverage circa 2015 (and years later), which is ironic because that was the first model year they sold compliant engines (or ones that needed few modifications). Essentially it killed diesel cars in the USA because VW pulled out and nobody else gave a shit about marketing/selling diesel cars and passing EPA certs for a low volume car.
The end result in the USA was an infamous buyback program and the VW holding lots that drone footage filmed, followed by cars there either being scrapped or resold into the secondhand used car market (and they sold quite fast as well, with resale values jumping in the Biden economy and gaining a status similar to the Geo Metro in the Obama years). In fact the only reason the buyback program happened was there were concerns that the cars couldn't be fixed or reflashed (most of them could be in the end).
It got more interesting with the sideshows however; it turns out VW wasn't the only ones faking the emission tests and they were simply the first to get caught. Numerous European companies including FCA and Benz were caught cheating too. The end result? Euros got fucked way harder than in America because in the USA most of the diesel vehicles on the road are big rigs or pickups. That Diesel car you bought a few years ago because you were told it was eco friendly is now killing the planet and so owners of them got restrictions in some areas by their governments (if it wasn't the latest model year), while it's getting phased out or having development stopped first in favor of selling more EVs. Also the reason so many cars got sold back to VW in the USA was because VW had/still has a "customer is always wrong" policy, and when the Bosch CP4 fuel pumps began to blow up (google that, it's a widespread scandal here) VW's response was to blame it on misfueling.
In fact these scandals have been used by governments to really push EVs, and as part of the settlement VW was forced into that anyway. Do you want to know why VW marketing is hard on the virtue signaling with saving the environment despite the fact that the only EVs people buy are Teslas? This is why.
Protip: if you move the pollution source from the tailpipe to the lithium mines and power plant you can beat regulators.
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@PhenomX6 @lain thanks!
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The truth is a lot of people forgot about it for one reason: journalists and politicians and a specific brand of old-school leftist cared more, along with obviously anyone who owned those cars. In the USA what, like 400-500k of those cars at most were made/sold, and I'm talking like 5-6 different cars on the same/similar platform and a few V6 models as well that sold much less.
Normies could care less and diesel truck owners make EPA jokes because they hate the EPA and think it's based a company fucked over the EPA. I've heard more people pissed at the EPA than they are at VW over this too, namely how the EPA treated car regulations afterwards (I've heard they're a lot stricter and it's led to many aftershocks, like less popular engine/transmission options being dropped due to regulation costs aside from high priced cars).
In Europe? Far more were sold so it affected them much more, along with the fact diesel cars are mainstream and not some niche product.
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@coolboymew @lain there's one more interesting bit of greenwashing to come from this too: city cars are being canned. Sure the usual v12 cars are mostly getting axed because of emission standards to the point bmw was releasing limited edition final v12 models and making the last v12 7 series a M car even.
But because of higher regulation costs and emission control costs, small cheap compacts with good mpg are getting the axe. But that XXL electric SUV is good for the environment so it can stay.
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@coolboymew
I think shareholders should be personally liable for the companies they own including the debt of the company.
If it's gonna be a gambling instrument let's have real stakes.
@lain
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@Leyonhjelm @lain I completely agree, but the question is "how", and how to avoid the fake virtue signaling and I don't trust an utopianist to have the solution
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@lain @Leyonhjelm did you mean that you can choose to personally deal with companies that aren't LLC
Obviously, I'm lacking knowledge on the subject, but what does an LLC involve, and is there even any around? I would guess that corpos that all have shitty monopolies or are massive in north america, aren't beholden to this
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@coolboymew @Leyonhjelm This is already possible, not all companies are limited liability companies. You can chose to preferably deal companies that aren't LLCs.
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They built their cars to detect when an emissions test was being run and deliberately nerf their performance to minimise emissions.
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@Eiregoat @lain @coolboymew it's more running the engine in a specific cycle to nerf it.
The compliant update managed to nerf performance and mpg less than that mode did but wound up having higher emissions than it was rated to be sold as (less than the EPA limit or how it was actually sold as). On the flipside DPF filters began to get wrecked...which isn't an issue because all the ricer kids and rednecks here deleted theirs 🤣
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@PhenomX6 @coolboymew @lain
Brilliant bit of recent history. Thanks for the effort post.
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Speaking as a guy who grew up up the hills, diesel is so fucking good. The torque is amazing for hill starts.
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@Eiregoat @lain @coolboymew I bought one of the tdis right as Biden >won and also because the car I had didn't have good cargo space.
I just went 40mpg on the highway and loaded the back with some tillers I got cheap from some auction site that sells Amazon returns and whatnot. I've seen people drop the 2.0cr engine into jeeps as a swap and it's not a uncommon swap either.
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cool_boy_mew
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Nudhul
Leyonhjelm :ek2_ribbon:
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