OT: Assaulted Over Linux

Lennart Sorensen lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org
Fri Mar 13 22:29:00 UTC 2009


On Wed, Mar 11, 2009 at 10:51:32PM -0400, William Muriithi wrote:
> Kelly,
> 
> >
> > >
> >
> > >> "Still have a job? Then keep driving foreign."
> >
> > It amazes me that people (in both Canada and the US), would rather
> > blame my intelligent purchasing decisions over somebody else's poor
> > business decisions.
> 
> 
> Actually, those stickers should never make you guilty. They are just funny
> and indicate the driver in front of you either have direct interest with the
> american car manufactures NOT their country or he/she is so out of touch
> with reality its not even funny. I think buying american car does not help
> in job saving much.  Most of those american cars are mainly build in south
> America and other countries where labour is cheap. On the hand, foreign cars
> manufacturers do have a good percentage of their cars in North America
> manufactured in North America.
> 
>  In fact, this is one case where Bush got it right when he said its throwing
> good money after bad money. And however sad it is when someone looses a job,
> this is one case where these guys made their bed and should go ahead and
> sleep on it. Heck, they lobbied the government when California attempted to
> enforce some efficiency, exactly what the Japanese has been doing for decade
> and how is the japanese manufacturers, healthy. Okay, I take that back, but
> at least they are better shape than american mafucturers. So if you look at
> the problem from the government perspective, more jobs may actually be saved
> by backing the efficient once, saving on oil imports and other externalities
> related to inefficient cars.
> 
>  Now, why is it a futile thing to attempt saving american car manufacturers.
> I have three good reasons.
> 
> 1) Time: If you look closely, car manufacturing is more like writing an
> operating system, a very evolutionary activity. You build on your previous
> position. If you have a lousy product, it make it all that hard to ever
> catch up with those who have perfected the art. If you doubt the
> evolutionary nature of the industry, look at Toyota tudra. Now I do not own
> one, but if you google for a couple of minutes on that brand, you will
> notice it has had a lot of reliability problems. That despite it was made by
> Toyota which is synonymous with reliability and over a billion dollars of
> investment. They will never catch up of ford for have perfected that sector.

Sure they will, if Ford does the typical thing that a lot of north
american companies have done, which is to decide they are the best and
stop improving.  It seems Ford is trying to keep improving their products
though, so perhaps the F150 will continue to sell in silly numbers to
people I don't understand.

> 2) Oil: Most people have concluded the recent $146 a barrel price what a
> market fuck ups. I believe it was purely driven by business fundamentals.
> Yeah the price of oil is now selling at $47 a barrel, but when you factor
> how far the world growth has fallen, $47 a barrel start looking way too
> expensive. Seriously, mid last year, the world growth rate was over 5%.
> Today, they are projecting it at -0.5%. That again is GLOBAL growth. If you
> were to convert that percentage change to dollars, it would be an imaginable
> number. Add the fact that we are not expected to see the end of this until
> 2010 if we are lucky. And yet, despite all that gloom, oil can hold at that
> price. I was expecting it to drop to $10. What this imply is when we finally
> turn the corner and start seeing some growth,  you can expect a price of
> $146 and above. Its that or we stay in recession for ever.

Yep pretty much.  Strangely I don't mind.  Perhaps higher oil prices
will make higher fuel prices and finally make people start to make
sensible decisions.

> 3) Cultural change: North American society has been one very lucky
> community. They were in position to afford a living standard most of us only
> dream of. Then came globalization. Note, I am not against globalization, but
> the way it was implemented was seriously baised toward the rich. A story for
> another day, but if you are interested, read the Roaring nineties by Joseph
> Stiglitz. That has destroyed the middle class for good, the major buyers for
> American cars. The rich tend to buy Lamborghini, Ferari, BMW etc. Those cars
> that are stylish and good image. Since then, the house industry was the the
> single main factor making middle class family feel rich. That is now gone
> and with it the purchasing power of most americans. The American cars do not
> sell well outside America. Reason, any car with power above 2 litre engine
> is considered a guzzlers to most people outside america. The chinese do tend
> to love huge cars, but that market is cornered by chinese domestic
> manufactures with the help of Chinese government. I can not blame them, we
> are doing the same here.

The american car companies can't complain about others not buying their
cars if they won't make cars that others want.  The japanese have no
problem making cars that north america will buy but which they would
never be able to sell in Japan.  They understand the idea of giving the
customer what they want.

> With this in mind, I tend to think supporting American cars is not worth it.
> There is just way too much head wind for very weak companies. True, they may
> survive, but tax payers are going to pay way to much for that to happen. If
> the government chicken and decide to back them well and good, but they
> should inform us of the full price we should be expected to foot. Not try to
> play Iraq game again - oh, it will just cost us $50 billion and then turn
> around an pull a 3 trillion bill. Read The three trillion dollar war by
> Stinglitz if you want to find more.
> 
> Disclaimer, I may be seriously wrong here, as I can not claim to be
> objective. I do hate the guzzlers and that mean a not too balanced
> analysis.  That said, I look forward to see if time will validate my
> observation

Sounds pretty good to me.

-- 
Len Sorensen
--
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