Keep the Cash -- Take Up Walking

Looks like the biggest industry in North America is about to go belly-up, as it falls victim to the recession – or so says those in charge of the auto industry.
In actual fact, the auto industry – which employs millions of people across North America for General Motors, Chrysler and Ford – is just as much to blame for its problems, as any other business is when it doesn’t make the cut.

As gas prices continued to increase, you’d figure the so-called “Big Three” automakers would have started producing more fuel efficient and even more alternative energy-driven vehicles. But as the oil and gas industry is in bed with the auto industry, neither saw the writing on the wall.

As oil tycoons continued to artificially increase the price of their products, driving up the costs to run the big, gas hogging vehicles being made and marketed in North America, those buying new vehicles turned to the foreign automakers, with their fuel efficient and hybrid-powered vehicles.

It wasn’t until after Toyota and Honda had already sold millions of hybrid vehicles in North America, and American-made auto sales slumped that the Big Three even considered jumping into the hybrid market.

The greatest irony, now that more people are doing whatever they can to cut expenses in this global economic mess, the Big Three automakers are forced to wake up and realize they are just as likely to go out of business, as the mom and pop shops down the road. Public transit use is up in major cities across North America, as people drive less to save more. Oil and gas prices have fallen sharply, as the need for the product has fallen so much so, even the evil oil tycoons can’t fake a need to force an increase. And people just aren’t buying big, gas guzzling vehicles anymore.

General Motors is threatening to close all of its auto making plants for January and part of February to stay alive. Ford and Chrysler have yet to announce how they too will threaten the world with massive unemployment, unless governments bail them out of their own sloppy mess.

It isn’t the business of government to interfere in the nature of private business. No one wants to lose their job, and the more people unemployed, the longer and harder this recession will last. However, even if governments don’t finance the auto sector, eventually things will get better.

The world won’t stop spinning and people won’t suddenly be stranded, unable to travel from point A to B. The world may be absent General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, but so be it. Tax dollars shouldn’t be used to pay for some private corporations mismanagement.

If and when the Big Three do go out of business, it may very well create other industries which are more environmentally sustainable, and finally force the evil oil tycoons out of business as well. There are many other ways to get around – electricity, solar, wind, and who can forget about our own two feet?

General Motors has already created a fully electric car, but they quietly killed the project because it was so successful. That’s right, they buried their success, so that we’d still be dependent upon the oil and gas industry to power the world.
Any company which hides its successes to fuel a dependency on a product is no different than a drug dealer pushing drugs on his customers, to keep them hooked. General Motors is like the pimp that gives you the occasional freebie, so that you go into withdrawal and eventually pay through the nose to acquire more ass.

Only the real ass in this scenario are the suits and ties pimping the North American auto market, and their just as trailer-trashy cousins, who run the oil and gas sector in the Middle East.

I for one hope they all go out of business, because then, finally, we will be free to explore alternatives to fossil fuels, by looking at ways to not just power our vehicles, but our homes, our businesses – our world – which are not only environmentally sustainable, and more cost effective, but also won’t lead us down the road to other dependencies.