Re: OT: Auto CEO Paychecks

DGDevin <dgdevin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Chuck wrote:

Well *** DG, who's trying to make sense?

In a.g.a.? Dang, hardly anybody but you and me.

I drive a 2000 Passat wagon,mostly for payload for the band- all of
my stuff plus PA fits very well.I wouldn't mind SUVs if they had
some sort of purpose, but they don't for most people.

That's dangerous territory. What purpose is there in a single person
owning a vehicle that seats four? What purpose is there in any of us
having a bunch of guitars and amps, it doesn't feed the hungry or
cure disease, it's just a waste of resources for needless toys. What
purpose is there in me wanting a new camera when I already own four
of them? And so on and so forth. Until there is a Federal Dept. of
What You Really Need then this sort of thing is up to each of us. Of
course we could follow the European model and tax the *** out of
cars with engines over a certain displacement and so on, it might
come to that.

Faulty argument in my opinion. Hydrocarbon-based fuels will become
scarce within the lifetimes of our children if not our own, and wasteful
consumption of this resource just brings the day of reckoning closer.

The amp analogy isn't so bad since it too consumes scarce energy
resources, but if you really look at it, it doesn't matter whether I
have one or ten amps since I can only play through them one at a time.
And use of a camera consumes negligible resources in comparison with the
other examples.

The damage to
infrastructure caused by a generation of these overweight vehicles,
is, however, inescapable. It's as if the national diet had suddenly
become supersized, extra spicy burritos. Imagine the effect on
toilets and sewer lines nationwide. Part of that is in jest
(although my anger at Detroit is not).

Why be mad at Detroit? The consumer votes with his checkbook, nobody
has ever been forced at gunpoint to buy an oversized SUV. The auto
companies exist to make money, they're responsible to their
shareholders, not the Sierra Club. If consumers have ignored small,
fuel-efficient cars in favors of SUVs and muscle cars, are the auto
companies supposed to refuse to make what their customers want?

This is simply a manifestation of some of the flaws in free-market
models. The underlying assumption is that the market drives toward
solutions that are good for mankind as a whole, and in this case it just
ain't so (long-term, at least).

So do we continue along these lines, with wild oscillations in the
number of people buying these oversized vehicles in response to similar
oscillations in gas prices when we *know* what's coming down the road,
or do we impose solutions that will be better for us in the long run?

You KNOW the corporate bean counters
do the same math, and that's pretty much was has happened to our auto
industry. They've been waiting for someone (meaning us) to do the
dialing for them.
Chuck

If the price of gas stayed up at five bucks a gallon this problem
would largely correct itself, but now that it's dropped back down
(for awhile) the short-attention-span American consumer will start
dreaming about 'Vettes and Escalades again. Sad to say, but we
aren't going to change until it hurts too much not to. And that's
where the govt. comes in, they're experts at making things hurt....

As is needed at this point. Otherwise, we're screwed the day after we
realize we're about to be.


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