“It’s a sad blow to our egos,” Smith said.
‘They Don’t Care’
Dobski, the retired GM executive, says he recently went to Washington with a group of “Main Street bondholders,” lobbying Congress for more say about the deal the government was cutting with GM.
Both Republicans and Democrats seemed to dislike the company, if for different reasons, Dobski said. Their staffs didn’t seem to understand the industry’s reach, he said.
When a business attempts to tug at our emotions, rather than presenting a good product, no, we don't care. Emotional appeals can backfire, as it has for GM... and any other industry/business that's tried it.
For decades we heard these same appeals from the U.S. steel industry. Democrats attempted to keep the industry going by giving them bailouts. We were warned about how devastating it would be to the economy. "Too big to fail" weren't the exact words used, but the message was the same.
What emerged, after we allowed the industry to fail after decades of throwing money at it, was a better steel industry. Americans produce boutique steels now, in cleaner, more prosperous plants. Other industries moved in to fill the void - industries that are also cleaner/safer.
A business can't rest on its laurels. It doesn't matter if they produced a popular product 10 years ago. What it is doing today is what matters. Personalizing it is a huge mistake.
Capitalism works, when it is left alone to work. Half-way Capitalism isn't Capitalism at all.
“I think about all the times we went on strike to better the middle class,” said Larry Maykowski, a GM retiree who gathered with other workers yesterday at National Coney Island, a restaurant across from the Tech Center.
Auto workers went on strike to use collusion and coercion to satisfy their own greed. Assembly-line work may be boring, but it isn't difficult. If someone wants a "middle class" income then they have to develop marketable skills; improving oneself is how to improve your income. Coercion may work for a while, but it isn't lasting. It is the result of strikes and government meddle that enabled foreign businesses to compete more effectively against us. That is always the way, despite the deniers hopes that this time the same mistakes can be made, with a different outcome.
You can't regulate against competition. Well, you can, but it will always fail.
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