The notion of a loss function is the basis of total quality management. Quality losses appear when the realization of an output deviates from its target qualities. For instance, if a nail is supposed to be 6 inches long, and it comes off the conveyer belt measuring 6.0000001 inches, the .0000001 is a loss. Total quality management is a process of reducing the loss by investigating deviations that are more than three standard deviations from the target.
De Jouvenal argues that Power, the governing elite, derives historically from conquest. In European history this took the form of the conquest of the Roman territories and Rome itself by the Franks, Goths, Angles, and other Barbarians. In China this took the form of the unification of China by the Duke of Zhou and Qin Shi Huang's reunification following the warring states period. Qin, by the way, buried China's scholars alive, a fate I have dreaded after seeing the movie The Vanishing.
The monarch or leader of the conquering tribe exploits the conquered population rather than kill them. The invention of slavery reduced the amount of killing because the conquerers learned to make use of the conquered economically. The king realizes that the nobility, the leaders of his army, pose a threat to his power. Over time, perhaps multi-generationally, the king realizes that by taking the side of the conquered against the nobility he can reduce the power of the nobility and enhance his own power. This happened in England in the 1500s. The establishment of the Chinese Civil Service was within roughly two centuries of the Qin Shi Huang's reunification of China. In America, the Progressives, representatives of big business, realized that they could work with populist and socialist movements by saying that they were against the trusts, and in doing so bring regulations that attacked the rising entrepreneurs and benefited big business to bear. Thus, the king creates a bureaucracy or civil service that aims to provide social benefits in order to unite the people against the nobility. This occurred in modified form in the United States. Abraham Lincoln had enhanced federal power in the 1860s, and Progressivism appeared within 40 years.
Ultimately the people realize that the king can be replaced with the popular sovereignty or national will, which of course are non-existent imaginings. The king is deposed and democracy replaces the monarchy. The unlimited definition of democracy, in turn, leads to tyranny. Thus, the French Revolution led to killings by Jacobins, Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety; the democratic revolution of Sun Yat Sen led to the tyranny of Mao Tse Tung; and the overthrow of the Czar led to the Bolshevik Revolution.
In America De Jouvenal's model does not apply exactly because there was no monarch. Also, Rousseau's unlimited theory of democracy did not take hold. Rather, Lockean liberalism limits the power of democracy. Hence, the tyrannies and suffocating power of government that took hold in backward Europe and Asia did not occur here. However, America's elite, jealous of the wonderful triumphs in Europe, aimed to introduce Rousseauean unlimited democracy here. Just two decades before the ascension of both Hitler and Stalin, Herbert Croly, Walter Weyl and Theodore Roosevelt argued for Progressivism. Croly's book glorifies the state and is very much in the tradition of German historicism, as was Progressivism in general.
The notion of a loss function is that the action of a producer can be improved by reducing losses. Many will argue with the claim that unlimited democracy leads to tyranny. However, whether you believe that unlimited democracy leads to social justice and benefits society, or whether you believe that limited government is better at achieving those ends, the question needs to be asked what the method of achieving each citizen's best interests can be. In other words, even if unlimited democracy and the state apparatus can advantage society, the question needs to be asked what method of execution or production will work best. It is unlikely that the centralized state by which Progressives hoped to emulate European Christian Socialism and social democracy (and itself was but an extension of monarchy, according to De Juvenal) is best at meeting public needs even if the state is better at meeting public needs than are private firms. The reason is bounded rationality.
Bounded rationality was discussed by March and Simon with respect to organizations in their book Organizations. Walter Lippmann discussed the idea with respect to public opinion in his book Public Opinion. Ludwig von Mises discussed it with respect to centralized economic planning. And De Jouvenal discusses it with respect to the ability of the state to achieve the objective of the common good.
Naturally, he mocks the idea that Power (as he defines it, the elite that governs society) has the common good in mind. This is the assumption of all advocates of big government, socialism, Progressivism, social democracy and the like. The notion that people seek power out of altruistic ends is laughable. We see this today with the naive news broadcasters, like CNN's Jack Cafferty, who offer prayers to Saint Barack Obama and his colleague, Lou Dobbs, whose head touches the floor seven times whenever Saint Barack's name is mentioned. But De Jouvenal grants this assumption.
