well, just when we were hoping that there would be at least one major corporation fighting for their independent right to exist without government “help”, Ford has caved and accepted $6 Billion in government loans for “green” technology development.
i can only wonder what government held over the heads of Ford’s executives, or what political pressure was made to bear behind closed doors. in refusing bailout money, Ford (and their CEO) made a very strong statement of their desire to continue on their own, without appealing to government force for assistance. but, i suppose when every single aspect of your production and business is already regulated, and you are forced to sit by and watch your company go into insolvency because of government-backed union laws, theres really no point in resisting. what would it even accomplish, anyways?
still, its a sad spectacle. likely, the image of Ford as the proud, defiant and independent business seeking to survive on their own merit and terms was all an illusion anyways, and not accepting bailout money was just a political or marketing tactic… but, it was nice for awhile to believe that there was someone, anyone, out there standing up to the raping of property rights and Constitutional limitations on government. the fact that the federal government has absolutely no Constitutional right to engage in purchasing (or even loaning money to) private corporations hasnt stopped the feds from bringing to bear the full force of legislative power to cripple the auto industry, and then offer to “help” them by “bailing them out” (i.e., taking them over).
not much left now, except to grab some popcorn and watch the progressively-faster implosion of a once-great nation and an economy that used to be the greatest in human history. thank you, government, and all you liberals and so-called moderates, for bringing us to this point. and a special thanks to all the “conservatives” and republicans who sold out long ago for their own piece of the government handout pie, and refused to stand up and even speak out at all until things got this far out of hand.
its to you conservatives, you dead fish rhino spineless cowards, and all your whining, fear-mongering, self-serving spokesmen on talk radio, in Congress and elsewhere, to whom we have to thank the most for the gutting and coming collapse of our country and our future, and the future of our children and grandchildren. so, thank you. youve accomplished what the leftists and statists could never do on their own, not in a million years, because you gave up under a little public pressure and media propaganda. really, im sure that the kids ill never have, because im not that sadistic or cruel as to being a child into this world or the world of tomorrow, would certainly thank you.
Who else would give them the loan? They need to go, “Green,” to compete in today’s market. The banks are either closing up shop, or drastically becoming more conservative and Ford’s CEO was just plastered all over TV not that long ago saying that he didn’t know if the company would survive without Government assistance. That was before Ford decided to go it alone, of course, but I still don’t see where else they could possibly get a loan of that size from at this point.
It’s not so different from tax credits for green stuff, which has been going on for years. It’s a political decision, and not an economic one. Pav’s got it right - they are actually taking this money to remain competitive. They’d be idiots not to.
I am really disappointed in you. Did you know that the great mister Ford once invented briquettes just so he can have even cooking on his fucking steaks? How dare you sully his legacy by taking this green crap just so, you know, you can make money. Shame on you!
This is more due to the hardheadedness of American companies in refusing to move on with the times. I remember a quote from, I think it was GM’s CEO, that went something like this: “how do people know what they want when we haven’t built it yet?”. This kind of thinking is bound to bring a company down. As to the green targets set by Obama, they’re hardly inspired. I have a Volvo ad in Newsweek claiming that their new S40 delivers up to 72.4mpg. A Mercedes ad for their top luxury car, traditionally a large fuel guzzler, claims to go 38mpg. This is 2009. Obama has set a target of 35 mpg for 2016. Volvo already gets over twice that amount 7 years earlier than the target set for American companies.
Even if American car companies just meet these targets, they’ll still be far behind all the European and Asian car companies. It’s not about greenness, it’s more about economics. Why should the consumer pay the same amount of money for a car that will burn (cost) twice as much fuel for the same mileage. If they can’t secure the private funding required to develop cleaner technologies, then the American government is only safeguarding the jobs of its citizens by being a creditor.
im sure that will do the trick. that letter will single handedly undo a hundred years of government corruption and central economic planning regulations that have toppled private industry in america. why didnt i think of it before?
its because its government force which is dictating the direction of the market, not consumer demand. its not economics, its political ideology and statism.
But TTG, the fact that the detroit companies have gone the direction they have indicates precisely that they didn’t go in the direction of the market. GM went from being the #1 car maker in the world to a bankrupt company in, what, 2 or 3 years? It continually lost market share to other companies, primarily the smaller and more efficient Japanese car makers, during a 20 year period to the point where it couldn’t withstand any abnormal behavior in the markets.
