Tuesday, June 16, 2009

I had an amiable argument with a friend of mine last night...

who was decrying the government's majority stake in GM as socialism.
"Let em' fail" he said.
I countered that the US had all sorts of examples of task-specific socialism on the books, notably the moon landing wherein the nation underwent what now looks like forced aerospace industrialization which took us from dinky Mercury Redstone rockets to the mighty Saturn Five in just eight short years.
Essentially the moon race was a contest between socialist systems, ours won, Bolshevism lost.
True the Russians lost for a number of reasons, lack of a cybernetics base, crude rocket prototypes, infighting among design bureaus, ego politics at the national level...a lacksadaisical start to the whole matter, the list goeth on and on.
All the sorts of pathologies that one associates with rampant ego-driven individualistic capitalist politics.
Meanwhile, Northrop, Ford Aerospace, the MIT materials lab, Rocketdyne, etc etc etc normally competitors are getting along just famously throught out the moon race...or as famously as any recipient of government largesse can be in the USA.
So my thought it, if we own a decisive chunk of GM why can't we get a little touch of that task specfic socialism goin' agin and push for better cheaper hybrids?
As long as it is our money lets at least invest it in something that will pay off decisively down the line sez I.
Then the private sector can have GM back at a good price too....

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