

What's really driving the Toyota controversy? - dwwoelfel
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/OpEd-Contributor/Don-Watkins-and-Yaron-Brook-Whats-really-driving-the-Toyota-controversy-89271207.html

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nailer
Asides from the lobby groups, there's also that the issue is wear flaw (ie,
gradual issue) but being presented as a sudden behaviour, and the mean age of
those who have apparently been affected is 60+.

Toyota sell a lot of cars all over the world. Nowhere in the west has covered
this to the state I saw while In the US, nor with the same vitriolic language
- NBC news talking about how Toyota might be called in front of congress to
explain the flaw. The only think I can think of to explain this is bitterness
at the demise of the US auto industry in the 80s.

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tlb
The mean age of new Prius buyers is 53, so 60+ is not astonishing.

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blueben
"This is not what Madison and Jefferson had in mind. Their vision was of a
strictly limited government, which would perform one basic function, guard
individual rights. Its role was to protect the individual’s rights to life,
liberty, and property from infringement by thugs and frauds, while otherwise
leaving people free to produce and trade in a free market."

I don't recall having read anything by Madison or Jefferson that mentioned
"free market trade". It certainly isn't spelled out in my constitution. Was
such a concept even recognized as we understand it today at that point in
history?

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Hoff
tl;dr: A perspective on corporations, governance, politics and stakeholders
from an analyst at the Ayn Rand Center.

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Perceval
_An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument
toward the person" or "argument against the person"), is an argument which
links the validity of a premise to a characteristic or belief of the person
advocating the premise._

<http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html>

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youngian
Unfortunately in this case the attack was accurate. The article starts with a
correct but not novel explanation of dumb political games, then veers abruptly
into libertarian cheerleading. The author mentions things like "too big to
fail" but ignores the fact that companies got this way through deregulation in
the first place. All in all, a disappointingly shallow argument.

~~~
ja30278
The argument against 'too big to fail' presumes that such a thing doesn't
exist. I.e., it isn't government's role to prop up corporations, regardless of
the effect their failure _might_ have on the economy. In that view,
deregulation, even if it encourages companies to become large, isn't a
'problem', so there isn't any inconsistency.

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code_duck
Sure, first someone took out a hit on Tiger Woods... apparently next in line
was Toyota.

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borism
much better skeptical article with numbers to back it up minus libertarian bs
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1186609>