And like I’ve said, the government’s targets are hardly radical. They’re setting targets to be met within so many years that are already being surpassed by other car makers. And if this company can’t find the private capital required to invest in the development of more efficient (and incidentally greener) cars, how can it have a sustainable business in a car market that is more and more dominated by improved economy, as exemplified by such companies’ gradual loss of market share even in their home market that is the US?
and why do you think GM went down so fast? take a look at arbitrary government safety, fuel mileage, emissions and weight standards, as well as union laws which make it THREE TIMES as expensive per car per employee for large american manufacturers to make cars than for foreign or smaller manufacturers.
what, you think none of that has anything to do with why GM failed? government caused this problem with their intervention in the markets, setting “standards” that crippled the competitiveness of american auto makers, and the UAW made it even worse. there was nothing free-market about american auto mahufacturing, and there hasnt been for a long time. blaming these failures on anything but the government and union policies that caused them is completely wrong and misguided. free-market economics had nothing to do with the collapse of american auto manufacturing.
it doesnt matter if GM makes shitty cars. i have a GMC, and i dont mind it, its run very well for a long time. but regardless, if people want shitty cars for cheap prices, then thats what GM should make. inserting arbitrary standards like “shitty” or fuel mileage or whatever into the car manufacturing process is meaningless, because the only thing that matters is market demand: if people are willing to pay X price for Y amount of cars every year, and this generates a sufficient profit for GM, thats all that matters.
traditionally, people have been more than willing to pay this price, even if the cars are less than perfect, even if they dont run to 200k miles or get 100 mgp or have clear air as exhaust. see, this is the problem: you act as if GM is fundamentally bound by some standard to not make shitty cars, or that its ok for government to impose arbitrary standards on GM as long as it imposes them on all american cars, but by this you are just subverting the demand of the consumer, which should be the only factor in what GM produces.
divesting production from what consumers want and are willing to pay for is what causes the imbalances and inefficiencies in the economy that lead to GM being nationalized. now, if GM were competing in a free marketplace and made cars that not enough people wanted, and they want out of business, thats fine. but thats not what happened.
But they don’t. People don’t want those cars at prices that are profitable for GM. I am not suggesting that GM is bound to anything - I am suggesting that you have not included every pertinent factor in you analysis of why GM went down.
By your logic, then companies should be able to sell whatever they want - snake oil, anyone?
The consumer shouldn’t be responsible for getting an engineering degree so that they can evaluate every safety feature oif every car on the market.
im not saying they should be; im saying that they are responsible for how they spend their money. if youre going to talk about how it works in real life, thats fine, because thats why there are consumer reporting agencies, mechanics, consumer protection agencies, car magazines, private organizations that give awards for safety/fuel mileage/etc. consumers are not “in the dark” about what they are buying just because they dont have a degree, and they certainly would not be in the dark absent government regulations and production standards on auto manufacturing.
were getting into theory versus practice here. yes you are right, in reality, you cant just sell what you want. i get that. but, i also reject that because you SHOULD be able to sell whatever you want, as long as someone is willing to FREELY purchase it given that you have honestly and sufficiently informed them of the terms of the transaction and purchase. to misinform or lie about these terms is fraud, which is properly criminal as a violation of property rights via theft. but, assuming that you represent your product accurately, and the other person freely chooses to buy it at a prearranged price, IDEALLY you should be able to exchange anything and everything you like. of course, yes, i know thats not how it works. im just saying that the way it works is unjustified and flawed.
but as to GM, they have been a flagship company forever in america, and have remained extremely successful ON THEIR OWN at least in the beginning. they made cars that people wanted. thats it. most people dont care if a car gets 25 rather than 30 mpg, or has a 3 star crash rating instead of 4, or pollutes 10 ppm more CO than another car, as long as the price is cheaper. people just want cars to work and be within their budget.
and its not up to us, or the government, or anyone else to decide that GM isnt making “good enough” cars. if this is true and they arent making good enough cars, they will go out of business. if they dont go out of business, then they are by definition making good enough cars (yes, barring government market intervention and nationalization of failures, i get that the world doesnt work this way in real life).
Oh, okay. Tell me how a catalytic converter works, what it does, and why it’s a good or bad idea. No cheating - they’ve been around for years. You should know this.
