The intervention was understandable; the political sideshow was disgusting, if also understandable.
Joel Send a noteboard - 26/04/2011 01:42:18 AM
The shit was hitting the fan and a lot of people were saying it was a good idea and its the sort of case where if two options are equally unsure in peoples eyes and one is to act and the other is to do nothing, people will want you to act. Bad move, IMO, but I consider the whole auto bailout less a right/left ideology issue as a bad but understandable crisis response, I don't really see the decision to do it as a black mark on congress or POTUS, what came after, when the immediate dust had settled, is another story.
I UNDERSTAND a lynch mob hunting down a serial rapist; I do NOT condone it. You know I feel problems are more often solved by action than inaction, but with the auto bailout (as with TARP) it was insulting to see the same people who demanded a Bush bailout equate Obamas with Marxism a few months later, and nauseating to see them get away with it. As far as the intervention itself, the problem wasn't deficits, but deeper institutional problems causing them. The only intervention that MIGHT have been legitimate was company reform, not handing them more money to squander. To the extent handing them money could only be justified if conditional on systemic changes the companies strenuously resisted to the point it's debatable whether any were accomplished. For the record, while UAW benefit packages should've been on the table with everything else, the UAW had been regularly accepting reduced benefits for decades while the Big Three alternately exported their jobs and flirted with bankruptcy. Low quality planned obsolescene and dictating consumers wants even as fuel prices climbed and economics put an end to the notion of buying a new car every two years had more to do with the Big Threes demise than unions, however convenient a scapegoat unions may be (funny how foreign auto manufacturers with American plants never have problems profits or the UAW ).
The supposedly far left (for America) President offers billions of taxpayer dollars to a symbol of American industrial power. Despite bankruptcy, they make counter with an offer of the terms on which they'll accept a free money that is their only hope. Those who insist government doesn't give business enough taxpayer money call the whole thing socialism. Most bizarre moment? Right wing Senator and laissez-faire acolyte Senator Lamar Alexander drafting legislation to give every US taxpayer some of the GM and Chrysler stock, which is the closest thing I can imagine to nationalizing the companies. Corporate welfare is only socialism in this sense, which is a dream for those who see government as a servant of business alone, but anathema to supporters of legitimate socialism.
Crony Capitalism is also anathema to free market capitalists, better article for that too, that article really needs to be flagged for NPOV and Soap, I see its been flagged twice for deletion.
Did you see why though? It was flagged when very incomplete and lacking sources, which has since been remedied; the second flag was essentially a "bump" to prompt the decision the first never produced. "Free market capitalism" is a phrase I won't even try to discuss because it's meaning varies by adherent. One free market capitalist supports some regulation to disavow laissez-faire and another opposes all regulation to disavow Crony Capitalism; the only constant is that The Program is ROCK SOLID111.
Can't say I object to parceling out the stock to the taxpayers, puts the ball in their court, seems a waste of cash though, shipping everyone one share, from a philosophical POV I sort of like the idea of parceling out ownership of shares if the taxpayers have to foot the bill, just divide up the current gov't stock into 300 million shares and send everybody one. Probably even boost sales by a noticeable amount, silly from a practical standpoint though but it's an interesting notion, might be worth it just to see the effect.
I think it was an outstanding idea; it would strongly encourage Americans to buy American, as you note, since they'd directly benefit from the companys improved performance, and could also put an end to the Big Three decided what we want to buy if someone decided to round up proxy votes. Of course, literal public ownership of GM would also be REAL socialism in its purest form, but unfortunately it wasn't a serious proposal, just Alexander grandstanding to generate populist appeal and undercut Obama.
As for "too big to fail", that's part of the same philosophy, the one that said, "what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa". I'm conflicted about letting it fail. The part of me concerned about the increasing degree to which America produces nothing but debt and little Americans is alarmed at the prospect of a non-existent US auto industry, particularly when the demise is, like the general demise of American manufacturing, laid solely on the shoulders of unemployed union workers who fought tooth and nail to stop US businesses exporting their jobs to countries with no human rights.
Well, the problem is nobody believes their motives really revolved around human rights. A lot of people were conflicted about letting it fail, me too, I just stuck to my ideological guns which is why I say I wasn't particular irritated that they chose to do it, just with how they've managed it since then. GM's one of our flagships, hard to watch it sink.
Questioning their motives is reasonable, but the charges were and remain valid regardless of motive. It all depends on whether we want to screw increasingly impotent unions so badly we'll ignore US businesses exploiting non-existent human rights overseas, and even subsidize it with our purchases. Yes, a quality product made by a skilled union worker guaranteed that a fair days work will feed his family costs more than a sub-standard or even dangerous one made by a starving 12 year old working 12 hour days at gun point. On the plus side, though Americans are unwilling to roll back environmental, product safety and labor standards any further to ensure corporate profits, the specter of having their jobs outsourced is convincing them to roll them back so America remains competitive (i.e. businesses whose headquarters and consumers are in the US won't send their production to places they aren't inconvenienced by the rule of law). If you think watching an American flagship like GM sink is hard, watching a centurys worth of labor, environmental and consumer protections sink is a lot harder, particularly when it means your hotdog bun, toothpaste or kids toy is lethal.
