Only following orders...

[normanrafferty]

What's fascinating about the anthropomorphization of corporations is that, somehow, if people are part of a collective, they're absolved from responsibility.

LIke this whole Volkswagen thing. Someone ordered the project. Someone programmed the computers to do the fooling. Someone did the quality-assurance to make sure it worked

Comments

[eggshellhammer]

A major part of this is that these people have not committed crimes, per se. What they have done is in violation of regulations - the governmental organizations which create and enforce these regulations are empowered to levy fines, but not to impose criminal sanction.

Because no crime has been committed, and the only penalty is economic, that economic penalty falls upon the economic entity which engulfs all of these economic actors - Volkswagen. I mean, what are they going to do, levy an $18 billion fine on the individuals involved? They aren't going to have $18 billion dollars. No, you hit Volkswagen because they're the ones with the money.

No one has been absolved of responsibility. There was never responsibility in the first place.