GM et al.

[Guest guest]

At the risk of beating a dead horse, let me just cast a metaphor to the

winds and see what happens.

Three captains build three super-cargo ships that hold a monopoly on

the world until a few paltry companies in Europe and the Pacific rim

make inroads with their own pitiful rowboats and junks.

As those few paltry companies add onto their own sailing vessels and

create their own super-cargo ships, the three original companies pass

on the baton to a bunch of moron captains who deliberately drill holes

into the rusting hulls of their ships and then slap their heads in

frustration trying to figure out how those holes and that rust got

there.

Over a succession of decade, the captains from the original monopolies

drill even more holes into their ships which by this time have

increasingly thinning hulls while the small fry upstarts monitor the

mistakes of the monopolies, avoid them, construct even bigger ships,

and in the shipping lanes of the monopolies no less.

Finally, the big monopolies throw their hands up and admit that they do

not know what to do, and find that somehow, they are no longer

monopolies. These people, who have demonstrated the worst possible

leadership, and who have succeeded in causing the biggest super-cargo

ships in history to take on water and sink faster than the bilge pumps

can pump, now ask for money to plug the holes and are dumb enough to

expect they are going to get the money.

Why would anyone who had money or credit, or who can " make " money in

such quantities that it will devalue ALL money, give it to these

captains? If the captains have consistently demonstrated failure

plugging the holes in their ships, why would we think that money would

solve the problem? Not even solid gold bullion would plug a hole in a

ship's bulk because you couldn't jam it airtight enough to plug all the

leaks.

Now let's take a look at the deck hands and boiler room stokers of

these former monopolies. Did they think that running a bunch of coal-

fired leaking, sinking, ships was going to be a profitable venture in

light of the fact that the new monopolies are all running cost

effective and increasingly " green " ships? Did they think that these

former monopolies would continue to make a profit when the products

they produce were the equivalent of steam locomotive engines in a

diesel world? Did they ever stop to think that asking for higher pay

and better benefits was a bad thing to ask for from increasingly

unprofitable shipping lines with disasterously eroding market shares?

As an observer, we have to ask ourselves what is the humane thing to do

verses what the sane thing to do is. The humane thing to do is to throw

these idiots -captains and crew alike- a bunch of life preservers, not

give them steel and rivits to plug the gaping holes, because the

captains and crew would not know what to do with the patching materials

they already had. Thus giving them NEW patching material would only

perplex them. They didn't know how to patch their own ship even when

they were steering and caring for it!

Yet all these imbiciles don't WANT life preservers. They don't even

want a life-raft. What they want is a whole new hull. And to what end?

Why bother when the inside of the ship is just as antiquated and

obsolete as the outside?

The sane thing to do is to sink the three original ships and make reefs

out of them so that the wildlife in the ocean can grow on their

remains, and if the captains and crew are too dumb to bail and swim to

shore, then they deserve what they get. Darwin's survival of the

fittest theorum applies in this case: The weak and stupid get weeded

out either by their own hand or by the society in which they live and

the cost of keeping these people around taxes the whole society and

weakens them.

Fortunately, we are talking about companies. Not people. Even though

companies EMPLOY people, and benefit people outside the companies,

there will be plenty of room in our society to accommodate these

people. It will be tough for them, but then, it needs to be tough on

them. A lesson hard earn is one well earned and well kept after all.

Maybe if companies and people realize that their mistakes were dumb

ones, they will not make dumb mistakes ever again.

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