Excellent summary, that's why I have much more respect for European parliaments that have proportional representation such that Greens, etc, have at least some voice in making policy. Obviously that isn't happening in the U.S. the best we can hope for is instant run off voting that would allow people to vote for third parties without worrying so much about something like a Nader spoiler factor. If we truly want to open up American politics towards BOTH Green left and Libertarian right ideas it's perhaps right up there with campaign finance reform as the most important reform to be made to our increasingly corrupt unrepresentative political ssystem we have in the U.S.
State militias don't need ICBMs, etc. The Iraqi militia is handing our asses to us on a platter with a few "improvised explosive devices." Guerrilla warfare is a winner because it's almost impossible to beat someone on their own territory when they can blend into the civilian population.
Some European countries are starting to wise up about this as well, the main defense method of the Swiss is called "armed neutrality." It means they have no formal standing army, but all their adult citizens have an ASSAULT riffle in their house and know how to use it. Result the Swiss have NO terrorism problem, and little crime. Although I consider myself a leftist I think this damn near NRA style solution to national defense is pretty smart.
I wish I could mod you up to 10. All this crap about being bi-partisan, moderate, and compromising has done nothing but allowed the country to drift dangerously far towards the authoritarian right with no active opposition being given. We were supposed to have a balance of powers, well that balance produced by opposition doesn't happen if there is no opposition.
Ask yourself what Dr, Martin Luther King would do in these situation would he compromise? Hell no he'd be out in the streets fighting our increasing tyranny with non violent civil disobedience. Here's what Dr. King had to say to the moderates of his day:
"This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy."
Dr. martin Luther King,""I had a dream speech, Aug 28th 1963
If by "The current [Dems] leadership are a bunch of wild-eyed, press hogging nutballs." you mean ball less wonders who have done NOTHING to oppose Bush's lying us into war and riding roughshod over the constitution I would agree with you. The Dems have a few good eggs like Feingold, McKinney, Conyers, and Kucinich who actually act as opposition to Bush but in the main the Dems DLC leadership like Lieberman are ball less suck ups to the neo-cons and Bush. In fact the Dems actively destroy their best up and coming leaders like Hackett and Cindy Sheehan both of whom were forced to bow out by the Dems leadership. The Daily Show had an excellent look at the ball less wonder quality of Dems on Tuesday night. If you have a good local Dem who stands up for your rights by all means vote for them, but don't expect me too DLC Dems like Lieberman, Hilary Clinton, Schumer, Biden, etc, to change anything other than possible be WORSE prigs about censorship than the heavily distracted Bush and call for a draft in the name of "fairness." Fuck that!
Jeffersonian self sufficient farmer ring a bell? And yes he had slaves, blah, blah. But at least there was an IDEAL once of freedom, self sufficiency, and small enterprises in America. Now people are too greedy and cynical to even strive for that ideal and make it better and more inclusive. I think the Reagan era was the real start of America's slide into totally self centered no remorse greed worship. Anyone here old enough to remember "greed is good," from the 80s?
I hope you enjoy your Scandinavian cell phone asswipe. Nokia ring a bell? Linux ring a bell? Guess where both Linux and Nokia come from, that's right European countries with vacation benefits. Oops...
Kentfowl sed: "Just my dumb luck for picking a profession that Indians and Chinese can kick my ass in."
That would be EVERY field as there are literally 7 times as many Chinese and Indians than Americans. Until we organize to lift wages back up ALL fields are going to experience downward wage pressure after all without any countervailing force all the incentives of owners and managers are to reduce labor costs. The flip side of reduced labor cost means YOUR wage goes down my friend.
What a load of crap, even basic commodity p.c.'s can record BETTTER than c.d. sound as in 24 bit samples at 96,000 samples per second. On a Mac it's even pretty easy to record a professional sounding cd on say pro tools. Yes there is maybe a 6 month learning curve to learn about things equalization, how to mic drums, whether or not to use compression, etc. After that you are good to go. Then it's just a question of getting the word out and gigging and selling cds. And hint if there is no middle man gouging 90% of the sale price of the cd into their greedy little pockets you have to sell far fewer cds to make money.
Artists from Public Enemy to The Throwing Muses are figuring this out and telling the record companies to bite them.
