Why is everybody so surprised? Big companies like GM - or Nortel or Bombardier - they are like big governments: once they have attained a certain size, they pretty much have a mind of their own; now as for the closure, GM has kept an unflinching position towards big gas guzzlers because that is what they have always done, ever since the beginning, and all the little car companies in the US that could do what the big firm couldn't - innovation - were quickly gobbled up and integrated in a vast, unmoving structure. GM has literally destroyed Detroit's economic life, and now that the main product sold by GM is not cars but credit (to buy cars), well, the destruction has been extended to part of the United States and Canada (since the U.S. and Canada have signed a binding pact with respect to automobiles years ago, and since Canada does not have a distinct culture when it comes to automobiles).
Now there is nothing any government - whether municipal, regional, provincial or federal - can do. GM has taken the decision to close the plant. The only thing remaining is for the workers to take possession of the plant and retrofit or scale it down to manufacture something else. This would greatly diminish its value but the other possibility, retaking it and selling all the interior parts as scrap metal is better for short term and would benefit only a tiny fraction of the people.
Either way, it proves that big business is rarely good business.
Posted by phonono at juin 17, 2008 11:08 PM