Chevy Volt Recall: A Statist Trifecta

Not yet a full-fledged recall….but according to a widely quoted AP story( which, curiously, I was unable to find on the AP site or as a search result), GM, while insisting the cars are safe, will buy them back from worried customers, and may consider recalling the entire fleet.

So, we have a  largely State owned company, the new General Motors (Us Treasury along

"L'etat, c'est moi." But Louis XIV got a gilded carriage, a better deal if you ask me.

with the Canadian and Ontario governments). Well, there are the unions, and the bondholders from the old GM( the stockholders were hung out to dry), in other words a union of government, labor and capital, in classic Mussolini style corporatism.

And this company manufactured a vehicle using a power train technology that the government chose.

I'm not going to do the math, but with less than 7000 units sold so far(2011 first model year), and future propects bleak, I bet they could have just bought all their customers a Hummer, fueled it for the vehicle's life, and still saved a big chunk of change.

The technology choice was an  act of faith: a good work in service of the state religion  of Global warming, Anthropogenic GlobalWarming, Climate  Change, or whatever they decide to call it next week.( I guess: how do you charge the thing if you don’t have any coal or natural gas to run the power plants; we wont talk about nuclear or hydro)

The result was predictable.  A politically correct ( a term with origins in the old Soviet Union) automobile fails in the market place.  There is no third way: command and control can only work in economies where you can command people to buy stuff.

Really, the old East bloc way made more sense  They just made crappy cars because that was the best they could do.

We aren’t lost yet: there were never any recalls for Trabants or Moskiviches.

A Volt goes for $41,000(OK, there is a $7500 tax credit that may apply, for which all the suckers who don't itemize pay), but wouldn't you rather have one of these at around $37,000?

Whether there is a timely perestroika in the U.S. before statism calcifies, is another question.