Labor’s love lost
12th November 2008
Megan McArdle has some perceptive things to say about our auto industry.
…there was no good way to recruit new talent who might have changed things to a sinking ship. Very few people set out to work for Detroit these days unless they’re serious gearheads, or happen to already live there. Working for the Big Three magically combines vast corporate bureaucracy and job insecurity in one completely unattractive package. Even the car freaks would often rather do something else–write about cars, or work for the NHTSA.
The entire thing is a toxic mess, left over from the days when interlocking oligopolies contentedly conspired to suck every last dollar out of captive consumers to whom Detroit would happily have given Flintstones cars if they could have figured out how to do them in two-tone vinyl. But things that look like lunatic mistakes on the part of management were often quite rational responses to intolerable pressures. I’m still not clear on why the cars had to be ugly, and all of the indicators cunningly hidden behind the wheel where they wouldn’t distract the driver, of course. Management did many stupid and inexplicable things.