When a Business Model is no Longer Sustainable… Whine to Congress
You know, at one time there must’ve been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I’ll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw. Now how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company? You invested in a business and this business is dead. Let’s have the intelligence, let’s have the decency to sign the death certificate, collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future. “Ah, but we can’t,” goes the prayer. “We can’t because we have responsibility, a responsibility to our employees, to our community. What will happen to them?” I got two words for that: Who cares? Care about them? Why? They didn’t care about you. They sucked you dry. You have no responsibility to them. For the last ten years this company bled your money.
From Lawrence Garfield (Danny DeVito) in “Other Peoples Money”
Yep, we can’t…we absolutely positively must prop up broken business models, privatize gain, and socialize risk, even better if we can shaft the elderly and children in the process. Case in point:
Corn Ethanol, without subsidies, its not sustainable. With subsidies, it prevents competition, ie we dont have sugar ethanol, nor switchgrass, nor other sources… We can’t let corn ethanol down, even if its greatly inferior to other ethanol sources.
Coal, absolutely, we must subsidize coal, and even railroads… instead, we send high tech solar offshore. We develop, and send the tech off shore… because we must prop up buggy whip business models. No matter the damage it causes, both health wise, and economic.
RIAA, the record industry is hosed… so rather than letting the market play out, and/or encourage new business models, the status quo must be kept in place at any cost.
Healthcare, yep, just read the Baucus bill… a major subsidy to the insurance companies, even more so than HR3200. We absolutely can’t let them compete or fail, they must be protected, and now, not only do they have protection, part, A, B, D subsidies, but they get the feds giving them new money left and right. No matter that the elderly, children, and medical providers get shafted, the insurance industry business model must succeed, even if it kills 45,000 people/year.
WallStreet… well I’ve written enough on that before.
We must keep big Ag happy, albeit at the cost of the family farm… Diversity in farming options is a must, there is no question we need to support the family farm… but when the family farm gets the publicity, and not the money, being that goes to big ag, a major rationale for ag subsidies goes right out the window.
Now, I’m not saying we should be heartless, and dump all subsidiezed businesses into chapter 7… There are orderly wind-downs, such as what has happened with military bases, Fermi-lab, and some NASA operations. Yes, ghost towns do occur as a result, but people do rebuild… This aspect of subsidizing buggy whip business models for the benefit of society is not a sustainable practice.
One good thing did happen today! $80 billion in govt subsidies were removed from the loan industry, at least in the house… we shall see what happens in the Senate.