If you mean military power you are WAY off the mark, we can't even hold the 5 mile stretch of road between the heavily fortified "green zone," and the airport with our maximum number of military people deployed to the point where some military commanders think the military is dangerously close to broken. Even hard core neo-cons like William Buckly are conceding the war in Iraq is most likely lost and it's time to withdraw.
Nor are we even economically powerful our economy is propped up by a 750 million dollar trade gap with China PER DAY. In addition we are a nation of people in heavy credit card debt, with no manufacturing base, a declining IT base, and 1/6th of whose people have no health insurance and who could die of a simple infection. Furthermore compared to Japan or Europe our transport infrastructure is dangerously dependent on cheap oil.
Powerful my ass, more like arrogant and full of the hubris that happens before a great fall. Humpty Dumpty probably thought he was powerful too...
If only it were that simple, in 08 for example who am I going to vote for, for president, Hilary Clinton? Give me a fucking break her rhetoric against Iran has been EVERY bit as intense as Bush, and Cheney's, and she called for 60,000 MORE troops this summer. So Bush's policies of endless war that lead to a national security state that lead to laws like one this one being proposed to limit our freedom to discuss government wrong doing are likely to continue under Hilary. Plus she is MORE likely to grab the guns that some of us were talking about using to fight back, and she is interested in banning violent video games, and is good friends with Tipper Gore who tried to get Dead Kennedies records banned in the 80s. The only thing as someone on the LEFT that I can imagine worse than Bush's horror show is Hilary's horror show. And no I'm not willing to throw EVERYTHING else overboard to protect a womens' right to choose. I believe in choice but in the dire situation we are in now the Dems need more than one issue to snag my vote. They need to prove they can overturn our current war mongering, fear mongering, "national security" state and in 5 years they have not exerted ONE IOTA of effort in that direction, their bad, SHAME on them. In fact Lieberman gave us the Department of Homeland Security (little better than the S.S.) double shame on him.
So what to do? Vote for Dems at the local and state level who aren't DLC whores, vote for Greens and Libertarians, support your local co-op, protect our vanishing wilderness, join a union, detach yourself from this corrupt government, become a D.I.Y. anarchist, but above all don't let the fear mongering of the government and the MSM make you afraid to think, feel, and speak your mind.
A handful of civilian "insurgents" in Iraq are doing pretty well right now against our army. "We"can't even hold the 5 mile strip between the green zone and the airport. If it really comes down to fighting the government in a guerrilla war we have an EXCELLENT chance of winning. Almost every guerrilla war in the 220th century was successful, do Mao and Vietnam ring a bell? And not that's not saying I support communism or jihad, just that guerrilla war is a successful TACTIC regardless of ideology involved
Wow we still have people red baiting in the 21st century? Does it occur to you that there are ways of organizing a society that are neither the laissez affair capitalism of Dickens's England, nor state controlled authoritarian socialism? Decentralized OSS development would be one obvious example for Slashodot, another example would be food co-ops that are organized around principles of consensus, non hierarchy, and return of equal profits to their owner members, while taking NO government money and selling on an open market. Another example would be credit unions which are in essence cooperatively owned banks, again with no government support, and operating in an open market. There are many ways of providing the needs of society that are utterly orthogonal to BOTH communism and greed oriented corporate capitalism. To portray our economic options in those purely black and white terms shows only your narrow understanding of the world.
Clap, clap, clap. Best post I've read on slashdot in a loooong time. Live long and prosper my friend, for you have spoken some real hard truths that few people want to acknowledge.
PHB sed: "That's a bit naive. Most of our employees are devious little buggers. As soon as no-one is looking they're sending amusing flash/avi/mpeg between themselves, forwarding jokes someone outside sent to their gmail account (and they've cut-n-pasted them into work mail), etc."
That's called being a human being, taking a break, and breathing a little. Ironically enough that bit of relaxation can even make an employee more PRODUCTIVE as in feeling relaxed before ANOTHER multi hour stint of coding, graphic design, etc. Nothing will make an employee less productive and more likely to lash out (back on topic) than crushing their human spirit despite what you latest handbook about proactively empowering synergistic team oriented marketing plans may say.
