Big 3…Down
Dawg has a post up about the Big 3 car makers. he suggests that holding your hat out has something to do with capitalism. It doesn’t. Bankruptcy has quite a lot to do with capitalism. Assets are re-allocated, labour contracts voided, pensions cut way back and shareholders out of luck.
However, a bailout will not let that creative destruction happen. Instead, it will keep a clearly dysfunctional set of organizations going for another few months. Then what? the wages will still be too high, the executives will still be paid too much and customers will still not want to buy the product. The only thing which will have changed is that several billion dollars will have been flushed down the rat hole.
Capitalists don’t do that sort of thing, Dawg, governments do.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Amen
November 21st, 2008 at 7:23 am
I find the whole blame game silly.
I’ve always said that capitalism is the best form of democracy there is. If the CEO of Ford said “all Ford products will be pink with purple stripes and yellow polka dots”, the market will either say “yes, give me more of those”, or “ugh”.
If the market says “give me mountains of metal and four wheel drive for two weeks worth of snow in Toronto”, then Ford says, “here”. When the market says “sorry, I’m not a yuppy, just a wannabe and can’t afford $200 fill ups”, then how is that Ford’s fault?
Not blaming us, the consumer, is like not blaming us, the voter, for the idiots in charge of government.
November 21st, 2008 at 9:42 am
Does the Dawg drive a Trabant or a Lada? I think not.