GM to force more than 1,000 dealers to close
GM said Monday that it also would eliminate its Pontiac brand, but there are only 27 dealers that sell just Pontiacs, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association. Most Pontiac dealers also sell Buick and GMC vehicles at the same location.
via GM to force more than 1,000 dealers to close – Yahoo! News.
Man, could America be any more fucked? Every day now we wake up and it’s something like, “Oh, by the way, Pontiac no longer exists.” What’s next? Will Kellogg’s discontinue the Froot Loop? Have we seen the last Slinky unfurl off the assembly line? Will Toyota buy the Cleveland Browns? Jesus.
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Those of us graduating and applying around in the job market reaaaally wish this wasn’t happening.
On the plus side, I am getting a sadistic kick out of the Republicans’ reaction to Specter.
Fuck Fruit Loops, it’s Lucky Charms I’m worried about.
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I’m sure I’m not the first to notice this, but I’ve got to figure GM’s dead, simply because of their latest ad campaign: “.. taking care of you like never before..” (or words to that effect). My first reaction on hearing that was “well, maybe that’s why the company’s almost dead”. It’s too late to institute customer service when you’re about to go belly-up.
On a related note (i.e., regarding The Big Takeover), canonical research findings suggest that entrepreneurs will end the reign of the kleptobankers.
Other research findings suggest that these entrepreneurs will launch start-ups that, en route to becoming a bank, provide people with new and improved ways to customize education, and to showcase and earn money from expertise (i.e., ways to become (more) creditworthy).
Some of the latter findings are canonical; others have been praised by analysts at Microsoft, Amazon.com and top venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson; a few are simple inferences.
In their 2006 textbook on International Economics (7th ed.), Paul Krugman and Maurice Obstfeld define “the problem of collective action”:
“While it is in the interests of the group as a whole to press for favorable policies, it is not in any individual’s interest to do so.”
Krugman and Obstfeld continue:
“In a now famous book [The Logic of Collective Action], economist Mancur Olson pointed out that…the problem of collective action can best be overcome when a group is small (so that each individual reaps a significant share of the benefits of favorable policies) and/or well-organized.”
From a 2009 book co-authored by Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor who originated the canonical Model of Disruptive Innovation:
“Regulations ultimately change in reaction to [disruptive] innovators’ success in those markets.”
Krugman and Obstfeld provide evidence that Christensen’s innovators equate to Olson’s small group. Specifically, the co-authors summarize research which makes it plain that, in their words:
“Politicians are, indeed, for sale”
Of course, successful entrepreneurs in a given industry are the small group that has the motive and the means to buy changes to regulation that disadvantage the industry’s old guard.
From elsewhere in the book co-authored by Christensen:
“Those disruptors that successfully dismantled the regulations that stood in their way succeeded by circumventing the regulation — by innovating in a disruptive market that was beyond the regulators’ reach or was peripheral to their vision.”
For a banking entrepreneur, an ideal peripheral market to disrupt is one wherein:
1. customers become (more) creditworthy
2. a lot of money can be made directly (i.e., independent of banking)
In 2008, Christensen co-authored a book titled Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns. From Disrupting Class:
“In the last three decades, increasing numbers of cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists…have produced a multitude of schemes to explain…that people learn differently from one another…
Students need customized pathways and paces to learn…
We state above that in the first phase of the disruption of the instructional system the software will likely be complicated and expensive to build. The reasons for this can be traced to the use of the existing commercial system when marketing the system, as noted previously, as well as to the relative immaturity of Web 2.0 software. Within a few more years, however, two factors that were absent in stage 1 that are critical to the emergence of stage 2 will have fallen into place. The first will be platforms that facilitate the creation of user-generated content. The second will be the emergence of a user network, whose analogues in other industries would be eBay [i.e., an online market is a type of user network]…
The data suggest that by 2019, about 50 percent of high school courses will be delivered online…
80 percent of courses taken in 2024 will have been taught online.”
My business plan for popularizing and leveraging an online market for customized education has been praised by analysts at Microsoft, Amazon.com and top venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
My plan makes the case that a provider of said market is likely to be put out of business by competitors if it does not:
1. introduce online markets that provide new and improved ways to showcase and earn money from expertise
2. introduce a loan program for consumers of customized education ASAP
3. make the popularity of the company’s markets and loan program mutually reinforcing, so a borrower who performs well in the markets — thereby demonstrating her ability to earn a high and/or fast-rising return on her expertise — is rewarded with a lower interest rate
4. take advantage of new government regulations to become a bank, as a means of increasing the amount of money the company can lend
5. introduce other loan programs and financial services that complement the markets
Together, these new banks can be expected to facilitate a lot of economic growth.
Paul Romer is a Stanford economist who originated New Growth Theory, which updates growth economics for the information age. Romer:
“Perhaps the most important ideas of all are…ideas about how to support the production and transmission of other ideas…North Americans invented the modern research university…As national markets for talent and education merge into unified global markets, opportunities for important policy innovation will surely emerge…There are…safe predictions. First, the country that takes the lead in the twenty-first century will be the one that implements an innovation that more effectively supports the production of new ideas in the private sector.”
Once the pockets of these new banks are deep enough, then, the regulation of banks can be expected to change in ways that best promote economic growth.
By definition, these changes will end the reign of the kleptobanks.
Beyond the above, there is much more to tell. If additional details are of interest, I am happy to share what I know.
In particular, I am happy to “open source” my business plan.
The short story on this count: I am not a technology/education/banking entrepreneur; the plan is a byproduct of my effort to develop a Web/TV series that blends drama and romantic comedy to showcase the best uses of the Internet to expand educational and economic opportunity.
Best,
Frank Ruscica
frank at landofopportunitv dot com
Really Matt? Fucked? Damn, Chrysler should have died years ago, GM should have been radically changed years ago. The government has been keeping these zombie companies alive for years now, just like the banks. Just imagine if there was true freedom in the USA to compete – there would be a ton more car companies, just like there are a ton of airlines that form, survive, die off, etc. Clearly the deck has been stacked in favor of these massive, too big to fail companies by the politicians and lobbyists. And don’t get me started on public sector unions, and the graft and corruption they engender. I see the bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler as massively good things, if only the government would let them truly perish.
Someone wrote a book, I can’t remember who or what it was called at the moment, where an American couple is going on their honeymoon, in the US. They only go to establishments and buy from companies generally considered to be American, but every single one is owned out of country now. The one example that stuck with me was Burger King.
Who the fuck are we if Americans don’t own Burger King any more?
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