He notes:
"But as soon Power is conceived as being exclusively the agent of the common good, it must form a clear picture for itself of what this common good is. While Power was eogist, the vital necessity under which it lay of reaching every day a daily accommodation with society, itself sufficed to form in it pictures of public requirements which, though confused, were born of actual contacts. But as soon as Power, under the spur of altruism, has a vision of the entire community and what medicine it needs, the inadequacy of human intelligence to such a task appears in its fullness. What the judgment pronounces then shows itself a blinder guide than what the senses indicate--to put it another way, touch is superior to vision.
"It is a noteworthy fact that all the greatest political mistakes stem from defective appraisals of the common good--mistakes from which egoism, had it been called into consultation, would have warned Power off." (On Power, p. 137).
In organizational theory, it is well established that one of the cures for cognitive limits on rationality is decentralization or divisionalization of organizations. Thus, one way to address the problem of the social loss function that government creates is to reduce the scope of governance. In other words, to download responsibility to the states.
American government anticipated this idea in the form of Federalism. However, the tendency over the past two centuries has been to reduce the power of the states and increase the monarchical power of the federal government. The reason for this is, as De Jouvenal points out, the economic, political and egoistic interests of the ruling elite--the politicians in Washington, the Justices of the Supreme Court, the academics who cater to them and receive significant jobs and consulting contracts, and the military industrial complex.
The monarchical process thus results in one rather odd effect: that a key finding of the social sciences, that information is difficult to procure; that rationality is limited; and that experimentation is the best way to learn; is scoffed at by judges, economists and academicians, whose economic interests take precedence over their interest in pursuing justice or the truth.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Bertrand De Jouvenal on the Equivalence of Progressivism and Corporate Conservatism
"Every association of men shows us the same spectacle. When once the social end ceases to be continuously pursued in common (as happens, for instance, in an association of pirates, where there must be a chief, but where no active body emerges over a passive generality) and becomes the permanent charge of one differentiated group, to be interfered with by the rest of the associates only at stated intervals--when once the differentiation has come about, then the responsible group becomes the elite, which acquires a life and interest of its own.
"It withstands on occasion the mass whence it came. And it carries the day. It is hard in reality for private persons attending a meeting, taken up as they are with their own concerns and without having concerted among themselves beforehand, to feel the confidence necessary to reject the proposals which are cleverly presented to them from the platform, and the necessity for which is supported by arguments based on considerations of a kind to which they are strangers."
De Juvenal shows that power is monarchical in nature. The popular sovereignty-based power of Progressivism is an imitation of European monarchy. Europe arrived at this model, shows de Juvenal, via monarchy. Dirgisme, strong state power, is the function of monarchy legitimized by popular sovereignty that has replaced the monarch with the "national will", an abstract concept that is vacuous of meaning. Thus, power becomes the possession of a group of self-interested activists or demagogues who claim to reflect the "national will". In the case of corporate conservatism, the argument is that the efficiency of corporations entitles them to special consideration. This is the corporate conservative view. But the corporations are not efficient and they cannot be because if they were there would be no motive to act as special interests in claiming state privilege.
Both corporate interests and social democratic cliques claim to serve the public. The corporate interest claims to do so through efficiency, when it is actually inefficient. The social democratic clique claims to do so when it actually serves itself.
Progressivism and progressivism, corporate conservatism and social democracy, are the same ideology with two rival gangs competing for power.
What is to be done? The alternative ideology to Progressivism and progressivism is Lockean liberalism: the insistence on individual rights; the insistence on no special treatment for any party; and skepticism that the state has the ability to create benefits out of thin air. This skepticism leads directly to a rejection of Keynesian economics; of socialism; and of social programs that have caused more harm than good.
"It withstands on occasion the mass whence it came. And it carries the day. It is hard in reality for private persons attending a meeting, taken up as they are with their own concerns and without having concerted among themselves beforehand, to feel the confidence necessary to reject the proposals which are cleverly presented to them from the platform, and the necessity for which is supported by arguments based on considerations of a kind to which they are strangers."
