Blindingly Absurd

I'm continually amazed at the idiocy of apologists for incompetence who from positions supposedly based on their intellectual supremacy will spout theories that could only be described as fantasy.

Try this quote:

The popular narrative of what happened to Detroit contains a great deal of truth but its focus is too narrow to account for the astonishing decline of this former industrial colossus. Yes, there were the riots of 1967, and white flight; and political leadership that was not just shortsighted but at times embarrassingly incompetent and corrupt. And, yes, the auto industry was a case study in self-destruction.

Who is downplaying the Detroit disaster? It is a Univ. of California-Berkeley professor. He asserts that burning down your city in riots in 1967 wouldn't be a factor in discouraging economic growth. He denies that the white population exodus to suburbia leaving the inner city as a crime-ridden ghetto wouldn't be a player. He excuses political leadership which is incompetent and undeniably corrupt for any hand in the matter. And he can't bring himself to acknowledge that if you run an industry without regard for what your competition is doing, you will inevitably fail.

Read the whole column from a New York Times opinion writer:

Whose Fault Is It?

They just don't get it. They ascribe the cause to economic policies, which should be translated as free-market capitalism, low taxes, profitability, minimal government regulation and competition.

Professor Shaiken and I drove past vast lots filled with rubble and garbage and weeds, past the old Michigan Central Terminal, which was once Detroit’s answer to New York’s Grand Central Terminal but which has long since been abandoned; past a onetime Cadillac manufacturing plant that is now an empty lot.

Did that terrible economy mean people didn't want luxury cars? Well it seems that Mercedes, BMW, Lexus and Infiniti thrived during the period. Cadillac simply didn't compete.

Is it that demand for cars disappeared and like the buggy-whip maker of yore, Detroit was left out? Actually we need only look at Toyota, Nissan, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Kia and others to see that building cars in the USA that people want could be a very profitable enterprise.

Maybe here is the crux of the argument:

We need a revitalized industrial policy, including the creation of whole new industries, if American families are to prosper in the coming decades.

Can I translate that? It means we need more government regulation (that's industrial policy); we need it revitalized or subsidized by a controlling government; we need to get on the green bandwagon (that's creation of whole new industries despite the recent exposure of wholesale fraud on that data) and we need to increase welfare because only that way can American families prosper.

But it doesn't hurt your community a bit to riot, elect corrupt politicians, or run a business without regard to markets. Absurd!