Tuesday, June 2, 2009

A modest proposal for GM

As you’d expect, Michael Moore has a few things to say about the state of GM. The filmmaker/whackjob (depending on your level of investment in corporate propaganda) who made Roger and Me 20 years ago to document GM’s catastrophic oblivion to the world immediately about it, thinks we all lose if the bankruptcy just allows the company to keep on keeping on (albeit on a smaller scale), seeing as to how “keeping on” has caused far more damage to our society than just making cars people really don’t like.

Growing up in LA, I was told that before WWII there was a nice system of light rail electric transport to get people around the area. Post-war, the oil and auto companies (GM in particular) lobbied heavily that the city should replace that “old-fashioned” system with nice, new, gas-burning buses. And that’s what they did.

And between the buses and the 12,437,677 cars on the roads, it became damned near impossible to get from here to there even on brand-new freeways. And LA for decades wore the crown of the smog capital of the country. (Growing up, I can well recall that painful limit on the depth of breaths you could take in the summer, when smog filled your lungs and; burned your eyes.)

Moore has some suggestions about what the bankruptcy executives could do with GM's remaining resources that don't involve continuing to build internal-combustion cars with the old GM mindset of tail-fins and planned obsolescence.

In general I agree with Moore.

But, as with Roger, probably no one involved in the GM bankruptcy will pay any attention.

Plus ça change…

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