[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
For the average little person in the United States the mighty pantheon of American economic capitalism is often a belittling, contradictory rationale of daily life. 50 million Americans suffer from no health insurance for the platinum principles of competition and the open market, yet one notices that simply turning a certain age or being employed by State or Federal government instantly renders these implacable cruel yokes of capitalism moot. Poof, forget about that ridiculous social science, have some health care.
If one is an insulting, obnoxious financial company that roared the glory of capitalism for 20 years, sneering at the free-loaders on welfare while blowing up billions of dollars in a orgy of incompetence, why, the Federal Reserve will rush right in to back up their failure with the people’s money, capitalism, heh, those were some good times, eh?
No citizen alive thinks farm policy adheres to capitalism, just water policy alone makes it a rigged game for the rich and powerful in California. A hard-working, honest American citizen soon learns that capitalism is a nice little game for shipping your job overseas or making you toil fifty hours a week with no healthcare, but when the free market or competition gets too inconvenient for the rich and powerful hell, just forget about those confusing contradictory economic terms and get your ass back to work. That’s life, no sense in never not making it by constantly bitching you’re screwed.
Fate and the powers that be, however, have consistently applied rigorous capitalism to the automobile industry, in the land of Henry Ford there really is a basic open market and competition from the Swedes, Germans, and Japanese really will crush your market share, year after year, somehow the invisible hand of the market will produce a competitive mind and American car makers will thrive again. Some day it must happen.
As well all tragically know that is not how the story has worked out in the last 33 years, using 1975 as the marker when the automobile industry should have implemented engineering and design paradigms to keep them competitive in a tightening oil market and increasing competition from the Japanese. Chrysler gave up and sold itself off, while Ford and General Motors have spectacularly failed in a horror show of layoffs, shuttered capacity, trillions in lost revenue and relentless global warming pollution.
Automobile capitalism also delivered total dependence and subservience to the geopolitical realm of peace, harmony and stability, the Middle East. Now that sure has worked well for every American, hasn’t it?
Watching the Oakland A’s I’ve seen the latest marketing from Ford and had a total moment of clarity: Ford and General Motors are never going to make it, they’re never going to successfully adjust to changing market conditions against the competition. If currently economic policy is left in place for the automobile market Ford and General Motors will crash and burn in my lifetime, holy Mary and Jesus I’ll be alive in an American time where no automobiles are produced in the United States.
Ford apparently has some new whiz-bang engine technology of reduced cylinder usage "that can make your V-6 deliver like a V-8 on the same gas." Jesus save us from American manufacturers and their idiotic slavery to the V-8 engine, how is it possible rational American business management minds cannot comprehend any element of reality? Forget about the grossly un-needed V-8, chuck the stupid V-6 out of your minds forever, and engineer a straight 4 to run on 2 at freeway speeds!
I would have preferred to hear how a 2 cylinder bio-diesel gets 90 mpg, but the meander into reduced cylinder technology on 100 horsepower 50 mpg hybrids would have been all right. Of course this is not the news that General Motors delivered last week, along with more billions lost and more layoffs the company finally scrapped its disgusting Hummer and made a desperate bet on an all-electric muscle car (it has to be sexy, it must be, sexy always sells, right?) for 2010. Current GM hybrids are 20 mpg 2 ton behemoths, another unsold reeking GM failure.
As America loses wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the planet warms, prices go through the roof, the Constitution gets tossed to the winds, 50 million suffer without healthcare in a lousy system anyway and millions more losing their jobs in mountains of public debt one gets the distinct impression that our current absurd media-driven election agendas are just a lot of empty useless distracting yap. Senator Obama will be elected President and very soon after a general rationale will take hold that all that bullshit from the election is over, now it’s truly time to level with the American people on what be done to get our ass out of the fire.
In that critical window when reality finally sets in it’s finally time to implement an industrial economic policy for the automobile industry. Americans are used to the contradictions and hypocrisy of American capitalism and will immediately understand a form of nationalization that so directly effects environmental and Middle East policy. Sorry, Senator Obama, but national automobile policy is another urgent slot on your very, very long list to bringing the country back. It’s either that or watching Ford and General Motors vanish in our lifetimes.