Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander was shocked, shocked when the decision was made to build the government’s new dream car at the Lake Orion plant near Detroit. The three plants competing to build Obama’s mini Greenmobile were Janesville, WI, Spring Hill, TN, and Lake Orion, MI. Michigan won out as a favor to Governor Granholm and the very powerful and rich backers of the Democratic Party, the UAW. I wrote about the GM and Chrysler takeovers being orchestrated political restructurings aimed at serving the larger interests of the US government. When the government, along with the pay-for-favors thieves in Congress and special interest power players, nationalizes and runs a business, decisions will always be made with political considerations/favors being first up on the agenda. Decisions will never be made on the basis of profit-and-loss and winning and retaining satisfied customers.
Set to emerge from bankruptcy within weeks, GM declined to disclose the factors it weighed in picking Orion, but said the process was free of political meddling. “It’s in the best interest of all involved to not discuss the selection criteria for the small-car plant,” said GM spokeswoman Sherrie Childers Arb. “All three plants have individual merits, but when all told, the Orion plant scenario provided the best business case.”
The federal government’s outsize role in the new GM has already raised concerns about the mixing of politics and commerce. Lawmakers, such as Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the powerful House Financial Services Committee, have squeezed GM to reject plant closures in their districts. Obama administration officials have prodded the car giant to develop smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.
Governments are not in the business of profit-and-loss; they are in the business of steal-and-spend. So there’s no profit motive with the New GM. Political players such as Obama, Barney Frank, and others will rape this company dry as long as they can keep pumping taxpayer money into the company to fund their self-serving causes. Their pet causes include rebuilding and renovating the tattered unions, making them a potent political force once again; pushing an EnviroCommunist, redistributionist agenda onto middle-class America; and empowering high-ranking, democratic congressional members so that they may direct the booty toward their home districts. A liquidated GM (and Chrysler) would have meant the end of the UAW, the Democrat Party’s largest and most consistent allies, and the loss of zillions of jobs for the democratic constituency.
The new GM has a bottomless pit from which to keep sucking up cash, unlike Circuit City or Linens ‘n Things, two companies that had to liquidate without government assistance. Imagine how blessed a New Circuit City or New Linens ‘n Things would have been with the same favoritism? What each of these companies lacked – that GM offered – was a powerful union, a defined and generous Democratic support base, and most importantly, the ability to fulfill very specific functions for the new regime’s environmental agenda that will reign in American lifestyles and grant favors and profits to corporate state giants who help to shape and manufacture the government’s centrally-planned visions.
{ 27 comments }
The US has become a banana republic. Everybody knows it’s not sustainable, so the elites now engage in grabbing everything that’s not nailed down.
If you listen, you can hear goose-stepping jack boots in the distance.
I know why they’re only building small cars.
They’re creating a market for themselves one law at a time. Just another clue that the country is heading toward prolonged poverty.
” Decisions will never be made on the basis of profit-and-loss and winning and retaining satisfied customers.”
LOL, I’m sorry but the free market is no panacea. I can name tonnes of companies that produce shitty products of a clueless undiscriminating population.
“satisfied customers” means jack shit when those custmoers are dumb as rocks and drag product qualtiy down because it’s beyond their meager brainpower to determine quality from not quality.
Human beings are dumb shits this why the free market will never be rid of the problems the author rails against in this article.
Time to read the federalist again:
But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
The same applies to the so called free market, it has all the failings James Madison described and a market without government would have all the same problems and businesses and corporations would just become the governing entities themselves.
In fact without the state it’s doubtful the free market as most people know it would survive very long.
There are *no historical examples* of a market without a governing institution.
In a global Marketplace, Monopolies are impossible in the vast Majority of Industries; in the rest, the Monopolies are breakable and are allowed to exist solely for the Consumer’s Convenience; should a Monopolist fail to keep the Consumer’s Confidence, then the Investors will hear the Groans and fund a Competitor – the Desire to maximize Profit is the great Regulator you seek.
That is, of course, without government interference.