De Juvenal shows that power is monarchical in nature. The popular sovereignty-based power of Progressivism is an imitation of European monarchy. Europe arrived at this model, shows de Juvenal, via monarchy. Dirgisme, strong state power, is the function of monarchy legitimized by popular sovereignty that has replaced the monarch with the "national will", an abstract concept that is vacuous of meaning. Thus, power becomes the possession of a group of self-interested activists or demagogues who claim to reflect the "national will". In the case of corporate conservatism, the argument is that the efficiency of corporations entitles them to special consideration. This is the corporate conservative view. But the corporations are not efficient and they cannot be because if they were there would be no motive to act as special interests in claiming state privilege.
Both corporate interests and social democratic cliques claim to serve the public. The corporate interest claims to do so through efficiency, when it is actually inefficient. The social democratic clique claims to do so when it actually serves itself.
Progressivism and progressivism, corporate conservatism and social democracy, are the same ideology with two rival gangs competing for power.
What is to be done? The alternative ideology to Progressivism and progressivism is Lockean liberalism: the insistence on individual rights; the insistence on no special treatment for any party; and skepticism that the state has the ability to create benefits out of thin air. This skepticism leads directly to a rejection of Keynesian economics; of socialism; and of social programs that have caused more harm than good.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Bertrand de Jouvenal on the Divorce Between Socialism in Theory and in Practice
"Once it is admitted that Power may forswear its true reason and end, and as it were, detach itself from society to form far above it a separate body for its oppression, then the whole theory of Power's identity with society breaks down before this simple fact.
"At this point nearly all who have written on the subject look the other way. A Power which is both illegitimate and unjust is off their intellectual beat. This feeling of repugnance, while it is understandable, has to be overcome. For the phenomenon is of too frequent occurrence to give any chance to a theory which does not take account of it.
"It is clear enough how the mistake arose: it was from basing a Science of Power on observations made, as it is history's business to make them, of Powers whose relations with society were of one kind only; what are in fact only its acquired characteristics were thus mistaken for Power's essence. And so the knowledge acquired, while adequate to explain one state of things, was quite useless in dealing with the times of the great divorces between Power and society.
"It is not true that Power vanishes when it forswears its rightful begetter and acts in breach of the office which has been assigned to it. It continues as before to command and to be obeyed: without that, there is no Power--with it, no other attribute is needed."
----Bertrand de Jouvenal, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth, p. 108
In the 1950s Stanley Milgram showed that conformity to authority comes naturally to a large segment, and likely a majority, of the population. All that is required to confer legitimacy on a Sovereign is an appropriate title or costume. Under laboratory conditions between 30 and 60 percent of the population will be willing to kill another person upon a scientist's command.
De Jouvenal points out that two restraints on European kings limited their exercise of power to a greater degree than modern democracy is limited. These were custom and the Church. Legal doctrines received from the Barbarian Codes and from the Romans left European kings with strictly delineated authority. Moreover, the power of the nobility, the dux, countered the power of the rex. Viewed historically, power seemed limited to historians of the 19th century because the kings never knew unlimited power until the Protestant Reformation, which overthrew custom and created the conditions for the argument of the divine right of kings. At the same time, the argument of popular sovereignty derived unlimited power from the popular will. Thus, the two doctrines of the divine right of kings and popular sovereignty evolved at the same time and considerably extended the possibility of power.
Historians could not anticipate the tragic consequences that would emanate from the unrestrained popular will of Rousseau, Hobbes, Hegel and Marx. Even the arch-capitalist Herbert Spencer was taken by surprise. He had argued that the organic evolution of the state in light of popular sovereignty would be in the direction of reductions in state power rather than more.
America was spared the Rousseauean tragedy because Locke did not claim that the people bestow all liberties on the general will, or that there is a general will at all. Unlike Rousseau and Hobbes, Locke saw only a limited granting of rights to the state. This limitation on state power creates a considerable distance between American and European democracy. Jefferson did not see this difference between the French and American Revolutions. That is one point on which Hamilton and Washington, the Federalists, were right and the Democratic Republicans were wrong. In America, Thomas Paine was exalted. In France, he was imprisoned.
Progressivism is a reassertion of Rousseauean values. The extent of the damage that Progressivism has done has yet to be seen.
"At this point nearly all who have written on the subject look the other way. A Power which is both illegitimate and unjust is off their intellectual beat. This feeling of repugnance, while it is understandable, has to be overcome. For the phenomenon is of too frequent occurrence to give any chance to a theory which does not take account of it.
