The U.S. Automakers: A Slow Motion Disaster

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The greatest thing about our country and its economic system that rewards those with good ideas, products, business practices, and profitable ways of improving peoples lives.

It’s something I’ve always had a certain amount of pride in knowing.

It’s the basis behind the greatest country in the world the United States of America - and by extension, the American dream. Work hard, do the right things: build, construct, invest, learn, educate and success will follow. It’s fundamental to all that we do here.

As a corollary to this, our capitalist system separates money from stupid people, businesses and products. It takes money away from bad ideas and moves it to good ideas. On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero, but bad ideas and poor business practices don’t stand a chance.

Any problem, continued and compounded will ultimately destroy any system.

So it’s always struck me as odd that companies like General Motors (GM), Chrysler and on some levels Ford have managed to continue on. Since I could remember these companies had awful business practices and made substandard products - if it wasn’t ugly as sin, it didn’t work.

And I wasn’t the only one. MILLIONS knew of the issues with these manufacturers and stayed away. Enter a host of foreign-made vehicles. But yet these juggernauts remained, unmoving, unflinching and committed to their substandard course.

It didn’t bother me that they were still around; so much as it threw a monkey wrench in the symphony of perfection in my belief in our economic system.

Seeing the crash of these automakers doesn’t bring me joy for I know how many innocent employees have their fortunes tied to these companies as well. I’m not sure they are all entirely blameless, because they could have done something, anything, to fix the glaring issues and shortcomings.

The collapse and destruction of these companies has been like watching a mountain colliding with a glacier. It’s a slow motion disaster that we’ve all known was coming.

As this plays out, I’m comforted by the fact that our economic system does still work, it may not always play nicely with the other “children,” but it works and that’s something we can believe in.

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