BobD,
Markets pre-exist the state. Markets(black) exist even where the state attempts to outlaw them. The state is an impediment, not a requisite to markets. Do you think that in the absence of the state people would stop buying and selling stuff or even creating stuff?
“LOL, I’m sorry but the free market is no panacea. I can name tonnes of companies that produce shitty products of a clueless undiscriminating population.”
IOW: “OH NOES WHATEVER SHALL WE DO! WITHOUT A GOVT TO THINK, FEEL AND CHOOSE FOR US, WHY WE WOULD BE LIKE HEADLESS CHICKENS!!!1!!!11! WHO WOULD BUILD TEH ROADZ!1!ONEONEONE!1!”
BobD, are you another clueless socialist hack? Humans being this dumb (yourself included, don’t try exempt it), is all the more reason to avoid parasitic monopolies, like the government. Such dull histrionics and whining about monopolies (propped up courtesy of the gov’t), please come up with something a tad more… original? Until then, bye bye.
“the free market is no panacea. I can name tonnes of companies that produce shitty products of a clueless undiscriminating population. “satisfied customers” means jack shit when those custmoers are dumb as rocks and drag product qualtiy down because it’s beyond their meager brainpower to determine quality from not quality.”
The market doesn’t strive specifically for quality; it’s shaped by the buyers’ preferences. If they prefer lower price over quality, it will deliver. So your real problem is with what buyers want, not the mechanism that meets it. Of course this isn’t a problem for the state solution you propose, since it can force whatever it wants.
Could we please think twice about the context with which we use the word “rape”? I know what you’re saying as well as any, and it certainly evokes an image similar to what is going on. However, I expect a little more professionalism here.
BobD, the elitist/corporatist drivel of Hamilton, Madison and Jay doesn’t do anything to help your cause in these quarters. “…Men over men”? “…you must first enable the government to control the governed”? And here I thought the role of a just government was to protect the rights of its citizens… No historical examples of unfettered free markets exist because the hyena of government is always lurking. Human history is also a constant stream of poverty, war and servitude. Do you think the lack of economic freedom and the suffering of the People are unrelated coincidences?
BobD,
“In fact without the state it’s doubtful the free market as most people know it would survive very long.â€
First, I find it interesting that you used the term “in fact†to begin a pure speculative statement. Second, I would like you to elaborate on this idea; you will learn on this website you simply cannot make naïve statements without any rebuttal from someone (some already have). So, with that said, instead of laughing at you, I would rather you explain your logic. So I can pick it apart. Hopefully, when writing your explanation you will come to realize your fallacies and contradictions by yourself (this sometimes happens when people think thoroughly, they stumble across the truth). If the latter proves true, then promise me you will post your next comment under the alias: “free market advocate, formally known as BobDâ€
Then I’ll be laughing with you.
All joking aside, I wish that you continue visiting this site. There are plenty of intelligent people and literature to learn from, I myself learned and still learn from the people who contribute here. It is, in fact, the sole purpose of the website.
“a market without government would have all the same problems and businesses and corporations would just become the governing entities themselves.”
Except they would not have the police power of the state on their “side”.
David Spellman, I presume you’ve seen HR 675, introduced in January, which provides for the following police powers for department of defense employees:
To execute and serve warrants;
To make arrests without warrants;
To carry firearms;
To enforce federal laws enacted to protect persons or property;
To prevent breaches of the peace and suppress affrays or unlawful assemblies.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-675&tab=summary
So much for Posse Comitatus…
It was interesting to see your point about the union being the special interest served by the political system and how they scratch each others’ back.
This corruption is purely the result of intervention into the economy and it is not natural. Without intervention the economy would function uncorrupted.
its funny how the unions are now realizing that the automakers are incredibly behind in efficiency and quality (no due to them of course ;/), but that it does not seem to matter to them. they still believe that they are relevant to the future of the automakers and that they seem to view this economic meltdown as a mere bump in the road. i found todays news interesting in my hometown of chatham ontario that the CAW finally realized that International Truck and Engine is in the drivers seat (pun not intended, but works) and that they can save 100 jobs or none at all. methinks this is the future of organized labour, perhaps the break the free markets may have been waiting for many decades, at least in this country. public service unions have been taking a beating here too. (who strikes in a depression????)
