Wrong Move

November 19, 2008
10:03 AM CST

You know, when I first read that the Detroit Big 3 were looking for a financial bailout from the Feds, my first thought was that it was a joke, something from The Onion.

But nooooo:

Detroit’s Big Three automakers pleaded with a reluctant Congress Tuesday for a $25 billion lifeline to save the once-proud titans of U.S. industry, pointedly warning of a national economic catastrophe should they collapse. Millions of layoffs would follow their demise, they said, as damaging effects rippled across an already-faltering economy.

Note to the Big 3: Fuck you.

For years, these bloated industrial-revolution-era mastodons have been making cars that people don’t want to buy—like Toyota, Nissan and Mazda would have had a chance if Detroit had had their heads outside their own asses—and now that their feral unions have imposed on them operating costs which would make any sane manager throw up, they want the taxpayers to rescue them from their stupidity and inefficiency?

I don’ theenk so, Lucy.

That’s not to say it’s all been their fault, of course. As Og suggested a while back, the way to really help GM et al. is not to give them money, but to execute everyone who works for the EPA (yes!) and use computer printouts of all the CAFE regulations as fuel to incinerate the corpses. (Actually, the latter is my idea, just a riff on Og’s.)

As for the jobless “millions” (which number is total bullshit, just a scare tactic), I would suggest that thousands of the future jobless would be unionized employees who have been raking in the overpay and enjoying job-related benefits which would make any Third World worker green with envy. Losing this bunch of pampered pussies would be a net gain to the republic, and having them start from scratch without all those union bennies would show them exactly how the real world operates these days.

Anyway, it’s not like the auto manufacturers are going away if they fail: they’d just have to restructure their operations under (say) Chapter 11 bankruptcy—and part of that restructuring would require renegotiation of union contracts so that high-school dropouts don’t earn $65 an hour for doing $12/hour work. Which, of course, is why the Democrats and other union supporters (and the unions themselves) are squealing like stuck pigs: reduced union wages = lower union dues = less money for Democrat politicians, and so on.

The math is drearily familiar.

As for Detroit’s business model (if so fucked-up a concept can be called that), it would behoove them to look at how their own European operations work at making cars and trucks that don’t look like a high-school weekend project in terms of build quality. Or (gasp!) they could learn from the Japanese about how to build cars that people want to buy, even when said Japanese cars are boooooring (but at least reliable).

I once asked a buddy, whose wife is a notoriously-bad driver, why he’d bought her (another) Honda when hers reached 200,000 miles. His response: “Not even _____ could fuck up a Honda.”

Try substituting any American auto brand for “Honda”, and excuse me while I laugh.

Frankly, what’s happening to Detroit now is just the result of years and years of corporate stupidity, cupidity and avarice, all aided and abetted by similar characteristics from their work force. There is no reason to think that the Big 3 would change anything if bailed out, and there’s ample reason to think that the $25 billion—or $225 billion—would just disappear into a black hole, without doing anything of lasting benefit to anyone, except perhaps to the executive bonus line.

Considering the role that government has played in the above fiasco, it’s tempting to throw the mess at government to fix—which is what’s being suggested now—but that would be more wrong than a Democrat foreign policy initiative. Because, you see, the only way Congress can fix anything is to throw money—our money—at the problem. And that would be profoundly wrong.

The fault behind the fiscal mess facing the Big 3 is purely of their own making, both corporate and workforce, and we should leave their market mistakes for the market to fix, as any self-respecting capitalist system should.

And as for the threat implicit in the “millions of layoffs”: that follows the old saw that some corporations are too big to be allowed to fail. Well, some corporations are just to damn big to rescue, too. Add to that the fact that these “Big 3” are totally unworthy of rescue, and that should give the answer right there.

Let Detroit sink.