Tech by PC

It wasn’t too long ago that we had this little thing called the dot com bust. What if the government had bailed out the tech firms as they plan to do to the auto industry? Here’s a little glimpse into what our lives would look like.

• Grocery stores would be online, and even rurual customers could order and get their groceries delivered for free thanks to Webvan. Subsidies by tax dollars would pay for this luxury. After all, you should not deprive the poor the ability to get groceries.
• Not only would we have AOL Time Warner and MSNBC, but by now we’d also have eBay Mall of America, Amazon Walmart, Expedia Mariott, Travelocity American Airlines, ICQ Verizon, and Vonage AT&T. We all know how excellent tech companies are at keeping their budgets in check, so why not let them gobble up the old stalwarts. Change is good, right?

Do you think our lives would be better? No. Of course not. These services would cost exceedingly more money than they do now in terms of total cost to the American taxpayer and at a lower level of service. Even if this had worked tech companies would even today be less interested in making themselves profitable than just survival.

We have this same problem in the automobile industry today. I heard on the radio last week that Ford recently said it would “Jump in with both feet” to the hybrid market. I’m sorry, but I don’t believe that for one second. Unless it stops producing conventional automobiles it has not jumped in with both feet. Ford may be sticking a second toe in, but it is keeping both its feet firmly planted on the platform of conventional oil vehicles engineered to fail within 10 years. I’m not picking on Ford because Chrysler and GM are doing the same thing. If we bail them out we are giving their lack of a sound business model a vote of confidence. It would be the same thing as investing in the dot com companies.

Do we want cars to look the same 10 years from now, or do we want a more efficient selection of vehicles at lower prices? Now is the perfect time to shake up the auto industry. People will still demand cars, so we will have a hole to fill and someone will emerge to fill it. If we are going to bail them out, then part of their commitment to the taxpayer is full repayment and investment in progressive technology. I would like to see Ford truly jump in with both feet to the alternative fuel market.

Unless one of the big three designs its business model 100% around alternative fuel vehicles, any buyout is just going to extend the life of polluting, inefficient, short-life-span vehicles. We should not invest in an industry that should not succeed. Would you bail out Exxon on the heels of record profits simply because demand for oil has fallen? No way! They should be taking that money and investing it in their own best interests for the future. That means alternative energy and more efficient infrastructure. If they don’t care about their own survival, then the taxpayer shouldn’t either.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 7:08 am and is filed under Soapbox, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.