While Detroit Slept

[NOBama]

OP-ED: NY Times, Dec 9​

As I think about our bailing out Detroit, I can’t help but reflect on what, in my view, is the most important rule of business in today’s integrated and digitized global market, where knowledge and innovation tools are so widely distributed. It’s this: Whatever can be done, will be done. The only question is will it be done by you or to you. Just don’t think it won’t be done. If you have an idea in Detroit or Tennessee, promise me that you’ll pursue it, because someone in Denmark or Tel Aviv will do so a second later.

Why do I bring this up? Because someone in the mobility business in Denmark and Tel Aviv is already developing a real-world alternative to Detroit’s business model. I don’t know if this alternative to gasoline-powered cars will work, but I do know that it can be done — and Detroit isn’t doing it. And therefore it will be done, and eventually, I bet, it will be done profitably.

And when it is, our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into the CD music business on the eve of the birth of the iPod and iTunes. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into a book-store chain on the eve of the birth of Amazon.com and the Kindle. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into improving typewriters on the eve of the birth of the PC and the Internet.

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"If we miss the chance to win the race for Car 2.0 because we keep mindlessly bailing out Car 1.0, there will be no one to blame more than Detroit’s new shareholders: we the taxpayers."

 

[WillowTree]

I second that

 

[Paulie]

Get some sleep Willow.

 

[WillowTree]

Get some sleep Willow.

I'm getting ready to leave the house! I'm going to the dreaded Wal Marts.. I'm going to get right in someone's face and say Merry Christmas,, Yesterday I went to Sam's I put money in the gasp Salvation Army bucket, he said to me "God Bless You"


now make sure you wipe front to back..


p.s,, I'm gonna stay logged on though,, so you won't know I'm gone!

 

[editec]

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"If we miss the chance to win the race for Car 2.0 because we keep mindlessly bailing out Car 1.0, there will be no one to blame more than Detroit’s new shareholders: we the taxpayers."

ACtually I understand your point there.

One presumes that the wisest way to achive Car v 2.0 is to take over GM and Chrysler (after all we're really buying it) and then invest the money to achieve that GREEN MACHINE.

Now were I king, I might be inclined to at least consider abandoning the whole automotive economy and invest that money in truly efficient translportation systems like rail and public transit (and flying cars of course!) but sadly I was not to the manor born.

 

[Mad Scientist]

Now were I king, I might be inclined to at least consider abandoning the whole automotive economy and invest that money in truly efficient translportation systems like rail and public transit (and flying cars of course!) but sadly I was not to the manor born.

If you were King and actually did that, the economy would be dead in one month. You and the Queen would follow in the revolution shortly thereafter.

 

[KittenKoder]

If you were King and actually did that, the economy would be dead in one month. You and the Queen would follow in the revolution shortly thereafter.

Actually, that was one of his few halfway decent ideas. Our exports are dead already, and nothing good ever comes back from the grave (old pagan adage from a millenia ago). So saving the auto industry will probably not even come close to being enough. We need to find something new to get our manufacturing and exports back up. Though the public transportation isn't a viable solution, something has to be. We have lost all our markets to other countries and trying to wrest control back would be pointless. What our country needs to do is find something the others are just not doing well, one such is still software (we still lead the world in software engineering), however, one market that has yet to be claimed which we could steer all our efforts from automotive would be architecture. Even though our buildings are fugly as hell lately, we still have the best products for construction. If we stopped expanding into our forests we could also increase our supply for something like that. Now, if you hadn't guessed, I know more about software than everything else in this topic so I don't have answers, just possibilities.