"It is clear enough how the mistake arose: it was from basing a Science of Power on observations made, as it is history's business to make them, of Powers whose relations with society were of one kind only; what are in fact only its acquired characteristics were thus mistaken for Power's essence. And so the knowledge acquired, while adequate to explain one state of things, was quite useless in dealing with the times of the great divorces between Power and society.
"It is not true that Power vanishes when it forswears its rightful begetter and acts in breach of the office which has been assigned to it. It continues as before to command and to be obeyed: without that, there is no Power--with it, no other attribute is needed."
----Bertrand de Jouvenal, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth, p. 108
In the 1950s Stanley Milgram showed that conformity to authority comes naturally to a large segment, and likely a majority, of the population. All that is required to confer legitimacy on a Sovereign is an appropriate title or costume. Under laboratory conditions between 30 and 60 percent of the population will be willing to kill another person upon a scientist's command.
De Jouvenal points out that two restraints on European kings limited their exercise of power to a greater degree than modern democracy is limited. These were custom and the Church. Legal doctrines received from the Barbarian Codes and from the Romans left European kings with strictly delineated authority. Moreover, the power of the nobility, the dux, countered the power of the rex. Viewed historically, power seemed limited to historians of the 19th century because the kings never knew unlimited power until the Protestant Reformation, which overthrew custom and created the conditions for the argument of the divine right of kings. At the same time, the argument of popular sovereignty derived unlimited power from the popular will. Thus, the two doctrines of the divine right of kings and popular sovereignty evolved at the same time and considerably extended the possibility of power.
Historians could not anticipate the tragic consequences that would emanate from the unrestrained popular will of Rousseau, Hobbes, Hegel and Marx. Even the arch-capitalist Herbert Spencer was taken by surprise. He had argued that the organic evolution of the state in light of popular sovereignty would be in the direction of reductions in state power rather than more.
America was spared the Rousseauean tragedy because Locke did not claim that the people bestow all liberties on the general will, or that there is a general will at all. Unlike Rousseau and Hobbes, Locke saw only a limited granting of rights to the state. This limitation on state power creates a considerable distance between American and European democracy. Jefferson did not see this difference between the French and American Revolutions. That is one point on which Hamilton and Washington, the Federalists, were right and the Democratic Republicans were wrong. In America, Thomas Paine was exalted. In France, he was imprisoned.
Progressivism is a reassertion of Rousseauean values. The extent of the damage that Progressivism has done has yet to be seen.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Michael Mooron Aims to Build Mass Transit For Suburbanites
General Motors went bankrupt in 1919, 90 years ago, and the current bankruptcy has antecedents that are instructive. GM also was reorganized in the 1920s, when the DuPonts, the firm's chief stockholders, removed its founder, William Durant, for manipulating the firm's stock price. Pierre DuPont ran the firm briefly and hired Alfred Sloan, a managerial genius after whom are named MIT's Sloan School of Management (Sloan was an MIT alum) and the Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Center in Manhattan. (Kettering was Sloan's R&D vice president and inventor of the self starting engine and many other automotive breakthroughs.)
The management policies that Sloan implemented transformed GM from a poor second to Ford to the world's largest manufacturing firm. Part of Sloan's insight involved decentralizing or divisionalizing the firm; creating price-based target markets for the automotive divisions; using return on investment to evaluate performance; and targeting higher-priced cars in order that used GMs would compete with the lowest price car--the Ford Model T. Sloan envisioned the used car market, and indeed, by the 1920s used GMs and other brands began to compete with the cheap Model Ts, but not the higher-end GM cars.
The reason Sloan was able to turn around GM was his managerial ability. In particular, Sloan understood markets; he established a market research system; he understood customers; he enhanced and utilized relationships with dealers; he developed cost efficient organizational structures; and he provided incentives for competent management and innovation. Sloan's sharp management skills contrast with the examples of public mismanagement that Michael Moore presents in his film Roger and Me. In the film, the Flint municipal government squanders millions on nonsensical investments like a theme park called "Auto World"; a useless hotel; and an effort to draw tourists to visit Flint.
