[nchallak]

There are a couple of hidden assumption here:

1. It is possible to punish a person for his crimes in a justifiable manner.

2. People are somehow deterred by punishment when the option of winning via cheating is available to them.

It's very hard to argue that 1 is possible considering the ethical dilemmas that it exposes e.g. would capital punishment be a justifiable punishment for a murderer?

If 2 were true, then there wouldn't be doping scandals in sports, would there?

[dreamOfDDR7]

You forgot the premise of the 'outrage'

1) any entity, corporate or otherwise, must act without flaw or be dismantled. Big talk from one whom I doubt is running a top 5 company in arguably the most influential sector of the global market. The fallout of 'ending' VW is the forgotten factor. Try a little tenderness, who don't you?

2) the infrastructure that sustains VW is not a logo, or a brand name, it's thousands upon thousands of individuals, women and men who work hard to sustain that company so that vehicles are provided for a myriad of purposes. 'Ending' something if it has a flaw is like throwing away the baby with the bathwater. Why not change what needs changing and be less vitriolic? Are you shorting VW? Are you invested in Mitsubishi? Are you a Renault shill? Do you like speaking in hyperbole so as to clarify something without having to do the heavy lifting?

Obvy responses to poster above you if that wasn't clear to someone.

[nihonde]

Accountability, credibility, and a sense of duty to the greater good must be part of what defines a society. When those are intact, individuals take responsibility and accept consequences. When they are too far eroded, there is no way to force or coerce society back to integrity except perhaps through a concerted effort over many generations.