Fear of employees, fear of Arabs owning the ports, fear of non existent WMDs in Iraq, fear of porn, fear of violent video games, fear little Johnny will be kidnapped if he's out of eye sight for even a millisecond, fear, fear, fear, it's all the MSM and our "leaders" speak of these days. Ever since 911 the U.S. has become a nation ruled by fear and paranoia. Is anyone sick of it yet?
Whatever happened to rugged individualism, proud freedom, and respect for individual dignity without need for spying on employees, and fretting about "intellectual property" and "national security." How diminished we have become, how pathetic, how cowering.
Fight back damn it, join unions to protect your rights at work, protest, make yourself heard before the candle of freedom is extinquished entirely.
Actually let me clarify a bit marketing in general is not great, but magazine and tee vee marketing that appeals mainly to the senses and not the mind is the worst and truly evil. To sell things based purely on visual sex appeal or fear of unpopularity which is common in tee vee and magazine ads leads to fundamentally bad purchasing decisions. Google ads being text based at least appeal more on the cerebral level and they are also easier to ignore so I think they are better than most ads if not perfect.
That's why I can say it's probably Ok for Mozilla to take money from google but that marketing in general is evil. I would be worried if Mozilla started running tee vee ads featuring models and not talking about technical features or the philosophy of open source development. I haven't seen the New York Times full page ad so I have nothing to say about that.
Although I like and use Firefox as my main browser and even think it's OK they are using google ad revenue, I must dispute one part of your post, MARKETING IS EVIL.
Why? Because almost by definition marketing is the feeding of biased information to people in order to persuade them to in a sheep like fasion buy or use your product. It's because of marketing that U.S. society is so fundamentally screwed up featuring things like low efficiency 4wd SUVS for highway commutes, mini mansions bigger than anyone needs that waste land and energy, and spread out strip malls and suburbs that also waste land and energy. I would almost go as far as to say that marketing and our corporate MSM is what makes us an aggressor nation that "preemptively" attacks oil rich countries to support our shallow selfish lifestyle.
A shallow selfish lifestyle that further will leave little of lasting value to history. Will anyone remember American Idol 50 years from now? The only thing we will be remembered for is the internet and maybe medical advances and that's why I bother with slashdot at all.
GM might make a couple of efficient show cars they sell a few thousand copies of, however the vast majority of their marketing effort went into SUVs and "light" (pickup) trucks. A couple years ago well over 50% percent of U.S. car sales were SUVs and light trucks due to this aggressive marketing.
Toyota is the opposite of this case they sell a few SUVs but most of the cars they actually sell have fuel efficient engines like the Corallas, 4 cylinder trucks, Priuses and to a lesser extent the Camery but even they are more efficient than V8 SUVs with a 32 mpg highway rating and ranking very good in C02 emissions.
Do I wish the big 3s management had made wiser decisions? Obviously as someone who supports the idea of U.S. union labor I wish the big 3 auto makers had made smarter decisions but they didn't and now they (and all of us in Michigan) are going to pay the price.
And no I'm not an auto worker, or even in a union job, I'm a free lance web designer and landscaper, but I sincerely wish there were union IT jobs available as I think it would blunt the influence of over bearing pointy haired bosses and I would prefer a job with good benefits and job security over free lancing.
And diesel doesn't just have to come from oil, ever heard of bio diesel. Bio diesel also lowers C02 output by 75% because when the plants grow they take up nearly the amount of C02 that is burned. Face it sooner or later the U.S. bug car juggernaut will end, we can do it now and have a smooth transition, or later when it will really hurt.
I call bullshit union workers are not one bit less "trustworthy" than non union workers. A non union individual can easily go postal, flip out, change all the pass words and disappear very easily I'm sure it happens every day. In fact I would say a union employee is likely to be more trustworthy is they know they have some job security and that they are going to receive fair compensation for their labor.
There is nothing "mature" about letting a few unaccountable CEOs accumulate billions while they simultaneously exert downward pressure on wages both here in the U.S. and abroad. There is nothing virtuous or admirable in supporting raw rank greed. All the major philosophies secular and religious universally condemn greed and avarice as vices. And no economics is not a philosophy it's a non empirical "science," i.e. a pseudo science like psychology. If economics were a true science we would have figured out how to prevent bubbles a long time ago.
1. The CAFE standards are very low considering what we could accomplish with current technology, for example a 157 mpg NON HYBRID that is going to be released in Germany for 13,000 dollars (U.S.)
