The Votes Are In

The American people have voted and it is overwhelmingly against the current domestic car status-quo.

Capitalism says that the market will determine which companies survive and which ones thrive. Consumers get to vote with their dollars. Over the last three decades the market share for the big three American car manufacturers have decreased steadily. No votes. Hondas and Toyotas abound. Yes votes.

This morning CNN posted the edited transcript of an interview with indie film-maker Michael Moore. Saith Moore:

"Well, what really went wrong is that General Motors has had this philosophy from the beginning that what's good for General Motors is good for the country. So, their attitude was we'll build it and you buy it. We'll tell you what to buy. You just buy it.

Eventually, the consumer got smart and said, 'You know what, I'd like a car that gets a little better gas mileage. I'd like a car that's safer on the road,' so they started to buy other cars. General Motors still wouldn't change. They still kept building the wrong cars, and more and more people stopped buying them. "

Sounds about right to me. The No votes are the result of GM's failure to listen to the market. Fine, but then he goes on to say...

President-Elect Obama has to say to them, yes, we're going to use this money to save these jobs, but we're not going to build these gas-guzzling, unsafe vehicles any longer.

We're going to put the companies into some sort of receivership and we, the government, are going to hold the reigns on these companies. They're to build mass transit. They're to build hybrid cars. They're to build cars that use little or no gasoline.

Wait. What happened to the market that wasn't being listened to? Is the clueless government dictating what gets made any different than clueless management?

Liberals say the darndest things.