To me it seems the difference between anarchists and monarchists lies between the ideological weigh put on management within free market.
While both parties value the idea of the division of tasks… which justifies different (scarce) resource allocation according to the “needs of society†(these can be “evil†needs of course) minarchists seem to place this as a justification for at least some monopoly government, because the State is “the†institution which specializes in “managing peopleâ€â€¦
The problem is that the allocation of society’s resource to “the managing need†is not allowed to freely change anymore then. No free market. No free will.
Per analogy, “society’s need†for electricity can also be “acknowledged†by Sarah Pallin and B. Obama and competition among producing corporations therefore reduced to a monopoly of one corporation whose CEO has to be “democratically elected†– to choose from Sarah Pallin or B. Obama.
Whatever minarchist say it seems to be an arbitrary rule. Of course the question “how to get thereâ€, from “Statism†to “free market†is the main problem. I believe first: education against propaganda.
Nonsense the market without government would devolve into tyranny and cartels competition does in the real world is subject to subversion and corruption. The people here have too little understanding of human nature.
Over 75% of the businesses I’ve worked for have had elements of fraud and defrauding their customers and can legally get away with it because businesses can get away with this due to the distance between the consumer and business.
The gross natural asymmetries of information and human psychology, would easily devolve into warfare.
Money itself as a store of value is problematic and flawed. I’ve developed methods of getting rich insanely fast by exploiting loopholes in the market, I can earn more the entire net worth of many people in less then 2 years by abusing the mechanisms in the market that will always be invented to enrich the few at the expense of the many. Competition has never ever been a gaurantee of goodness.
People will always create things I don’t doubt it, but contracts become tenuous and unenforcable, most consumers are dolts and credit card companies charging insane interest rates that should not be allowed to begin with is essentially legalized theft.
Just because you can frame any human act as a “Free act” or “voluntary” act does not mean it is not fraudulent act or the person on the other end does not have the intellectual capacity to understand their abuse.
Many among the slaves for thousands of years thought slavery was normal and natural, you can convince people of anything if you have the dominant social force.
Freedom is not the ultimate good I’m sorry to say it, and only those with life experience and who’ve suffered immensely that most people abuse their freedom, freedom is a euphamism for framing the world so that one may engage irresponsibility and exploitation, and rhetorically mask the truth of a matter.
The only principles one need to live by in life is to see: The end of suffering the end of war and the betterment of all.
Rallying around and idealogy is for children, the world is not an idealogy, water is not socialist, it is not capitalist, it is not communist, the world is simply a structural space in which geometric forms exist in which we navigate and manipulate according to our limited abiltiies.
I don’t believe in idealogy because I believe any principles taken to excess are inherently flawed from the outside: The very principle of freedom and volanturism needs a serious critique, otherwise we will submit to myopia that comes with thinking we are right when we have not grasped the truth of a matter but only our own illusions.
The truth is a long hard slog and most people in their lives do not have that kind of time on their hands nor the interest. We should not rally around ideology or principles, we should rally around truth, and test the limits of our principles and thoughts through vigorous criticism.
Many of the wise know: Principles are guidelines only, then hard and fast rules and they must change as the times do and not become dogma’s immune from obsolesence and critique.
“Nonsense the market without government would devolve into tyranny and cartels competition does in the real world is subject to subversion and corruption. The people here have too little understanding of human nature.”
Abject nonsense/lie/prove it.
“Over 75% of the businesses I’ve worked for have had elements of fraud and defrauding their customers and can legally get away with it because businesses can get away with this due to the distance between the consumer and business.”
Anecdotal evidence/fault of provider of justice, i.e. government/fault of indolent consumers rendered indolent due to gov’t thinking for them.
“The gross natural asymmetries of information and human psychology, would easily devolve into warfare.”
Assertions/lies. If anything states WORSEN the asymmetry and entrench it.
