In life’s challenges, we will either sink or swim. Work, sport, game, and politics – they all must end with either success or failure. It’s a harsh but exhilarating fact of life that fuels our competitive nature and keeps us coming back for more.
Outwit, Outlast, Outplay, right Mark Burnett? Survivor's producer couldn't have adopted a better tagline for his hit TV show. But this concept transcends Survivor. We watch bar fights, sporting events, and political campaigns understanding that the competitors will do whatever it takes to win - and there will always be winners and losers. We strive to get accepted into the most prestigious universities and start our careers in Fortune 500 companies to position ourselves for success. This is competition. This is capitalism.
When we lose, we admit defeat. It's back to the drawing board. Sport teams sign free agents, recruit new talent and make trades to get ready for next season. Reality TV rejects return to their normal lives and are sometimes lucky enough to use their recently found fame to pursue new careers. And what about us? What happens when the circumstances cause us to lose our jobs or force us to shut the doors of our businesses? Some seek additional education, some hone their trade skills and polish up their resume, and others explore new ventures.
We we win, we prepare for the challenges ahead - the next season, the next immunity challenge, the next project.
In today's wild financial climate we see unprecedented foreclosures, layoffs, and plummeting 401Ks. Why? In short, banks lent to unqualified borrowers, unions bled corporations, CEOs took exorbitant bonuses, and investors went running scared. Companies like Lehman Brothers, AIG and General Motors failed. For all intensive purposes they should be out of the game. "The Tribe has spoken."
Whether it's AIG, GM, or Fajita Grill, a bailout is unjustifiable. Where's the capitalism? Where's the competition?
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To use a sports analogy: What if two golfers were both making dangerous shot selections and ignoring the etiquette rules governing golf causing one golfer to be +24 and the other +25 at the end of 18 holes. Of course, the +24 golfer is the winner. However, is he the "winner" in the spirit of the term? Did he truly beat the other golfer in the true sense of competition? Let's add a driver of the golf cart who is eagerly supporting both golfer's bad decisions. Does he deserve some blame in this travesty of sport simply by supporting it through his positive attitude towards risk and ethical breaches? To bring this back to the financial world, the two golfers are the main street homeowners and the wall street banks/investment firms. The cart driver is the federal government. What I am trying to impart from this sports example is that all three parties share a large amount of culpability in failure to achieve a positive result. The ideals of capitalism provide an insufficient lens to examine this situation. Where was the competition? Who were the parties competing? Did one party do something better than the other? Is one entity's failure a result of better business decisions of the other party? This is why I support a bailout for the financial companies. The main street homeowners who eagerly signed mortgage agreements for homes beyond their financial means deserve equal blame in the current financial mess. The Wall Street peddlers of these mortgages deserve equal fault. Sure, Wall Street is the more sophisticated party in this matter, but it did not remove the volition of the homeowners. It must have been easy for wall street to convince homeowners that rising equity on their properties will allow them to borrow on the property values of the home to cover any shortfall in liquid assets when historic gains in property values are being enjoyed. However, the individual who sells his soul to the devil cannot be absolved of all fault simply because the devil was convincing. Looking beyond the deal itself, this is where the government comes in. Where was the oversight of these companies peddling "no asset verified" loans to unqualified borrows? The oversight was long a relic of the past, which was done away with during the Clinton Administration's splurge on deregulation of the financial industry. Isn't it interesting that the financial regulation that Clinton threw out was instituted during the New Deal Era policies designed to help banks recover from The Great Depression? Here we come full circle: The government acted and its citizens did not object. Main Street finds fault again. My support for the government bailout of the financial companies stems from the complete culpability of all constituent parties in the mess. Main Street, Wall Street and the federal Government share equally in the financial situation we are suffering today. However, this is the boundary of my anti-capitalist views. The auto companies that are floundering now based on poor long-term business plans and an inability to change with market conditions do not deserve a dime. In their sports game, they are simply the Tampa Bay Rays who lost to a better Philadelphia Phillies team head-to-head (Japan).
All of this ideology doesn't begin to touch on the realities of the situation and lessons learned from The Great Depression: Governments cannot allow large portions of a nation's banking industry to simply fail. The FDIC cannot cover the loses and the financial effects would completely cripple this nation.
General Motors should be ashamed of itself. To intentionally stand in the way of the natural progression in technology in the fields of efficiency to attempt to maintain a status quo that they were comfortable is an atrocity. I will not support a single bailout dime going to such a shameful company. It's an embarrassment to everyone in the company from the CEO to the guy who cleans the toilets. I am thrilled that they are getting exactly what they deserve. Lets offer incentives to Honda and Toyota to build their cars in America to provide more jobs. These are savvy and innovative companies that provide the market with products that they actually want. GM's strategy was that they were the big dog and that nothing could stop them. And it's not like they don't know how to revamp a product line. The revitalization of Cadillac in the late 90's-early 2000's was nothing short of remarkable. They know how to do it but hubris and greed prevented it. Fuck GM.
-Beardo
I'm not going to argue with Mean Gene, but I will say, that yet again, the gainfully employed American middle-class tax payer foots the bill for others greed and mishaps. Of course some of these middle-class folks got innocently caught up in hubub of problems when they were laid off from their jobs at irresponsible/greedy company X.
While I never supported the bailout, I do support keeping the US financial system afloat to avoid long term economic turmoil/downturn.
I do NOT support bailing out an auto industry that is now feeling the effects of years of fiscal abuse.
Ask any auto industry insider what destroyed their former world wide dominance on automobiles.
-Unions-
The roots of almost every US auto industry problem, whether it is poor quality, poor design, or cost over-runs, all can be largely attributed to Unions.
I could honestly go on for eons about the details and negative consequences Unions had on the US Auto industry, but I think any company that sells 9.1 million autos in 2006 and actully increases to 9.3 million autos in 2007 and continues to lose money has a serious problem with the operation of their business.
A bailout of the auto industry would be just pissing more money down an open drain.
As I re-read my post, I realize it's not well connected, not well written, and not well supported, but it would just take too long to explain everything...
you either get me, or you don't.
One more thing,
If you want to get more fired up about Unions, check out the Obama backed "Freedom Choice Act" (the name actually is insulting to intelligent Americans, as it actually uses the words "freedom" & "choice" when neither is actually descriptive of this bill, but hey what a great way to sell something ugly to the millions of easily convinced and shortsighted American people.
Note: I'm not entirely against Unions, some serve their purpose well, but when greed moves in, which it so often does, the Union becomes a recipe for business failure... or outsourcing to somewhere outside the US.
Unions were born out of the greed of large companies. Workers were mistreated, so their only recourse was to band together to get their due. Power corrupts though, and the newfound power was abused by those in charge of the unions. In conclusion, neither management or the unions are the root issue. The real culprit is human nature and, more specifically, greed.
-Beardo
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