Fraud is not the only issue. The market is full of highly-engineered products. No one has the time and few have the education to even know what many elements in those products are. If the government forces manufacturers to test for safety, it really should force manufacturers to make products safe - before the “press” has the chance to review those products, or report on the the deaths and injuries resultant of unsafe products. If the government does not force safety testing, no one will, until it’s too late. It’s not fraud if the manufacturer or seller just doesn’t know.
But most of them don’t work, very well. Do people want to get into a livery vehicle or cab that is substantially less safe than other cars? Into a friend or coworker’s car that is inherently more dangerous? Should I have to assess that risk each time I am not “one car - one driver”? Do I have to breathe the more and more polluted air caused by gas-guzzlers just to preserve the free market? Do I not mourn the death of my child, caused by a rickety and inherently unsafe car that couldn’t stop or swerve, just to preserve that free market? Cars are not like computers. Computers don’t kill. Computers do not roam the public ways.
why would i need to know how that works in order to buy a car?
actually, in reality safety is preserved more in open markets where companies cannot fall back on government standards as the minimum and safe place to stop caring about the safety of their products. in the absence of government safety requirements, companies are forced to succomb to public demand. and when your product ends up killing a lot of people, you lose a lot of demand. however, if all you need to do is go “what, i meet the government safety requirement, its not my fault that thing failed or that engine exploded, theres no requirement on that!” then companies are not held accountable for their safety failure.
also, just to point this out, and i know it sounds harsh but there it is: you dont have a right to demand of another person that he give you a “safe” product, when you freely choose to buy it anyways. you had the obligation to verify, however you deemed necessary, the safety of the product you choose to purchase. if you failed to do that, then you are consenting to potentially buying a defective product.
but, in the long run like i said, it all evens out when you let markets determine success based on public sentiment and consumer demand. no one demands cars that have defective gas tanks that explode; you dont need a government law to mandate non-exploding gas tanks.
i contend that most cars work very well. i can move myself and hundreds of pounds of stuff from where im sitting right now to halfway across the country for about $60 in gas. thats pretty fucking amazing, when you think about it.
and i dont have dirty air where i am because of cars exhaust; and if i get in another person’s car, its a gamble whether or not that person effectively checks and maintains the safety of his car. when i get in, in consent to the possibility that it might not be safe. and its tragic when people die in car accidents, especially due to faulty machinery, but thats what litigation and life insurance are for. the world is a risky place, and no amount of government standards are going to change that— and, in fact, i contend that they make it a lot LESS safe, because producers are then divorced from bearing the burden of their mistakes as long as they were “following the letter of the law”.
cars roam public ways, yes, but you also consent freely to drive a car or enter a highway. when you freely choose to drive a car, you consent to the possibility that you might suffer as a result of the inherent riskiness of driving. and if a car runs over you when youre on your property minding your own business, that sucks and the driver will likely go to jail… but like i said, the world’s a risky place, and thats what litigation and insurance are for.
You wouldn’t. My point is that one reason that such things as emissions and mph are mandated by the government is that the average consumer doesn’t have the technical expertise to make the best choices. Car and Driver reviews just aren’t enough.
History has not borne this out - on either mark. Open markets have not made products safer, and lawsuits have still accounted for problems that the government hasn’t prevented directly. But, as the courts are government also, all of this is government regulation.
We have exactly the rights that we accord ourselves as a society. Again, the average consumer doesn’t possess the know-how to verify anything about very technical products. If we, as a society deem it necessary to use government for this, we have satisfied your requirements. That is, government regulation is the very way we have, in many cases, fulfilled our obligation to verify the safety of products. Mainly because this is by far the most efficient way to do this. Again, I see you arguing not with me, but with yourself.
You don’t need a society so dependent on cars - we have chosen that.
I was talking about most GM cars, not most cars. If the press should take the place of government, as you have suggested, I would suggest a peek at J.D. Powers to see the difference between most GM cars and most others.
I guess the law should be re-written to suit your particular circumstances, then. Again, government regs do ot preclude lawsuits.
I guess I have consented to everything that might happen to me as soon as I leave the house - or even before i do. Conservatism equals anarchy only on your posts, 3x. Not for the rest of us, I think. And again, litigation is government regulation. And no insurance company is on your side in this. I have worked for two or three.
In fact, I don’t know who would be on your side. Perhaps only the extremely wealthy.
