Posted by Sir Four at 10:24am May 3 '12Which is kind of like a Christian basing his argument on the bible, to an atheist.
As for GM, while it wasn't their best quarter, $1 billion in profit is a pretty good number.
"consider IBM's fall from dominance in the fledgling home PC market, paving the way for Microsoft to bring the revolutionary notion of a graphical user interface to your living room."
Except that's not how it happened. IBM didn't fall and leave a vacuum for Microsoft to fill. IBM simply slowly lost market share because they failed to innovate as fast as their competitors. The GUI was inevitable. Xerox was working on it; Apple was working on it. Microsoft basically stole the ideas from these companies. But in any case, IBM didn't go away and leave a vacuum for Microsoft to fill. Microsoft wasn't even a direct competitor to IBM.
"the fall of Atari from the gaming console market, allowing Nintendo to step in, and eventually opening the door to Sega, Sony, and eventually Microsoft"
Same flaw in your argument. Atari didn't fail and leave a vacuum for Nintendo. Atari simply didn't keep innovating, which allowed competitors to steal away their market share.
"It's also a fact that when a company is big enough that its failure produces a hole in the market, others rush in to fill the void with their new ideas;"
Cars are a mature industry with numerous competitors. It's at least as likely that foreign car companies would simply take over the market share lost by GM and Chrysler. Were GM and Chrysler to fail, a huge ecosystem of supporting businesses would also fail. You're talking about a whole industry dying, not one or two companies. Once the whole supporting cast for an industry goes belly up, you'd have to rebuild all those pieces, too--not just the one or two car manufacturers. And these related businesses, as far as we know, have done nothing wrong...nothing to deserve failure. Between 2 and 3 million US jobs are directly or indirectly tied to GM, Chrysler and Ford.
And now that they are on their feet again, it's wonderful news that they are performing strongly.
As for GM, while it wasn't their best quarter, $1 billion in profit is a pretty good number.
"consider IBM's fall from dominance in the fledgling home PC market, paving the way for Microsoft to bring the revolutionary notion of a graphical user interface to your living room."
Except that's not how it happened. IBM didn't fall and leave a vacuum for Microsoft to fill. IBM simply slowly lost market share because they failed to innovate as fast as their competitors. The GUI was inevitable. Xerox was working on it; Apple was working on it. Microsoft basically stole the ideas from these companies. But in any case, IBM didn't go away and leave a vacuum for Microsoft to fill. Microsoft wasn't even a direct competitor to IBM.
"the fall of Atari from the gaming console market, allowing Nintendo to step in, and eventually opening the door to Sega, Sony, and eventually Microsoft"
Same flaw in your argument. Atari didn't fail and leave a vacuum for Nintendo. Atari simply didn't keep innovating, which allowed competitors to steal away their market share.
"It's also a fact that when a company is big enough that its failure produces a hole in the market, others rush in to fill the void with their new ideas;"
Cars are a mature industry with numerous competitors. It's at least as likely that foreign car companies would simply take over the market share lost by GM and Chrysler. Were GM and Chrysler to fail, a huge ecosystem of supporting businesses would also fail. You're talking about a whole industry dying, not one or two companies. Once the whole supporting cast for an industry goes belly up, you'd have to rebuild all those pieces, too--not just the one or two car manufacturers. And these related businesses, as far as we know, have done nothing wrong...nothing to deserve failure. Between 2 and 3 million US jobs are directly or indirectly tied to GM, Chrysler and Ford.
And now that they are on their feet again, it's wonderful news that they are performing strongly.
You make a lot of libertarian assumptions - Sir Four