“Money itself as a store of value is problematic and flawed. I’ve developed methods of getting rich insanely fast by exploiting loopholes in the market, I can earn more the entire net worth of many people in less then 2 years by abusing the mechanisms in the market that will always be invented to enrich the few at the expense of the many. Competition has never ever been a gaurantee of goodness.”
And a lack of it is a sure guarantee that there will be none. Your first phrase doesn’t even connect with the others, and makes little sense.
“People will always create things I don’t doubt it, but contracts become tenuous and unenforcable, most consumers are dolts and credit card companies charging insane interest rates that should not be allowed to begin with is essentially legalized theft.”
What they “should” or “should not” be allowed to do has nothing to do with your purely subjective whims and opinions, little Hitler.
“Just because you can frame any human act as a “Free act” or “voluntary” act does not mean it is not fraudulent act or the person on the other end does not have the intellectual capacity to understand their abuse.”
If it’s fraud, it should be punished – something the state itself is ill-suited to accomplish, being the biggest fraud of them all. Moreover, surely you do not mean to suggest that instating a monopoly over several sections of the market (i.e. the State) is not prone to capture by the self-same manipulators, abusers and frauds? And it is us who are “naive” or whatever other adjective a whim-worshipper like yourself wishes to toss about? Please try better than this puerile garbage.
“Many among the slaves for thousands of years thought slavery was normal and natural, you can convince people of anything if you have the dominant social force.”
Yeah, almost like the state convincing its citizens that they are the state… oh wait.
“Freedom is not the ultimate good I’m sorry to say it,”
Your opinion is irrelevant.
” and only those with life experience and who’ve suffered immensely that most people abuse their freedom, freedom is a euphamism for framing the world so that one may engage irresponsibility and exploitation, and rhetorically mask the truth of a matter.”
Yada yada, Marxist whinging, yada yada.
“Rallying around and idealogy is for children, the world is not an idealogy, water is not socialist”
Then stop doing it.
“I don’t believe in idealogy because I believe any principles taken to excess are inherently flawed from the outside:”
Translation: consistency is overrated.
“we should rally around truth,”
We do already.
“Many of the wise know: Principles are guidelines only, then hard and fast rules and they must change as the times do and not become dogma’s immune from obsolesence and critique.”
Then please apply this to yourself.
My what a long, empty rant to say nothing much of interest.
Brad Maynard,
Who strikes in a depression? Well, the great Prof. Reynolds just wrote a brief history of labor unions (http://www.lewrockwell.com/reynolds/reynolds21.1.html) and under his description of the Norris-LaGuardia Anti-Injunction Act of 1932 he writes:
“The overriding object of the act was to free organized labor from the constraints that bind businessmen and everybody else, allowing unions more scope to use their aggressive and violent tactics. The number of strikes suddenly doubled between 1932 and 1933 to 1,695 and then continued climbing to a 1930s peak of 4,740 in 1937. This outburst of strikes occurred during a period of deep depression and massive unemployment, while previous business downturns had always diminished strike activity and disappeared many unions. As Friedrich A. Hayek summed it up: “We have now reached a state where [unions] have become uniquely privileged institutions to which the general rules of law do not apply.â€
So I guess the answer is…that depends on the situation.
“Nonsense the market without government would devolve into tyranny and cartels competition does in the real world is subject to subversion and corruption.”
As long as government is there to enforce property rights and contracts, the market does the rest. It doesn’t work in spite of human nature; it works because of it. Individuals want to profit, and profit results in efficiency.
BobD wrote:
“Nonsense the market without government would devolve into tyranny and cartels competition does in the real world is subject to subversion and corruption.”
Wow. This is so grammatically incorrect, I’m not sure what it really means. Is the recession causing a world-wide shortage of commas?
Assuming that you mean that the market is subject to subversion and corruption, I would have to agree. But so is government. And there are lots of companies competing in the market. There are only three governments (local, state and national) in most areas. Which is more likely to be subverted and corrupted?
