Foreign oil dependency: America versus GM
An icon for GM hatersEarlier today I read an article about the 3 things that might kill the Chevy Volt, but I didn't really agree with any of them. Ultimately, I believe the Volt will happen, but I do think it might not be a cost-effective, mass-produced solution for decades.
Still, one of the three things that might kill the Volt is the shareholders of GM, and this thought has been bouncing around my head all morning.
Is a criticism of GM and its connection to foreign oil dependency and global warming, really a criticism of shareholders? If so, isn't a criticism of shareholders really a criticism of America herself? Thus, has the American dream turned into the world's nightmare - and all because of shareholder value?
Labels: Foreign Oil Dependency
posted by Dahcredyns at
11:25 AM
6 Comments:
Corporations and special interests run this country. But corporations are an impersonal extension of individuals who own pieces of a corporation.
Individuals as individuals have no value in this country. The human side of people has been removed from the overall equation of how this country runs and what it stands for.
But buzzwords, such as freedom, liberty, family values, children, etc...are nothing more than bullshit buzzwords to make people do things that they wouldn't normally do or support ideologies that they normally would not support.
Shareholders allow the individual corporation to do what it does because they are completely detached of its direct effects on people, the environment, foreign relations, whatever.
It is extremely sad to know that such companies such as GM, or Halliburton, etc. care more about giving their shareholders a $5000 profit over the life of a family in Iraq...or be part of a global environmentally responsible solution to our current crises.
This country is made up of people who are like frogs who are being boiled slowly to death. We are so detached from the real world that it's truly embarrassing and insulting to the rest of the people and habitation of this planet.
Shareholders are in it for their own ROI. Seldom is it really a matter of values. Typical US corporate management gives way too much credence to Wall Street. With day-traders, mutual funds, and stock options muddying investment waters, stock ownership has changed in nature. Too many insider trading decisions by rich old board members and management, sabotages any chance of long term success in manufacturing and technology companies alike.
"Long term business common sense" probably only exists in small businesses today.
If electric vehicles happen, the leadership will be by small manufacturers. And they will have unusually huge hurdles from the good old US government (aka Big Oil and Detroit) to overcome before they are allowed to sell their embarrassingly better vehicles in the USA. We may see them come out of, believe it or not, India and/or China. Don't bet on GM; it's a suckers bet every time.
That's 100% correct.
I'm in a debate right now on another site that is slamming China and Chinese people because of what they stand for and that they are "communist", etc....
I'll bet they'll embrace new technologies and have access to them well before we will.
You don't even have to wait that long to realize how far behind we are in just about everything else in life...just pay a visit to Europe, Asia, etc...and immediately one understands how backward-ass we are here.
Noz-
Not very many electric cars are selling in Europe, or anywhere else for that matter. Likewise, GM for example, is responsible for many small car hits in Europe.
As for China, one of the biggest hits in China is GM's Buick division.
Also, I think that this idea that only boutique automakers can make electric cars is the same kind of thinking that got Marty Eberhard removed from Tesla.
Making electric cars is the easy part. Making them and selling them for a profit is the issue.
GM already developed a great electric car, possibly the best electric car ever created. GM knows quite well how to make an electric car, they just don't how to do it a profit.
New cars, such an electric car, require millions of units to be sold to start achieving effective economies of scale - the supply chain to achieve 1 million electric automobiles doesn't even exist today - and it wasn't even a concept just a few years ago.
When automakers were essentially hand-building the first set of electric cars, the real world cost of those cars - because a production facility did not exist - would have easily exceeded 50,000 per car.
Even if GM subsidized the cost to $30,000, am I really to believe that that consumers would have flocked to a car that would have required the average Angeleno, for example, to take a week off of work just to drive to Las Vegas and back?
Hi Dahc:
I know you understand when I say this. I think the problems we are facing and about to face environmentally, socially, etc.... transcend any economic viability that we want to see or "need" to see to make things viable.
We're in so deep that the whole race as a whole needs a change of mentality and quick. If we continue down the path we are going, electric cars or not, we are going to end ourselves.
This may all sound very monkish or overly philosophical (I'm sure I've given plenty of dead brains a big headache over at VWVortex.com) but this is the reality of it. The problems we are facing are all self-inflicted.
We are really facing ourselves in the mirror right now and very very few people are realizing where we really are in terms of our overall chances of continuing. It's a hard thing to grasp for people who will outlive the "transition" of our species but I think it's here. For corporations to now sit and haggle over pennies, dollars, or whatever, it means the people involved in these companies are as oblivious or uncaring as the next. We already know the lower-than-scum people who sit in or invest in corps like Halliburton aren't worth a damn.
It's a real shame we can't physically separate the people who care from the people who don't. I would love to see the latter group have their own place on a far away land or planet and spend the rest of their days believing whatever they believe in without getting in the way of the rest of us.
By the way, if you have the time, and are so inclined, watch this 2 hour documentary called ZEITGEIST...it really is fascinating and well done. If you want the link, let me know.
I
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