Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Gay Basher Marginalized at CPAC
This has gotta make Andrew Sullivan happy. A fair sample of the Republican Party has made it clear that when it comes to gay rights, they simply have bigger fish to fry (even if they are just being quiet about any intolerance of gay rights)
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Cars suck
The Wall Street Journal had an excellent article today about Toyota and the shitty cars they've been selling to people for years. The article essentially tears them apart, so I think it is worthwhile to play devil's advocate before I do the same.
Toyota developed fuel efficient vehicles while American car companies had their thumbs in their asses. American car companies are now getting bailed out by the government. Toyota has done a better job of giving people what they want.
The past few years have shown isolated instances of defective cars, and it is only natural to think this is not reflective of a larger problem that will put countless people in danger. If Toyota was aware of the depth of the problem, it would have been in their interest to begin the recall immediately and stop production of equally defective cars.
So with that in mind... should we give Toyota a pass and say that a lesson lived is a lesson learned, try not to make cars that will kill people next time? The answer is obvious.
We can't just rely on the free market to punish Toyota. Transportation is essential to the public, and if you fuck it up to the extent that people are in serious danger, your previous role in providing public transportation needs to be compromised.
Toyota has known for years that their cars were fucking up all around the world and failed to act on it. The article also mentions that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's primary contacts at Toyota had been some of their own previous employees.
Putting regulators on the phone with their own ilk is a great way to shake them off. Unless someone can persuade me otherwise, I have to assume that is exactly what Toyota did.
So this brings me to my main point: How much trust should we put in car companies to handle our transportation needs, and how much trust should we put in the government to make sure that car companies are handling this with care?
Doctors, lawyers, and financial advisers have a fiduciary relationship with their client. Fiduciaries are bound by ethical standards and usually laws to act in the interest of their clients.
The reason for this is obvious: if I am coming to you for legal advice, or I am giving you my money to invest, or I want your medical opinion, you could do a very bad job and I wouldn't even know the difference until I'm broke, jailed, dead, etc. Failing to fulfill your responsibility as a fiduciary undermines the purpose of your practice.
Much of this cannot apply to car companies because they are not individual practitioners, but large multinational businesses that serve tons of people with tons of cars with no rhyme or reason.
However, the fact remains that car companies are counted on to perform an essential service. When they screw up, everybody gets screwed.
It's easy to say that we should just get angry, regulate the car companies, and sue them. But this does not address the fundamental problem, which is our dependence on their products in order to conduct our lives.
Sure, Toyota fucked up and we should all partake in the proverbial finger pointing. That's always gonna happen, and I have no beef. But what if we sue them for a ton of money, regulate them more, and fuck with their entire operation? How much will that help?
In this case, more oversight would have probably revealed the problem. But the truth is that car companies are always going to screw up at least some of the magnitude of their operation.
So now that I've argued in a complete circle, what does this mean?
Instead of increasing the public's oversight of the auto industry, let's increase the public's oversight of transportation in general. Instead of telling car companies how to go about making cars, lets pull back and reassess our need for cars.
There isn't a clear answer, because people people don't always want to share public transportation and you can't travel great distances on a bike. Cars serve as a middle ground between these two.
Nevertheless, the conversation needs to be more abstract than simply figuring out how to improve on what we already have. Car companies are entrusted with too much power to have an evenhanded relationship with the the public.
Toyota developed fuel efficient vehicles while American car companies had their thumbs in their asses. American car companies are now getting bailed out by the government. Toyota has done a better job of giving people what they want.
The past few years have shown isolated instances of defective cars, and it is only natural to think this is not reflective of a larger problem that will put countless people in danger. If Toyota was aware of the depth of the problem, it would have been in their interest to begin the recall immediately and stop production of equally defective cars.
So with that in mind... should we give Toyota a pass and say that a lesson lived is a lesson learned, try not to make cars that will kill people next time? The answer is obvious.
We can't just rely on the free market to punish Toyota. Transportation is essential to the public, and if you fuck it up to the extent that people are in serious danger, your previous role in providing public transportation needs to be compromised.
Toyota has known for years that their cars were fucking up all around the world and failed to act on it. The article also mentions that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's primary contacts at Toyota had been some of their own previous employees.
Putting regulators on the phone with their own ilk is a great way to shake them off. Unless someone can persuade me otherwise, I have to assume that is exactly what Toyota did.
So this brings me to my main point: How much trust should we put in car companies to handle our transportation needs, and how much trust should we put in the government to make sure that car companies are handling this with care?
Doctors, lawyers, and financial advisers have a fiduciary relationship with their client. Fiduciaries are bound by ethical standards and usually laws to act in the interest of their clients.
The reason for this is obvious: if I am coming to you for legal advice, or I am giving you my money to invest, or I want your medical opinion, you could do a very bad job and I wouldn't even know the difference until I'm broke, jailed, dead, etc. Failing to fulfill your responsibility as a fiduciary undermines the purpose of your practice.
Much of this cannot apply to car companies because they are not individual practitioners, but large multinational businesses that serve tons of people with tons of cars with no rhyme or reason.
However, the fact remains that car companies are counted on to perform an essential service. When they screw up, everybody gets screwed.
It's easy to say that we should just get angry, regulate the car companies, and sue them. But this does not address the fundamental problem, which is our dependence on their products in order to conduct our lives.
Sure, Toyota fucked up and we should all partake in the proverbial finger pointing. That's always gonna happen, and I have no beef. But what if we sue them for a ton of money, regulate them more, and fuck with their entire operation? How much will that help?
In this case, more oversight would have probably revealed the problem. But the truth is that car companies are always going to screw up at least some of the magnitude of their operation.
So now that I've argued in a complete circle, what does this mean?
Instead of increasing the public's oversight of the auto industry, let's increase the public's oversight of transportation in general. Instead of telling car companies how to go about making cars, lets pull back and reassess our need for cars.
There isn't a clear answer, because people people don't always want to share public transportation and you can't travel great distances on a bike. Cars serve as a middle ground between these two.
Nevertheless, the conversation needs to be more abstract than simply figuring out how to improve on what we already have. Car companies are entrusted with too much power to have an evenhanded relationship with the the public.
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