NB: This doesn’t mean I’m an anarchist. I’m not. It just means that government is every bit as likely to attract the wrong kind of person as business is, if not more so.
BobD is a troll.
BobD:
After reading your two very ignorant posts, I just have to comment -
Why should I “listen” to anyone who can’t spell or write past a second grade level? Heck, you can’t even write a coherent sentence!!!!
You go home and suckle on your mother’s breast a little more before posting here again (i.e. grow up, study, and learn before TRYING to express your view point again!!).
He’s too old for that. But the government teat will be there from cradle to grave.
“Arb”, the perfect name for a government spokesman!
BobD: I can go with several of your sentiments, in as much as businesses defrauding their customers—note that such also attempt to defraud other businesses (I know, working for one at the moment). However, the impulses pushing the decision-makers to take such a route are only encouraged and strengthened by government. In the absence of protection (e.g., subsidies, tax breaks through various connections) the market would much sooner weed them out and leave them to wither on the vine (in the specific case the good people and others who can see the truth are all leaving).
Gernot,
Who’s going to enforce it though? You’re mistakenly thinking that business institutions will not become governments in their own right , just because we call an institution a business does not mean it does not have governing power and functions that are the same as government that the will lord over others, under the euphamism of ideology.
All that will change is a transfer of power and same people with same conflicting interests, will just form group of businesses in the market and will just become another form of government by a different name, who enforced the currency? who protects it from fraud and subversion? What is to be done about inflation (basically what amounts to theft that is built into the invention of money, i.e. people not choosing to have their money devalued, therefore the collective actions of individuals have collective effects and are forced on those who didn’t choose to have their time and hardwork inflated away, by those who can successfully can escape inflation.
One cannot get rid of the flawed nature of money itself, in a population of 30 it’s impossible to get insanely wealthy as we see in our society of billionaires, as population expands there must be enough money to go around.
The fact that we are so wealthy is because as populations become large, more money exists to go around, so its a property of large numbers, not because people have earned money, you can be just as talented in a small population as you are in a large one but you can no where near become as wealthy, because of the nature of large numbers, therefore excessively wealthy people don’t truly earn their wealth, it is an artifiact large populations and the invention of money itself, you can calculate it yourself by taking 2% of the total money in a society of small population and comparing it to a large population, note that nothing has changed other then the necessary expansion for the demand for money and population.
Historically human beings have a horrible track record for getting along, and the government is nothing more then rich people protecting their interests through the mechanism of government, remove the government and you still have those rich people who are going to do bad things and you can’t stop them from doing this, it will simply devolve into the mafia-business like entities.
Everyone here who thinks I’m trolling has seriously not read history, nor been around the block long enough to understand the amount of corruption in fraud in human beings.
I don’t see any good solutions, did we not learn anything from the past 100 years where businesses were killing their workers and workers had to rise up collectively and form governments in the first place to stop this behaviour?
Quite frankly it’s disturbing that people who read this blog are quite insulated from the harshness and brutality of the world and people as they really are because the are wealthy and not on the other end of the stick, did the native indians think the incoming white capitalist were a good thing when they setup their own government and killed them and took their land which is now america?
The problem is mankind overall has no historical record of being nice. Removing government is not going to change this, anyone who says differently is certainly not well read on the history of our race.
And to the angered: Spelling mistakes / missing words/ errors mean nothing, as those mistakes are frequently common in human beings, a take some neurology courses to understand that unconscious errors are made and are not realized due to motor neuron errors/noise and their effects, until after the fact when they are pointed out.
All human beings suffer from attention blindness, they think they know things when the do not, see here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAnKvo-fPs0
Many ideologues suffer from change blindness, and do not research the limits of their own minds being so self assured in their knowledge, to realize the truth one must seriously always have serious amount of self doubt, this is usually only understood by those who’ve lived long enough to grasp these more fundamental issues and they are not eager to rush back into the naive ideologies they held in their youth, they realize that everyone has something of merit to say and are constantly challenging themselves to hear things they intuitively find revolting because they know their mind is often incorrect and the desire truth rather then ignorance.
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