But the mechanistic management style that Sloan represented had several flaws. Sloan was bad at labor relations and politics. As a result, he became a sacrificial lamb to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. The unionization of GM could have been implemented in a way to enhance GM's strategic advantage, but instead Sloan created an atmosphere of adversarial labor relations from which the firm never recovered. He was attacked not only by sit down strikers but also by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins and, if I recall, Roosevelt himself.
Likewise, Sloan failed to develop a succession plan. The executives who followed him at GM were not his equals. Managerial breakthroughs were being made in Japan by the 1950s, yet the GM management was not able to imitate the ideas that Toyota pioneered.
The failure of GM was well documented in the 1972 On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors by De Lorean and Wright. As well, Peter Drucker had written a rather positive account of the firm in the late 1940s entitled Concept of the Corporation, to which the management reacted with considerable hostility. Sloan responded with his 1962 classic My Years with General Motors which is one of the best management books ever written. GM's paranoia about criticism ran deep, and its culture of conformity and groupthink undoubtedly contributed to its demise.
There is a long litany of critics of General Motors and the automobile industry, one of whom is Ralph Nader and another is Michael Moore. Moore's Roger and Me is a darn good film. Unfortunately, Moore's political ideas are downright Mooronic.
Jim Crum just sent me this drivel that Moore wrote about socializing the firm and turning it into a mass transit manufacturer. Moore's strategy is similar to the woman's in his film who conceptualized Flint as a tourist Mecca--and who upon failure made her destination to be tourism czar of Tel Aviv just as the Palestinian Intafada was about to start.
If GM is to be turned around it needs to clean house; eliminate management at the departmental head level and above; and institute nuts-and-bolts, quality-oriented managers who can institute lean manufacturing and a culture of innovation and cooperation. Imposition of the rancid, socialistic tripe that Moore has on offer will create another New York City subway system in the form of General Motors.
One of the problems with America today is that America's wealthy, including Moore, are economically illiterate and persistently self serving. Moore is one of the few who can afford an expensive apartment in Manhattan. He lived on 83rd off Broadway when I lived on Riverside Drive and 87th. I was there because my in-laws lived there. He was there because plunking down $1 or $2 million for an apartment is chicken feed for a Hollywood guy.
Thus, Moore makes the assumption that all Americans live in Manhattan and can afford the $1 million for a one bedroom apartment, just like he can. As a result, all Americans will benefit from more mass transit.
But if anything is worse managed than GM, it is New York City's subways. Moore probably doesn't take the subway. Rather, he is likely chauffeured around, possibly in a specially built hybrid Humvee to accommodate his frame. I doubt he could fit into one of those mini-van style taxis that are environmentally friendly and coming to dominate the New York taxi scene. As well, I suspect his flatulence is a bigger problem than the bovine flatulence and porcine waste about which environmentalists like to complain.
The New York City subway is a nightmare institution. Rats scurry hither and yon. When I travel to Brooklyn, there are 20 people in the subways and thousands above ground in Humvees and Cadillacs. Maybe most of the cars aren't GMs, but building more subway cars isn't going to change that because the subway system is so incompetently managed by the Metropolitan Transit Authority that it would have gone bankrupt 40 years ago if it were a private firm. Of course, before the city took it over in the 1930s, the subways were clean and attractive and the subway firms viable. Now, Moore is looking to turn GM into another incompetently managed subway system. To him, the way to turn around GM is to turn a third rate private firm into a twentieth rate public sector one.
Moore is right to criticize GM's management, but he is one of the few people who feel themselves qualified to comment on management issues whose ideas are more blundering and stupider than Wall Street's or GM's. Socializing GM is guaranteed to establish a management even stupider than Roger Smith. And Moore, a robotized advocate of socialism who has never seen a public institution he was willing to criticize, no matter how putrid, won't be around to tell the tale.
Moore writes:
1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.
The management policies that Sloan implemented transformed GM from a poor second to Ford to the world's largest manufacturing firm. Part of Sloan's insight involved decentralizing or divisionalizing the firm; creating price-based target markets for the automotive divisions; using return on investment to evaluate performance; and targeting higher-priced cars in order that used GMs would compete with the lowest price car--the Ford Model T. Sloan envisioned the used car market, and indeed, by the 1920s used GMs and other brands began to compete with the cheap Model Ts, but not the higher-end GM cars.
