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Comment by bugsy | Hacker News Reader

I agree it is a brilliant idea with good design. It's a great way to bribe the general public into supporting police state measures such as the ubiquitous installation of cameras and monitoring. "Support Big Brother - You Might Already Be a Winner!"

Supporting these sorts of very clever social control programs is very consistent with the history of Volkswagen Corporation, which has a long history of corporation and government working hand in hand, such as the origins of the Beetle as a car of the people brought to them by the benevolent oversight of their Fatherland.

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Interesting observation. Though, just to be clear, this promotional series VW has been doing called "The Fun Theory" is merely meant to observe how fun can affect human behavior for the better. The tie-in with their brand, of course, is that fun IS functional.

This is the first/only experiment connected with the government (and the Swedish government at that). The rest have been environmental or health-related (making more people recycle, take the stairs, etc).

Stairs at a subway station, public waste cans and bottle recycling centers are all government controlled things that are presented to people as good stuff the government has made which is for the public's own good. I do not contest at all that there are benefits to throwing away trash, walking up stairs or recycling glass containers. But I observe these are all elements of social control by the government. Surely among the tens of thousands of proposals, not all of them were things that government is responsible for and which deal with social control "for their own good". Yet that is the only thing that is selected for these pieces, which does in fact show that this is the chosen focus by Volkswagen for this program. Not too controversial though to say so since ht their Fun theory site states clearly it is all about "changing people's behavior", and changing behavior is about controlling people.

Are you less free because of trash cans?

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