Movie stuff.
Play Haley Off, Keyboard Cat (via chopperdave78)
A Rant
I’m not so sure that those Tumblrs who’ve commented/suggested ways to axe Detroit from the map actually understand what they’re talking about or the processes that got us to this point.e .
“You can’t blame the Unions, Detroit” or “Let’s let the magnificent and glorious inviisible hand do it’s natural thing” or “Duh, stupid Big 3 not realizing that people would eventually want more fuel-efficient cars, etc.,”
The invisible hand has never mattered in the auto industry. The carmaker lobbyists, oil companies, and especially CONGRESS have been fundamental in ensuring all sides feel the sting of this industry collapse.
Ask an economist what the most efficient way to bring alternative fuel/hybrids into the mainstream… I bet that economist answers immediately with “tax the gas pump” to some crazy, outrageous level. That would stop people from wanting to buy gas (at $75/gallon… I bet fewer Hummers would be cruising around). But since taxation as such is the complete opposite creed as sworn on by freemarketalists (to say nothing of the public outrage that would ensue), that option is off the books. Hell, we’re giving oil companies fatty tax breaks precisely so that everyone can KEEP on buying and re-fueling their autos.
Taxing the pump like that would immediately kill demand for ANY of the big 3’s current offerings… but I’m certain the industry’s response would be on a level we’ve never seen… Either that or the industry would fail and NOBODY could justify a government bailout.
The next proposition usually brought up is raising fuel standards at a super-high rate. However, this line of thinking became irrelevant sometime in the 1990’s as the car lobby and the U.S. Congress together maintained shockingly lax fuel-economy minimums even as the costs of production dropped siginificantly. So instead of developing new modes of production and investing in progressive technologies, the autos were able to pump more money into POWERFUL ENGINES and BIG ASS TRUCK BEDS and MORE SUV’s that maintained the abosolute minimun required fuel standards. That’s what AMerican consumers were all over for so long and it let the autos capitalize by charging high premiums for ESCALADES and LOADED UP MINIVANS without consumer guilt mattering at all.
The Unions are hardly to blame for the auto industry being where it is today… the Unions are obviously making this whole fiasco infinitely more difficult, but they didn’t get us here. Political lobbies (Auto Industry/Oil/stupid-ass non-solution ETHANOL & corn farmers) combined with an environmental stance that remained stuck in the 1980’s led us to this.
Unless it’s actually the consumer’s fault… for turning general demand away from the Big 3’s breadandbutter so quickly thus rendering any effort at progress a lost cause… Or we should blame OPEC or any other foreign cartels for artifically affecting oil prices… or, well, whatever else you want.
I’m pretty shocked, though, that general consensus on Tumblr is that it’s tooooottally the Unions’ fault or tooooottally the CEOs’ fault or toooooottally the fault of factory workers who want their health insurance or FUCK IT, it’s SMELLY- ASS DETROIT CITY’S FAULT FOR FUCKING THIS SHIT UP.
Just because you’re not willing to invest your own capital or ever-important thoughts on doing something about this ginormous problem doesn’t mean that the answer is “FUCK IT. I’M GONNA (MIS-)INTERPRET ADAM SMITH so that I CAN IGNORE THE PROBLEM.”
Unfortunately for the class of New York/urban creative/design/media types, we can’t solve the congressional/industrial/labor/energy clusterfuckingfuckfuck problem by simply adding white space, an efficient digital publishing model, and a healthy dose of Helvetica.