2. The reason they "sell a lot of them," is they advertised the hell out of them and in "clever" ways to make pencil necked pointy haired bosses feel insecure about their masculinity if they didn't commute to work on perfectly flat pavement in a 4000 pound 4 wd truck that can do 120 mph when the speed limit is 70 tops. Yes tee vee advertising propaganda and group think do work for a while until it costs too much to be "cool." Then suddenly last years "cool" becomes "un cool" finally, thankfully a Prius is "cool." As we inch closer to peak oil and 3/gallon gas those German diesels will win and the big 3 will lose and that has nothing to do with unions and everything to do with short sighted marketing and design decisions.
In your case I will give you the virtues of being civil, thoughtful, and polite (yes qualities I could use as well:)) unlike the parent poster, however I think your facts are a bit off the mark. According to a Washington Post article called SUV sales drop sharply on December 2nd:
"Sales of all new vehicles in the United States were off 2.8 percent in November from a year ago, with Detroit automakers bearing the brunt of the industry slowdown, according to Autodata Corp. Sales of some SUVs were off more than 50 percent from last year. Meanwhile, U.S. sales by Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. continued to surge.
At General Motors Corp., the world's largest automaker, sales were down 7.6 percent. The slump coincided with the company's announcement last month that it would cut 30,000 jobs by 2008 and close several plants. GM sales have lagged since it ended "employee pricing" discounts in September.
Ford Motor Co., the No. 2 automaker, said sales fell 15 percent. In response, GM and Ford announced yesterday that they will make fewer trucks in coming months while boosting car output. Ford said it will increase first-quarter car production by 21 percent from a year earlier."
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent summary, that's why I have much more respect for European parliaments that have proportional representation such that Greens, etc, have at least some voice in making policy. Obviously that isn't happening in the U.S. the best we can hope for is instant run off voting that would allow people to vote for third parties without worrying so much about something like a Nader spoiler factor. If we truly want to open up American politics towards BOTH Green left and Libertarian right ideas it's perhaps right up there with campaign finance reform as the most important reform to be made to our increasingly corrupt unrepresentative political ssystem we have in the U.S.
g
See for example: http://www.fairvote.org/irv/
http://www.instantrunoff.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_votin
I agree, that's why Firefox with the adblock extension is your friend:
http://mozilla.com/
http://adblock.mozdev.org/
State militias don't need ICBMs, etc. The Iraqi militia is handing our asses to us on a platter with a few "improvised explosive devices." Guerrilla warfare is a winner because it's almost impossible to beat someone on their own territory when they can blend into the civilian population.
Some European countries are starting to wise up about this as well, the main defense method of the Swiss is called "armed neutrality." It means they have no formal standing army, but all their adult citizens have an ASSAULT riffle in their house and know how to use it. Result the Swiss have NO terrorism problem, and little crime. Although I consider myself a leftist I think this damn near NRA style solution to national defense is pretty smart.
I wish I could mod you up to 10. All this crap about being bi-partisan, moderate, and compromising has done nothing but allowed the country to drift dangerously far towards the authoritarian right with no active opposition being given. We were supposed to have a balance of powers, well that balance produced by opposition doesn't happen if there is no opposition.
,""I had a dream speech, Aug 28th 1963
Ask yourself what Dr, Martin Luther King would do in these situation would he compromise? Hell no he'd be out in the streets fighting our increasing tyranny with non violent civil disobedience. Here's what Dr. King had to say to the moderates of his day:
"This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy."
Dr. martin Luther King
http://www.jdscomm.com/drking/kingdream.html
Many people today mouth respect for Dr. King, few realize how radical he truly was by the standards of today.
If by "The current [Dems] leadership are a bunch of wild-eyed, press hogging nutballs." you mean ball less wonders who have done NOTHING to oppose Bush's lying us into war and riding roughshod over the constitution I would agree with you. The Dems have a few good eggs like Feingold, McKinney, Conyers, and Kucinich who actually act as opposition to Bush but in the main the Dems DLC leadership like Lieberman are ball less suck ups to the neo-cons and Bush. In fact the Dems actively destroy their best up and coming leaders like Hackett and Cindy Sheehan both of whom were forced to bow out by the Dems leadership. The Daily Show had an excellent look at the ball less wonder quality of Dems on Tuesday night. If you have a good local Dem who stands up for your rights by all means vote for them, but don't expect me too DLC Dems like Lieberman, Hilary Clinton, Schumer, Biden, etc, to change anything other than possible be WORSE prigs about censorship than the heavily distracted Bush and call for a draft in the name of "fairness." Fuck that!
