There doesn’t seem to be a lot of comment on the fact that Gm has announced a shutdown of four plants; the facilities were producing trucks and SUVs, and only an inbred cretin like Bush could possibly be surprised at the news “news” that big fat-assed gas pigging vehicles are not what we want or need on this planet. They’re even considering dumping the Hummer brand, about a decade too late for it to do anyone any good.
That this is a beautiful example of thoughtless, mindless consumerism — the ultimate outcome of pure “free market” economics — is something which seems to be escaping many people.
Ideally, a corporation’s CEO will, among other things, look to the future of his company with wisdom, or at least enough foresight to see to the end of any given decade. US automakers’ leadership, however, has been dismal; rather than realize the hard, inescapable fact (in 1998) that gas prices would never, ever go down, they chose to produce pigmobiles, and put a significant amount of material resource into their production.
And Americans, hypnotized like chickens with lines drawn before their beaks, lined up to buy the idiot machines.
Because of our myths about money (if it makes a buck, it’s okay with us; if it makes a billion, hey, it’s really okay), corporate immunity (corporations, like people, have a “right” to free speech, but unlike people cannot be executed for committing murder), and the “merits” of a “free market” economy, we can be certain of hand-wringingly plaintive stories about people knocked out of work — while the actual perpetrators of the misdeeds relax in the shadows of their offshore accounts.
Until we decide it’s time to rein in the heedless and headless juggernaut of the “free market”, we will continue seeing this sort of short-sighted stupidity imploding on itself. Until we learn to spend for the future instead of the moment, and until we begin demanding foresight of our national and financial leaders, we will continue to see our society buckle and heave in the aftereffects of continually mortgaging our own futures.
he question is not whether we, as a nation, were stupid, or whether GM was; the question is which of us was more stupid.
2:59 on June 14th, 2008
[...] Contrarily, there is an unrealistic pressure placed on CEOs to keep profits high, in order to forestall a shareholder revolt that would cost them their positions. This, I suspect, can lead at least some to make decisions which work extremely well over a year or two or five — but which, in greater scope, are clearly in error. Witness GM’s recent implosion in manufacturing SUVs. While a lot of money was made, very quickly, over a fairly short period of time, the practical outcome for the company, its shareholders and its employees has been rather dismal. Had GM chosen to produce more moderately-sized vehicles, they wouldn’t now be closing plants and posting losses. (Well, okay, maybe that’s not true; but they’d probably at least be closing fewer plants and posting not-so-great losses.) [...]