The US & World Motor Vehicle Industry?

The US & World Motor Vehicle Industry?
by Max Earth
Monday 8th December '08


Twenty years ago or so I joined GreenPeace in Melbourne, my ex-Home town.

Eager & happy to “put-in” to the Cause of Saving the Planet, I volunteered in the city office.

Ha! What a mockery... of me....! I found the staff were nicely, pleasantly inheritanced all-of-them – long-hippy-hair, dreadlocks were definitely yet to be braved in the conservative streets of Hellbourne-er-Melbourne, but pricey “rainbow” clothing was acceptable.

Then, assuming nothing, merely observing, I was happy to put my trust in a few “solid-looking” dudes.

I was one of the many in teams, rallied into 12-seater minibuses each day & trucked to the suburbs to door-knock for memberships. One of them came out with me, to observe & guide me in the delicate art of flogging a membership to hesitant materialistic heathens (my term) living in over-consumptive middleclass opulance.

“Tone of delivery” was about the Essence the Dude taught me, being a naïve deluded child caught in a wicked catholic witch's brew as-I-was. And it worked! I made good sales that day. Thanks Dude!

Another Dude I sought some guidance from, was, I think, the head of the Melbourne office. I recall I asked him about the TERROR of the motorcar, & how one should go about “BRINGING IT DOWN” (Radical Speak!).

We felt our ground, talked, & then he gave out.

If you want to go at the motor vehicle industry, by all means! However......, first there's the collusion between the motor vehicle industry with the petroleum industry, & their collusion with the plastics industries-plural, the electronics industry, & the components industries, & the road-building industries, then there's the ............................................................

Hmmmmm.........

How a balloon of naivity grew-up.

Deflation wasn't quite the word, more like a minor implosion.

So.... I kept riding my bike!

Lately, if nobody's noticed, the motor vehicle industry is in a bit of strife.

But which “industry” isn't, or won't soon be in a bit of strife?

Hmmmm.

The US government is currently replete with committees commissioned to sort this
“rather important industry” out. “Rather important” in-the-LONG-view, only so far as it is a key income resource for wage-earners connected to it.

In regard to the future of Humanity, the auto industry pales as negative dross. But in the “Free World”, the 'enlightenment mob' demand that it is our nature to be conned to wasting time, effort, money & Peace-of-mind gratifying our superficial, skindeep desires for 'pretty colors', fancy looks, comfort, &, in autoland, SPEED!!!, rather than keeping our egomaniacal desires in Pandora's Box, superceded by pragmatism, efficiency, economy (HO!? Economy???) & an Higher Quality of..., of...., of...., LIFE?

But apparently, that's another issue....

The big three of Detroit – Ford, GM Chrysler, are begging the government to bail them out, & LO! the government is not signing the cheques.

Here we have a question which really has to be answered before the US government CAN help the auto industry.

Can the industry keep providing unsustainable vehicles to the People?

Now this question has many components, like a fancy car. One is whether the makers can make & sell a car which does NOT pollute?

But where does pollution begin in the making, using & disposing of a car?

You wanna know were the pollution really begins?

In yer freakin' MIND, dude!

We'll let that one pass, aye?

AND, just to be unorthodox, where does it END???

Hmmmm....

To extend the monologue of the 2nd Dude, the proportion of the society which depends on motor vehicles is perhaps the most disproportionate of all unnecessary addictions. As the beast itself consumes more of our income, time & energy than everything else in our micro-kingdoms next to a HOME, so it consumes more of the government's income, time & energy than most everything else this side of the moon.

Run-away Space programs & fear-of-our-neighbour military expenditure aside.

AND what about the RESOURCES???

Hmmm...

Thus far, the auto industry has had unbridled freedom to produce the biggest pile of scrap, waste pollution, carnage, injury, & insult to the Human species, & to the Mutha Earth, than everything but the Catholic church. The “convenience” et al it brings, in the end, is ideal for making us all slothenly, loose-brained, egomaniacal idiots – zombies who can't get out of the cage of small-minded mememe thinking.

Now, to shatter the assumptions – I like cars! I saw a luvely old Holden Torana today – Ah! What a Rippa, mate. Not quite an XU-1, but nice to see a clean 30-plus year old (almost-OZZIE!) car still cutting it.

But the original concept of a people mover went a bit silly, whenever, & marketeers went crazy conning the people they needed all the crap that comes with today's transporters.

Now, as if it wasn't then..., “planned obscelesence” seems to run our lives?

It was found as FUNDAMENTAL to a company's survival that the buyer should NEED another product after about three-to-five years, so that the company could stay in business to... flog MORE!