Jeffersonian self sufficient farmer ring a bell? And yes he had slaves, blah, blah. But at least there was an IDEAL once of freedom, self sufficiency, and small enterprises in America. Now people are too greedy and cynical to even strive for that ideal and make it better and more inclusive. I think the Reagan era was the real start of America's slide into totally self centered no remorse greed worship. Anyone here old enough to remember "greed is good," from the 80s?
Then chicks will love me.
Oh wait...
I hope you enjoy your Scandinavian cell phone asswipe. Nokia ring a bell? Linux ring a bell? Guess where both Linux and Nokia come from, that's right European countries with vacation benefits. Oops...
Kentfowl sed: "Just my dumb luck for picking a profession that Indians and Chinese can kick my ass in."
That would be EVERY field as there are literally 7 times as many Chinese and Indians than Americans. Until we organize to lift wages back up ALL fields are going to experience downward wage pressure after all without any countervailing force all the incentives of owners and managers are to reduce labor costs. The flip side of reduced labor cost means YOUR wage goes down my friend.
What a load of crap, even basic commodity p.c.'s can record BETTTER than c.d. sound as in 24 bit samples at 96,000 samples per second. On a Mac it's even pretty easy to record a professional sounding cd on say pro tools. Yes there is maybe a 6 month learning curve to learn about things equalization, how to mic drums, whether or not to use compression, etc. After that you are good to go. Then it's just a question of getting the word out and gigging and selling cds. And hint if there is no middle man gouging 90% of the sale price of the cd into their greedy little pockets you have to sell far fewer cds to make money.
Artists from Public Enemy to The Throwing Muses are figuring this out and telling the record companies to bite them.
If you mean military power you are WAY off the mark, we can't even hold the 5 mile stretch of road between the heavily fortified "green zone," and the airport with our maximum number of military people deployed to the point where some military commanders think the military is dangerously close to broken. Even hard core neo-cons like William Buckly are conceding the war in Iraq is most likely lost and it's time to withdraw.
Nor are we even economically powerful our economy is propped up by a 750 million dollar trade gap with China PER DAY. In addition we are a nation of people in heavy credit card debt, with no manufacturing base, a declining IT base, and 1/6th of whose people have no health insurance and who could die of a simple infection. Furthermore compared to Japan or Europe our transport infrastructure is dangerously dependent on cheap oil.
Powerful my ass, more like arrogant and full of the hubris that happens before a great fall. Humpty Dumpty probably thought he was powerful too...
If only it were that simple, in 08 for example who am I going to vote for, for president, Hilary Clinton? Give me a fucking break her rhetoric against Iran has been EVERY bit as intense as Bush, and Cheney's, and she called for 60,000 MORE troops this summer. So Bush's policies of endless war that lead to a national security state that lead to laws like one this one being proposed to limit our freedom to discuss government wrong doing are likely to continue under Hilary. Plus she is MORE likely to grab the guns that some of us were talking about using to fight back, and she is interested in banning violent video games, and is good friends with Tipper Gore who tried to get Dead Kennedies records banned in the 80s. The only thing as someone on the LEFT that I can imagine worse than Bush's horror show is Hilary's horror show. And no I'm not willing to throw EVERYTHING else overboard to protect a womens' right to choose. I believe in choice but in the dire situation we are in now the Dems need more than one issue to snag my vote. They need to prove they can overturn our current war mongering, fear mongering, "national security" state and in 5 years they have not exerted ONE IOTA of effort in that direction, their bad, SHAME on them. In fact Lieberman gave us the Department of Homeland Security (little better than the S.S.) double shame on him.
So what to do? Vote for Dems at the local and state level who aren't DLC whores, vote for Greens and Libertarians, support your local co-op, protect our vanishing wilderness, join a union, detach yourself from this corrupt government, become a D.I.Y. anarchist, but above all don't let the fear mongering of the government and the MSM make you afraid to think, feel, and speak your mind.
