Comment by ToucanLoucan

Comment by ToucanLoucan 9 hours ago

10 replies

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I'm going to start compiling a list of stories to reply with when people say "environmental activists are too preachy/emotional about their work" and the Ford motor company manufacturing seats, seat belts, and windows, shipping them in vans to get out of a few thousand dollars in taxes per vehicle, and then shredding those things without them seeing a single ass in their entire existence after removing them from the vehicles for "recycling" is a great first item.

This legit made me ill and the people responsible for it, the people who permitted it, and the executives who oversaw it should all be in prison.

wkat4242 8 hours ago

Yes me too. It's the first thing I thought of. The "and recycled" part is clearly an afterthought/greenwashing of this horrible practice. It's important to realise too that even when fully recycling a product) and it's very doubtful to be the case here) its definitely not zero impact on the environment.

These seats could have been sold as spares, conversion kits, even put into other new cars.

I think this behaviour should be criminalised and I'm not taking about the tax evasion.

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  • jordanb 7 hours ago

    It's also an indictment of our legal and regulatory system that allows this interpretation to go forward (no doubt on the advice of very expensive lawyers and lobbyists hired by Ford).

    People may disagree on if the truck tariff is good policy nor not. But allowing Ford to go through with this weird kabuki dance pageant of waste when it's blatantly clear that their intent is to import a truck is absurd and corrupt.

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  • ToucanLoucan 7 hours ago

    > These seats could have been sold as spares, conversion kits, even put into other new cars.

    Or even just shipped the fuck back to the factory! Like good god. If you're gonna have like a thousand seat and window combos that just get shipped back and forth between these factories, that's still wasteful, but I dunno, maybe it's purely an emotional point, but the fact that they're manufactured, fitted, shipped, and destroyed just hits so much harder.

    Doing this as a dodge this way would be shitty, but at least make an ounce of sense. Doing it the way they actually did, just making and destroying who knows how many products for literally no reason apart from skating by customs is fucking OBSCENE to me.

    Edit: A sibling comment here pointed out the FTC "came down hard" on Ford, which some quick back of napkin math translates to roughly 20% of their Q2 2023 profits to account for ten years of this tom-fuckery, covering hundreds of thousands of vans which doubtlessly contained hundreds of thousands if not millions of parts that never served a day of use and were sent to landfill, oh sorry "recycled," by Ford's partner in Ohio. Granted, more than most corporate fines I've done that kind of math for, but also incredible ROI on the part of Ford motor company. Meanwhile mother nature takes another for the team.

    I feel sick.

    Edit to edit: I maintain that as long as the "penalties" for this kind of horseshit are fines that go to the company and no further, we will never make an ounce of progress on this. I challenge anyone who feels inclined to take it on to explain to me why every Ford executive that oversaw the company while it was doing this should not be personally financially liable for it, in addition to the company itself paying fines. There is no fucking way Ford motor manufactured, shipped, and destroyed millions of van seats and windows without the executives knowing about it.

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d0gsg0w00f an hour ago

You're not mad at the person who wrote the tax code?

Taxes are pretty arbitrary. Unless you intend to enforce the spirit rather than the letter of the law you're always going to be playing cat and mouse games. People who generate money want to keep it and people who give away money want to take it from people who have money. One will ALWAYS be a step ahead of the other.

If you enforce the spirit of the law people call foul and stop playing the game with you.

Don't get mad at the mice, just build better mouse traps.

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dpifke 4 hours ago

It's not just taxes. U.S. environmental and labor regulations are a big part of why Ford would prefer to manufacture vans in Turkey, burning bunker oil to ship the vans overseas and wasting energy to make and then destroy seats, seat belts, and windows.

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flyingpenguin 7 hours ago

If it makes you feel better, there is a miniscule that the people responsible for it, the people who permitted it, and the executives who oversaw it could possibly go to prison for not doing it. fiduciary duty baby!

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jameslk 7 hours ago

> This legit made me ill and the people responsible for it, the people who permitted it, and the executives who oversaw it should all be in prison.

In prison for what crime? Perhaps feel sick about those writing the laws, instead of those who are following them?

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  • supportengineer 6 hours ago

    Wasting non-renewable resources.

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    • from-nibly 5 hours ago

      That's not a crime as evidenced by the dumb tarrif loophole. The tragedy is the lawmakers who don't care that their laws are responsible for this.

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