While the “ECONOMY's” running high, that is on the backbreaking poverty of everyone else, these fatal flaws in economic, commercial policy, have been free to exploit everything & everyone.

It has been through this, that Humanity now faces it's downfall.

Some months ago I scribed a piece on “planned obscelesence” but it's stuck in my phone.
So, as it seems pertinent to today's US car industry shamozzle, I'll patiently transcribe it over by keyboard, to the computer. I hope I can post it to my blogsite.

Here it be...


GLOBAL CLASS ACTION AGAINST “PLANNED OBSCELESENCE” called for.


“Heavy contributor to environmental chaos”, say experts.

95% of all manufactured products have obscelesence planned into them in design, creating massive waste & pollution.

An All-Product Scrutiny Commission demanded by huge majority of global population.

“Ve sik of ze zero-qvality crap in all ze stores!” harps Helmut of Hamborg.

“I don't li-ike it!” pipes Pauline of Peanutland.

“Whah th' feerk cayn't I git me sturff 'at'll last 20, 30, 40 goddammed YEARS?” asked Arnie of America.

“People don't borrow an' lend tools now, in-case it breaks! So we buy our own tools & shit,but can only afford crap-quality junk, that fails months out-of-warranty!”

Sheds globally, are in crisis, oozing with busted garbage, none of it more than five years old!

Kev of Canberra cursed “CRIKEY! It's consumption CARNAGE out there!?”

Vlad of Vostok agreed: “Sank Gott it's not in VODKA, ziss P.O.!

P.O. MUST GO!

P.O. MUST GO!

RA-RA-RAH!!!

YA-YA-YA!

Well, that was it. Short & spiffy.

As the US government, Congress & Senate, debate the future for “autos” let me ask them to consider, I mean REALLY Consider the above comments, comical & invented, & see how they go including the HARD, REALPolitik Issues that MUST be addressed, especially about the on-the-surface blithe issue of “planned obscelesence”?

This is of course a weighty issue for the Good Ol' US of A, because the born-to-be-obscelete auto really is part of the culture there.

This begs the question for Barack Obama: “CHANGE, by how much?”

I know Mr Obama & Co., would be only too happy to lift America above the Magnificent-yet-all-too-Common egomania of that Great Country. Yet he, or any, cannot be expected to do that. Going beyond bald egoism is our own Task, & our own Task Alone. The best he & his cooperators in government & the authorities can do, is direct Good Policy at the wastemaker corporations. Policies which serve the function of being a set of guidelines within which makers of everything must remain.

It seems laughable to suggest that GM, Ford, Chrysler, if they survive, would find in their own boardrooms, Wisdom enough to alter the course of car-making globally, to the point where such planetarily pernicious concepts, particularly of “planned obscelesence”, are removed from the design, planning, marketing, fashion, spare parts & reliability window of producing a People mover.

But..........., as we're at that delicate “precipous”, in danger of falling off the edge of the world, & through our addictions, taking everyone else with us, it is quite plainly CLEAR, that commercial interests who design short term life spans into ANYTHING, need a swift kick up the tailpipe, in order to sort their dreams from the PLANETARY REALITY.

While Americans are seemingly irretrievably addicted to expressing their ego, in typically rather ostentatious ways, the all-American marketeer will always be ready to lend-a-hand, & inflate the desires to excess.

So saving the US auto industry from itself, & from the American ego, demands that the government tackles this very issue, & negotiates with the auto boardrooms to re-address their “reason detre”.

“Fashion”, another 'trend' we do not really need, & definitely do not really need in matters of curtailing our propensities toward unsustainable lifestyles, has to be steeered, so that the buying masses can learn to distinguish between a superfluous product & something which does the job more than adequately, while keeping the resources in positive territory.

As the US government has recently bought part-ownership of the big US auto makers, they are now able to command their direction.

While the whole world thinks America is more ego than Intelligence, I, as the Tribal Bowman, fire the above burning Arrow into the Congress, & aim to ignite those-therein's minds with some HARD Truths about how BEST to amalgamate the Qualities of the Peoples of the USA, with the Needs of the world.

If you ask me what would be the best thing they could do, I'd say something like “bring in some Soviet Minds.”

Soviet because they are Intelligent beyond egomania, see things in a far wider, Wiser, longterm way.

Funny how GW & the Pentagon's minds tell us the Russians are still the evil empire. Could that be the GW-type “ego” talking?

I think so....!

Yours,

Omaxa bin Eartha
aka Max Earth.
Uluruba.