Err 20th century doh, Freudian slip I only wish I was in the 220th century, couldn't be an worse than this rathole of a decade.
A handful of civilian "insurgents" in Iraq are doing pretty well right now against our army. "We"can't even hold the 5 mile strip between the green zone and the airport. If it really comes down to fighting the government in a guerrilla war we have an EXCELLENT chance of winning. Almost every guerrilla war in the 220th century was successful, do Mao and Vietnam ring a bell? And not that's not saying I support communism or jihad, just that guerrilla war is a successful TACTIC regardless of ideology involved
Wow we still have people red baiting in the 21st century? Does it occur to you that there are ways of organizing a society that are neither the laissez affair capitalism of Dickens's England, nor state controlled authoritarian socialism? Decentralized OSS development would be one obvious example for Slashodot, another example would be food co-ops that are organized around principles of consensus, non hierarchy, and return of equal profits to their owner members, while taking NO government money and selling on an open market. Another example would be credit unions which are in essence cooperatively owned banks, again with no government support, and operating in an open market. There are many ways of providing the needs of society that are utterly orthogonal to BOTH communism and greed oriented corporate capitalism. To portray our economic options in those purely black and white terms shows only your narrow understanding of the world.
Clap, clap, clap. Best post I've read on slashdot in a loooong time. Live long and prosper my friend, for you have spoken some real hard truths that few people want to acknowledge.
PHB sed: "That's a bit naive. Most of our employees are devious little buggers. As soon as no-one is looking they're sending amusing flash/avi/mpeg between themselves, forwarding jokes someone outside sent to their gmail account (and they've cut-n-pasted them into work mail), etc."
That's called being a human being, taking a break, and breathing a little. Ironically enough that bit of relaxation can even make an employee more PRODUCTIVE as in feeling relaxed before ANOTHER multi hour stint of coding, graphic design, etc. Nothing will make an employee less productive and more likely to lash out (back on topic) than crushing their human spirit despite what you latest handbook about proactively empowering synergistic team oriented marketing plans may say.
Fear of employees, fear of Arabs owning the ports, fear of non existent WMDs in Iraq, fear of porn, fear of violent video games, fear little Johnny will be kidnapped if he's out of eye sight for even a millisecond, fear, fear, fear, it's all the MSM and our "leaders" speak of these days. Ever since 911 the U.S. has become a nation ruled by fear and paranoia. Is anyone sick of it yet?
Whatever happened to rugged individualism, proud freedom, and respect for individual dignity without need for spying on employees, and fretting about "intellectual property" and "national security." How diminished we have become, how pathetic, how cowering.
Fight back damn it, join unions to protect your rights at work, protest, make yourself heard before the candle of freedom is extinquished entirely.
Actually let me clarify a bit marketing in general is not great, but magazine and tee vee marketing that appeals mainly to the senses and not the mind is the worst and truly evil. To sell things based purely on visual sex appeal or fear of unpopularity which is common in tee vee and magazine ads leads to fundamentally bad purchasing decisions. Google ads being text based at least appeal more on the cerebral level and they are also easier to ignore so I think they are better than most ads if not perfect.
That's why I can say it's probably Ok for Mozilla to take money from google but that marketing in general is evil. I would be worried if Mozilla started running tee vee ads featuring models and not talking about technical features or the philosophy of open source development. I haven't seen the New York Times full page ad so I have nothing to say about that.
Although I like and use Firefox as my main browser and even think it's OK they are using google ad revenue, I must dispute one part of your post, MARKETING IS EVIL.
Why? Because almost by definition marketing is the feeding of biased information to people in order to persuade them to in a sheep like fasion buy or use your product. It's because of marketing that U.S. society is so fundamentally screwed up featuring things like low efficiency 4wd SUVS for highway commutes, mini mansions bigger than anyone needs that waste land and energy, and spread out strip malls and suburbs that also waste land and energy. I would almost go as far as to say that marketing and our corporate MSM is what makes us an aggressor nation that "preemptively" attacks oil rich countries to support our shallow selfish lifestyle.
A shallow selfish lifestyle that further will leave little of lasting value to history. Will anyone remember American Idol 50 years from now? The only thing we will be remembered for is the internet and maybe medical advances and that's why I bother with slashdot at all.
