Kevin Williamson of National Review Online takes a closer look at Volkswagen’s conscious effort to game American auto emissions testing.
[I]f we can pry ourselves away from the ritual denunciations of corporate greed and the wickedness of capitalism — original sin is not exorcized by organizing a corporation, as it turns out — we might ask: If the gentlemen in Wolfsburg are willing to game emissions tests over the margin on a few million diesel engines with a few measly billions of dollars at stake, what might the gentlemen in Beijing do when it comes to emissions, when there are potentially trillions of dollars at stake, not to mention the always-present possibility that they will end up with their heads on spikes in a public square?
Humans cheat and, hence, human institutions cheat. In the matter of genuine corporate scandals (which are not rare but which are rarer than media-invention corporate scandals) you often will find that this is a matter of cold calculation. When cutting a certain corner provides savings in excess of what is likely to be extracted in fines or litigation should the scheme be discovered, then the temptation to cheat is strong. This is particularly true when it comes to phony moral imperatives, notable examples of which are American automotive emissions standards and their big brother, the worldwide global-warming crusade.
Maybe you don’t think that these should be considered phony moral imperatives, but they are. Everybody talks in sober, even apocalyptic terms about carbon-dioxide emissions and climate change, and then they do — nothing. The celebrities go back to their private jets and their 50,000-square-foot homes, and the politicians . . . go back to their private jets and their 50,000-square-foot homes.
