The following journal entry is from David Byrne's (singer/songwriter/artist/former Talking Head) website. I know everyone has enough to read already, but this is short and Byrne makes a great point. Here it is......
03.07.09: Good Investments and Bad Investments
An accounting firm that’s been analyzing GM says that even with the $30 billion bailout they’ve requested, GM won’t stay afloat. Pragmatically, it would be sheer lunacy to throw $30 billion at GM executives — who still ride around in their town cars and fly on company jets — only to see them allocate it for their own golden parachutes before their company, and the cities of Detroit, Flint and a few others, become giant ghost towns. I have a feeling there will be a knock-on effect, and other ghost towns will arise in the wake of those Rust Belt towns’ demises.
GM’s management has made few comments re: altering their course; there has been little mention of producing green cars, or building public transportation systems or infrastructure. They talk mostly about closing plants, cutting divisions and firing workers — but not about rethinking what they make, or their role in the world. It seems they basically want to stay the course — but in a smaller boat. The passengers who can’t fit get thrown overboard. The boat is headed for Niagara Falls, so as far as I can see, it doesn’t really matter what size it is.
There are options. Workers could take over the factories and start producing stuff that suits the world as it really is. Or the factories could be nationalized, and the government could force the factory infrastructure and manpower to begin making stuff that benefits the population. Assembly lines would have to be altered, refitted and modified — but it’s either that, or sell the machines as scrap steel. Or the companies could make changes voluntarily — re-jigger themselves to build trolley cars, high-speed rail systems, and hybrids. Some of these, being public works, would probably receive a large amount of government financing — funding for work, NOT a bailout.
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A smart guy, David Byrne. It's interesting to think about these ideas in relation to the discussion we had last weekend about whether government is a help or a hindrance in our relationship with cars and car culture!
ReplyDeleteYou could make a case that Detroit, Flint et al. have been largely ghost towns for some time now (that's what prompted Michael Moore's first big hit, "Roger and Me"). There's a whole art form in exploring and photographing dead industrial sites and ruins of the industrial era - see, for example, Nicole Rork's "Detroit Ruins" project (http://www.detroitruins.net/locations.php , or Camilo Jose Vergara's work, mentioned in this 2006 article from "Lost" magazine:
http://www.lostmag.com/issue2/detroit.php
Ah, so much to read and think about... Thanks for this, John.