GM might make a couple of efficient show cars they sell a few thousand copies of, however the vast majority of their marketing effort went into SUVs and "light" (pickup) trucks. A couple years ago well over 50% percent of U.S. car sales were SUVs and light trucks due to this aggressive marketing.
m l
Toyota is the opposite of this case they sell a few SUVs but most of the cars they actually sell have fuel efficient engines like the Corallas, 4 cylinder trucks, Priuses and to a lesser extent the Camery but even they are more efficient than V8 SUVs with a 32 mpg highway rating and ranking very good in C02 emissions.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/17759.sht
Do I wish the big 3s management had made wiser decisions? Obviously as someone who supports the idea of U.S. union labor I wish the big 3 auto makers had made smarter decisions but they didn't and now they (and all of us in Michigan) are going to pay the price.
And no I'm not an auto worker, or even in a union job, I'm a free lance web designer and landscaper, but I sincerely wish there were union IT jobs available as I think it would blunt the influence of over bearing pointy haired bosses and I would prefer a job with good benefits and job security over free lancing.
Within the lifetime of people writing these responses peak oil is going to kick our asses, then that "stupid car," will look very smart indeed.
2 0#more
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/3/1/3402/634
And diesel doesn't just have to come from oil, ever heard of bio diesel. Bio diesel also lowers C02 output by 75% because when the plants grow they take up nearly the amount of C02 that is burned. Face it sooner or later the U.S. bug car juggernaut will end, we can do it now and have a smooth transition, or later when it will really hurt.
I call bullshit union workers are not one bit less "trustworthy" than non union workers. A non union individual can easily go postal, flip out, change all the pass words and disappear very easily I'm sure it happens every day. In fact I would say a union employee is likely to be more trustworthy is they know they have some job security and that they are going to receive fair compensation for their labor.
There is nothing "mature" about letting a few unaccountable CEOs accumulate billions while they simultaneously exert downward pressure on wages both here in the U.S. and abroad. There is nothing virtuous or admirable in supporting raw rank greed. All the major philosophies secular and religious universally condemn greed and avarice as vices. And no economics is not a philosophy it's a non empirical "science," i.e. a pseudo science like psychology. If economics were a true science we would have figured out how to prevent bubbles a long time ago.
1. The CAFE standards are very low considering what we could accomplish with current technology, for example a 157 mpg NON HYBRID that is going to be released in Germany for 13,000 dollars (U.S.)
http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=1000
2. The reason they "sell a lot of them," is they advertised the hell out of them and in "clever" ways to make pencil necked pointy haired bosses feel insecure about their masculinity if they didn't commute to work on perfectly flat pavement in a 4000 pound 4 wd truck that can do 120 mph when the speed limit is 70 tops. Yes tee vee advertising propaganda and group think do work for a while until it costs too much to be "cool." Then suddenly last years "cool" becomes "un cool" finally, thankfully a Prius is "cool." As we inch closer to peak oil and 3/gallon gas those German diesels will win and the big 3 will lose and that has nothing to do with unions and everything to do with short sighted marketing and design decisions.
In your case I will give you the virtues of being civil, thoughtful, and polite (yes qualities I could use as well :)) unlike the parent poster, however I think your facts are a bit off the mark. According to a Washington Post article called SUV sales drop sharply on December 2nd:
c le/2005/12/01/AR2005120100737.html
"Sales of all new vehicles in the United States were off 2.8 percent in November from a year ago, with Detroit automakers bearing the brunt of the industry slowdown, according to Autodata Corp. Sales of some SUVs were off more than 50 percent from last year. Meanwhile, U.S. sales by Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co. continued to surge.
At General Motors Corp., the world's largest automaker, sales were down 7.6 percent. The slump coincided with the company's announcement last month that it would cut 30,000 jobs by 2008 and close several plants. GM sales have lagged since it ended "employee pricing" discounts in September.
Ford Motor Co., the No. 2 automaker, said sales fell 15 percent. In response, GM and Ford announced yesterday that they will make fewer trucks in coming months while boosting car output. Ford said it will increase first-quarter car production by 21 percent from a year earlier."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
Thus for now I'll maintain an SUV sales slump is a large part of the big 3s troubles.