Let Them Eat Sushi

It's anticipated that the auto industries will, eventually, receive some sort of bailout, albeit with a long list of stipulations set down by the government and, specifically, Obama, forcing them to, well, enter the modern age.

To which I say: why bother?


For at least the past ten years, the Japanese automotive companies have been developing some sort of energy efficient car; the Honda Insight (61 mpg) was released in 1999, and who knows how long they were working on it before then.  GM and the other American companies have been lazy.  They've assumed that, just because they had a market in the past and that Americans like driving, they could continue in the same vein of **All-American!!** Fourth-of-July ads and monster vehicles and still somehow make a profit.

How do three major automakers manage to completely miss the new dominant trend of the past 10+ years?

This is absurd.  Not only should they be held completely accountable, they should not be given a second chance to make similar mistakes.  Considering that certain states (specifically, Israel) are already working to implement a national fully electric car system and considering how soon the oil supplies are expected to run out, America does not have the luxury of letting its automakers continue to sit on their asses and pretend to finally get things done.  The Chevy Volt is pretty much the only concrete object that is going to come out of the Big Three, and it's been delayed for over a year already.

Let the Japanese, Germans, and whoever's willing buy these companies out, I say.  We can add in a stipulation that the factories have to be located within the U.S.--and we should really redefine the idea of "made in America" to include both parts and actual assembly--but the higher management should be left to someone competent.

Of course, we couldn't let capitalism run its course, but America needs to stop being so strongly associated with a few specific businesses.  Letting the West define itself not through culture but through products will prove fatal eventually.