The reason Sloan was able to turn around GM was his managerial ability. In particular, Sloan understood markets; he established a market research system; he understood customers; he enhanced and utilized relationships with dealers; he developed cost efficient organizational structures; and he provided incentives for competent management and innovation. Sloan's sharp management skills contrast with the examples of public mismanagement that Michael Moore presents in his film Roger and Me. In the film, the Flint municipal government squanders millions on nonsensical investments like a theme park called "Auto World"; a useless hotel; and an effort to draw tourists to visit Flint.
But the mechanistic management style that Sloan represented had several flaws. Sloan was bad at labor relations and politics. As a result, he became a sacrificial lamb to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. The unionization of GM could have been implemented in a way to enhance GM's strategic advantage, but instead Sloan created an atmosphere of adversarial labor relations from which the firm never recovered. He was attacked not only by sit down strikers but also by Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins and, if I recall, Roosevelt himself.
Likewise, Sloan failed to develop a succession plan. The executives who followed him at GM were not his equals. Managerial breakthroughs were being made in Japan by the 1950s, yet the GM management was not able to imitate the ideas that Toyota pioneered.
The failure of GM was well documented in the 1972 On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors by De Lorean and Wright. As well, Peter Drucker had written a rather positive account of the firm in the late 1940s entitled Concept of the Corporation, to which the management reacted with considerable hostility. Sloan responded with his 1962 classic My Years with General Motors which is one of the best management books ever written. GM's paranoia about criticism ran deep, and its culture of conformity and groupthink undoubtedly contributed to its demise.
There is a long litany of critics of General Motors and the automobile industry, one of whom is Ralph Nader and another is Michael Moore. Moore's Roger and Me is a darn good film. Unfortunately, Moore's political ideas are downright Mooronic.
Jim Crum just sent me this drivel that Moore wrote about socializing the firm and turning it into a mass transit manufacturer. Moore's strategy is similar to the woman's in his film who conceptualized Flint as a tourist Mecca--and who upon failure made her destination to be tourism czar of Tel Aviv just as the Palestinian Intafada was about to start.
If GM is to be turned around it needs to clean house; eliminate management at the departmental head level and above; and institute nuts-and-bolts, quality-oriented managers who can institute lean manufacturing and a culture of innovation and cooperation. Imposition of the rancid, socialistic tripe that Moore has on offer will create another New York City subway system in the form of General Motors.
One of the problems with America today is that America's wealthy, including Moore, are economically illiterate and persistently self serving. Moore is one of the few who can afford an expensive apartment in Manhattan. He lived on 83rd off Broadway when I lived on Riverside Drive and 87th. I was there because my in-laws lived there. He was there because plunking down $1 or $2 million for an apartment is chicken feed for a Hollywood guy.
Thus, Moore makes the assumption that all Americans live in Manhattan and can afford the $1 million for a one bedroom apartment, just like he can. As a result, all Americans will benefit from more mass transit.
But if anything is worse managed than GM, it is New York City's subways. Moore probably doesn't take the subway. Rather, he is likely chauffeured around, possibly in a specially built hybrid Humvee to accommodate his frame. I doubt he could fit into one of those mini-van style taxis that are environmentally friendly and coming to dominate the New York taxi scene. As well, I suspect his flatulence is a bigger problem than the bovine flatulence and porcine waste about which environmentalists like to complain.
The New York City subway is a nightmare institution. Rats scurry hither and yon. When I travel to Brooklyn, there are 20 people in the subways and thousands above ground in Humvees and Cadillacs. Maybe most of the cars aren't GMs, but building more subway cars isn't going to change that because the subway system is so incompetently managed by the Metropolitan Transit Authority that it would have gone bankrupt 40 years ago if it were a private firm. Of course, before the city took it over in the 1930s, the subways were clean and attractive and the subway firms viable. Now, Moore is looking to turn GM into another incompetently managed subway system. To him, the way to turn around GM is to turn a third rate private firm into a twentieth rate public sector one.
Moore is right to criticize GM's management, but he is one of the few people who feel themselves qualified to comment on management issues whose ideas are more blundering and stupider than Wall Street's or GM's. Socializing GM is guaranteed to establish a management even stupider than Roger Smith. And Moore, a robotized advocate of socialism who has never seen a public institution he was willing to criticize, no matter how putrid, won't be around to tell the tale.
Moore writes:
1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.
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