[Corp. Watch] Taken for a ride: Saving transportation - and the economy - by killing GM

[Corporation Watch]

We Don't Need the General Motors Corporation

by Mike Ferner

(Project on Corporations, Law, and Democracy, June 8) -- Times are  
understandably fearful in car country right now, but staring us in the  
face is a rare opportunity -- to replace a terminally ill  
transportation system with something we can literally live with.

	To take advantage of this uncommon opportunity, we will have to do  
something far more profound (yet less costly) than a government bail- 
out or an act of Congress. As Paul Newman said in 'Cool Hand Luke', we  
have to "get our minds right" on one simple fact: We need reliable,  
sustainable transportation -- but not General Motors (GM).

	Contemplate the freedom implied in that statement for just a moment:  
we do not need GM. In fact, we're better off without it.

	The kingpin of the highway lobby, GM has been by far the biggest  
roadblock to reliable, sustainable transportation for one basic reason  
we seem to forget: It was never in the business of providing  
transportation. It was in the business of making money.

	That means that 90 years ago, when GM officials realized their  
marketshare had stalled out with less than 20 percent of the  
population owning automobiles, they had to do something. They had to  
get the other 80 percent of the population out of streetcars and  
trains, and into cars.

	Had the company been in the business of providing transportation, it  
could have started manufacturing and maintaining streetcars and rail- 
related equipment, but that was never going to be as profitable for GM  
as selling a car to every family in the nation (or at least coming as  
close to it as Henry Ford would allow).

	So GM put shareholders ahead of citizens, and decided the trains and  
streetcars had to go. The whole, sad story is told in painstaking  
detail in the documentary, 'Taken for a Ride,' a lively, engaging film  
released in 1996 that has never been more timely than now.

	I'm not going to tell you how GM did it. You can read about it, or  
get a copy of the film from your public library (and if they don't  
have it, put your tax dollars to work and ask them to order it).

	The point is, we have an abundance of everything it takes to provide  
reliable, sustainable transportation -- raw materials, skilled labor,  
and if we decide to exercise our 60% ownership of GM (courtesy of a  
$50 billion taxpayer bail-out), the capital.

	The entity known as General Motors Corporation is a legal creation  
most adept at concentrating economic and political power, buying off  
elected officials, and opposing seatbelts, pollution controls, and  
higher mileage, while maintaining executive lifestyles to make a  
pharaoh blush. But it is by no means needed to provide transportation.

	There are other, more humane models available for organizing finance  
and production. For example, the U.S. has a rich history of  
cooperative enterprises, but most Americans view them as arcane, and  
in modern times we have not provided optimal conditions for their  
growth, giving preferential treatment to corporations instead.

	But let's consider an example of a cooperative from a country that  
takes them seriously. The Mondragon Corporacion Cooperativa (MCC), a  
finance, manufacturing, and distribution cooperative based in the  
Basque region of Spain, has 85,000 employees and operations on five  
continents. It is not failing, or in need of a bail-out to prop it up.

	Can you say, "Goodbye, GM?"

	Michael Moore, internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker and  
native of Flint, Michigan -- one of the communities most devastated by  
the de-industrialization campaign that the U.S. government allowed GM  
to conduct -- puts it a little more bluntly.

	"Please, please, please don't save GM, simply so that a smaller  
version of it can build more Chevys or Cadillacs," Moore said. "Let's  
be clear about this: The only way to save [our transportation  
industry] is to kill GM."

	"But If we allow the tearing down of our auto plants" in the process,  
he continued, "we will sorely wish we still had them when we finally  
realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail,  
bullet trains, and cleaner buses. How will we [convert to that vision]  
if we allow our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to  
disappear?"

	Equally important, Moore offers better insight into this problem than  
90% of the "expert" talking heads when he describes hybrid cars as  
merely a temporary fix -- a so-called "bridge" technology.

	If that sounds like heresy, remember that we have been subjected to  
generations of advertising designed to make us feel beautiful, sexy,  
independent, and uncommonly smart if we bought the right kind of car.

	Add to that the not-so-delicate head bashing in recent years geared  
to make us believe that our very lives depend on letting the auto  
industry govern our work and our economy.

	It is indeed true that times of crisis are times of enormous  
opportunity. We just have to listen to Cool Hand Luke.