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The Forum > Article Comments > General Motors bankruptcy and nationalisation: exit strategy needed > Comments

General Motors bankruptcy and nationalisation: exit strategy needed : Comments

By James Gattuso, published 4/6/2009

The US Government has put up a staggering amount of money for General Motors, but does it know how to run a car company?

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This is history repeating itself - fascist history.

Russia’s “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” and Nazi Gemany’s “National Socialist German Workers Party”. Can you spot what they have in common?

The difference between the national socialism of Germany and the international socialism of Russia, was that in Russia the path to the socialist society was to be by way of outright nationalisation of industry.

In Germany on the other hand, formal legal private ownership was retained. The state was to dictate to the producers the overall direction of the enterprise, along with anything else they felt like dictating - prices, wages, quantities, quotas, suppliers, and so on.

Underlying the socialism of Marx, Lenin, Hitler, Mussolini and Obama, all in common, is the failure to understand the function of the entrepreneur that socialism is purposing to replace.

Entrepreneurs buy factors of production earlier, and sell finished goods later in time. If they successfully predict the future state of the market, they make profits; if unsuccessfully, they make losses.

Thus the source of profits is successfully applying scarce factors to the uses that the consumers consider most urgent. The entrepreneur functions to adjust scarce factors to an uncertain future so as to satisfy the values that *the masses* consider most urgent.

All this is lost on the socialists. They think the function of industry is to make *the producers* comfortable, to pay them wages and conditions *above* what the mass of consumers would willingly play, and to just repeat what was done in the past. They call blame capitalism for any shortcoming, and call on the state to pay any shortfall in their desired outcomes.

If entrepreneurs, exposed to profit and loss, and most of whom fail, cannot figure out how to make things at a price the consumers are willing to pay, it is absolutely laughable that Obama or his commissars, who pay no price for getting it wrong, would know
Posted by Wing Ah Ling, Thursday, 4 June 2009 1:52:08 PM
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It is the masses of people themselves, including the GM workers, who are causing the company to go broke because *they don’t want to buy its product at that price*!

Obama's plan merely takes capital and workers from producing cars that people do want at lower cost, and diverts it into producing cars that people don't want, at higher cost!

Obama is merely repeating the path to the wonderful fair and productive society that was first mapped out by – cop this – his fellow socialist travellers Hitler and Mussolini!

If that doesn’t ring alarm bells, I don’t know what will.
Posted by Wing Ah Ling, Thursday, 4 June 2009 1:54:49 PM
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Calm down WingaLing

Do you really want to rip the Sinues from Americas heart ?

Akin would be to sell Uluru to the Eskimos or lease all UK's Castles to Russia ..........get with the program mate !
Posted by ShazBaz001, Thursday, 4 June 2009 3:20:35 PM
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Obama is following an existing template in this rubbish.

After WW11 the UK government started to use their motor industry in a hugh social engineering experiment, in exchange for "help". They helped it so much, [directing where to build factories, & what cars to build] that they drove them, one by one, to the edge of extinction.

Finally they forced them alto onto the one boat, the HMAS British Leyland, & then, with the help of the unions, sank the lot.

The similarities between the UK, & Obama & the US unions is uncanny, & the outcome is equally assured.

The worst part, we have put an equally arrogant fool in charge here,
Posted by Hasbeen, Thursday, 4 June 2009 3:28:38 PM
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James, you say "History provides no reason to think anyone in DC knows how to run a car company." And I would say that in the last few decades American car companies don't know much about running car companies either.

Perhaps car companies will become a thing of the past as the world adjusts to life without oil and escalating shortages of everything else under the sun.

For those interested here is a link to a great suggestion as to what should be done with GM now that it is (hopefully but who knows) in more benign hands.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-06-01/goodbye-gm/
Posted by kulu, Thursday, 4 June 2009 11:13:02 PM
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I think you're all underestimating Obama.
After all, he was a community organiser.

"He's gonna change things...
Rearrange things...
Obama's gonna change the world."
Posted by KMB, Thursday, 4 June 2009 11:31:18 PM
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