The part of me who watched the nation respond to melting ice caps and dependence on oil from countries who sponsor terrorism against us by buying SUVs thinks the culture of consumption, luxury and planned obsolescence is embedded nowhere as deeply as Detroit and only drastic need will force production changes that became standard decades ago in Japan and Germany. The Big Three can keep telling us we want huge powerful gas guzzlers, but we no longer have the economic means to believe it, so it's time they had management that produced saleable cars instead of marketing fantasies.
Oh, I really doubt our oil based jugular economy will last more than another 10-30 years, the same teams that grew and transplanted human windpipes have a bunch of successfully growing human hearts that are expected to start beating any time in the next week or so. That's some pretty badass shit. It only takes one big shifter product to change the whole dynamic, and better batteries, better superconductors, fusion, some GM plant or algae that can grow off green light too, any of those change the dynamic on energy problems. There's a lot of things that look right over the horizon, some don't pan out as hoped for like jetpacks, others we're way ahead of schedule on like cell phones and computing power, remember back in the early 90s when Virtual Reality was all the rave? Kinda disappeared into the vacuum, but the iPad's basically better than the cool little handheld readers they liked to show on Star Trek, being able to pull up wikipedia on something you keep in your pocket is a pretty mundane thing, but that's really huge, you can see people laughing about that as pie-in-the-sky even 20 years ago. Cheer up, don't be so pessimistic.
I'm not really pessimistic, as such, at least not in the short term; I'm cautiously optimistic that Western workers and consumers will soon have had enough (and in some cases already have) with deregulation through "free" trade and at the expense of everyone but the Western companies using it to circumvent Western law. I'm less optimistic that America will retain a leadership roll, because if the process continues as it is economic and industrial leadership will belong to China while political and social leadership belongs to Europe, and Europeans seems a lot more willing to reverse the trend than Americans. America has become too insular and too enamored of the status quo, and the biggest evidence it will take a major upheaval to change that is that some pretty big shocks have only entrenched that fetish as an object of defensive desperation for many. In cars as with so many other things European regs and labor produce better quality products while Far Eastern lack of regs and cheap labor produce less expensive ones. That leaves us with the "overpriced crap" market, and it's not surprising companies catering to it are collapsing, but preferred solution is less regs and lower quality; we'll compete with China by becoming like them. Personally I'd rather compete with Europe by becoming like them if we're going to copy someone, but I'd much prefer to see a return to the American Way of innovation through assimilation, mutual respect and cooperation.
Yeah, the world's gonna move forward; the question is will America take the lead as she always had until the '70s or be left in their wake.
Either way, however, throwing money into a money pit doesn't produce anything but more debt.
Makes good compost probably, not sure about the inks they use in it though.
For the moment they probably have to be enviromentally friendly, but the Three Gorges Dam is open now, so with any luck the EPA wil soon be abolished as un-American and, just like Beijing residents, none of us will be able to go to work without surgical masks (Made In China, of course. )
Honorbound and honored to be Bonded to Mahtaliel Sedai
Last First in wotmania Chat
Slightly better than chocolate.
Love still can't be coerced.
Please Don't Eat the Newbies!
LoL. Be well, RAFOlk.
Last First in wotmania Chat
Slightly better than chocolate.
Love still can't be coerced.
Please Don't Eat the Newbies!
LoL. Be well, RAFOlk.
Government rushing to dump GM stock - costing taxpayers $11B -
20/04/2011 03:19:54 PM
- 637 Views
But the Party had control of the capitalist running dogs industry! Comrade Obama,you fool!
20/04/2011 05:36:26 PM
- 473 Views
I Knew It! COMMIE!!!
20/04/2011 07:17:05 PM
- 438 Views
The whole thing was rather surreal.
24/04/2011 05:04:32 AM
- 556 Views
I don't know, it seemed a normal crisis response
24/04/2011 07:06:39 AM
- 474 Views
The intervention was understandable; the political sideshow was disgusting, if also understandable.
26/04/2011 01:42:18 AM
- 620 Views
One reason I'm thankful for you:
20/04/2011 06:55:55 PM
- 653 Views
You have to admit...
20/04/2011 07:26:55 PM
- 396 Views
What was the better choice? Not doing this stupid bailout scheme in the first place..... *NM*
21/04/2011 12:48:27 AM
- 173 Views
I'm not sure I agree with that, but that's neither here nor there. *NM*
21/04/2011 01:12:49 AM
- 165 Views
some of us said the same thing about iraq, but what are you gonna do about it now? *NM*
21/04/2011 01:44:45 AM
- 182 Views