There's a Lesson Here

Last year about this time my enormous Chevy Tahoe started getting on my nerves.  Stuff was going wrong with it, and the repairs were eating me up.  On top of that, it was costing me like $70 every time I went to the gas station, and I went to the gas station a lot.  It was time for a new car, a small car, a more environmentally friendly car, a car that had room for the kids, the dog and some stuff, but not a monster, no more huge gas guzzling trucks or SUVs.  I started doing research, I was semi-afraid that it might be minivan time, but I really didn't want to go that way.  Then I found it: the Volkswagen Jetta Sportwagen, Turbo Diesel Intercooled (TDI).  I looked at the specs: upwards of 40 miles to the gallon, great safety ratings, good reviews, and one of the only honest to goodness station wagons out there, and it was in my price range.  If you've read the news recently, you might know where I'm going with this: my now just under a year old 2014 Volkswagen is one of those on "the List."  "The List," refers to the cars that have a nasty little wrinkle, not a defect mind you, a cheat, a dirty little cheat.  In order to comply with emissions standards imposed on diesel engines, VW put a little software patch in the car's computer that causes it to run clean whenever the testing is in progress, sneaky Germans.
Apparently this works really well, because they advertised to schmucks like me that this diesel engine was "clean diesel."  They fooled the EPA, they fooled everyone.  I, and over 11 million other people, bought cars with these engines and began enjoying the 40 plus MPG and the solid German engineering and the generally good experience of owning a Volkswagen.
I still love my VW, it's not the car's fault that some Snidely Whiplash put a lying, cheating software patch in there.  But there's now a problem, my car isn't as eco-friendly as I smugly wanted it to be.  To tell you the truth, it's probably still a step up from the Tahoe, after all, I'm still burning less fuel, which is something in itself, and it's not like this is a safety problem, like those Toyotas that had the sticky accelerator, or cars with unpredictable airbags, but this wasn't an accident, or a mistake.
Someone had to write that code, someone had to have it put into over 11 million cars.  This wasn't a small time operation, this was a corporate decision.  Somewhere in the bureaucracy of VW, an executive with enough clout and authority to do so, directed his underlings to do something unethical, and no one protested, they just did what they were told.
This is not a defect, in fact, this is a sign that the people who built my car were smart enough to fool just about everyone for six years.  But there isn't a lot of room to give anyone a lot of cover here.  A bunch of people had to be in on this, someone, somewhere gave the order to do this, knowing what it was and choosing to try and pull one over on us, and break the law, and sour my love affair with my Volkswagen.
I also read this morning about a guy who bought the patent to an anti-HIV drug, and promptly raised the price from like $15 to $750 per pill.  Tell me again how unfettered capitalism is such a great thing?
This is the problem with the idea that, as a society, we should allow finance and industry the freedom to operate without interference from the government: they are not looking out for our best interests.  The goal of any corporation is to make money, and don't get it twisted, if they have to give you cancer, or destroy the world your grandkids have to live in, or sentence poor people with AIDS to suffer because they can't afford their medicine anymore, tough luck.  This is the flaw in trickle-down economics, the basic reason why Ayn Rand's exaltation of self-interest is so crazy, it's why Citizens United has to go, and why even someone as fanatically Republican as Scott Walker knows that Donald Trump must be stopped.
The problem with pure capitalism is that it does not account strongly enough for human sin.  The Apostle Paul says, "So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand." (Romans 7:21)  Which is absolutely true, and what's worse, there are people out there in the world (and at Volkswagen) don't care anything about doing good, they only want to get rich, or acquire power.  In fact, many people have adopted getting rich and growing powerful as actually an a priori good, they are not.
I'm not a litigious person, but if there was ever a time to jump into a class action lawsuit this is it.  We have to hold corporations responsible for this sort of cheating.  I'm going to wait until I have all the information before I really decide what to do, I expect that VW will be in contact soon to try and smooth things over, with all 11 million of us.  I'm going to try and forgive for my own sake, but I'm not into letting corporate greed and malfeasance go unchecked.
For today, I'm just going to remember that I do like my little Sportwagen.