Sunday, September 21, 2008
Capitalist Logic
Many people believe that capitalism leads to higher efficiency in all things. As is shown in Who Killed the Electric Car?, this is simply not the case. Under Capitalism, corporations have only one thing in mind: profit. In order to profit, corporations must grow. They must have cutting edge technology. But above all, they must make money. Everything they do, they do in order to make a profit. The proposed electric car from the movie was fuel efficient and long-lasting. A fuel-efficient car is not good for oil companies, which are very closely tied to car companies. A long-lasting car is not good for car companies because they sell less of them. Although the car companies would have sold very many electric cars, without planned obsolescence, they would not sell as many cars in the long run. They might be "encouraged" to stop producing those cars by oil companies. In short, by producing an electric car, they (and other corporations) would be making less money in the long run. According to capitalism, this is unacceptable. Many people in the movie were surprised and taken aback by the decision of the car companies to crush down the electric cars. They don't see why corporations would destroy such a good product. The more one examines capitalism, the more one can see the logic behind the decision the car companies made. A long-lasting, money-saving product for the consumer is simply not something corporations have incentive to make. If they made products that were good for the consumer, they would make less money and probably not make it very far in this capitalist economy. While I personally would love to have a long-lasting, fuel-efficient car, I know it is not going to be a possibility for some time. Our government will have to step in in order for it to happen. A product that makes less-than-optimal profit simply will not do for a capitalist market.
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4 comments:
I absolutely agree with Eric Farber-Eger's opinion and disagree that the car companies decided to crush down all the electric cars, even though the invention of electric car is indeed a brilliant idea and help to preserve our Earth's natural resources. However, as we live in the world of capitalism, from the view of capitalists, they see that the invention of electric cars has been the barrier for them to make profit. They do not look from many different and wide scopes, i.e. the benefit of electric cars to humans, animals, and even our Earth. From my perspective, I could see that, wealth is the only word that exists in their mind. It is not a big deal if they just stop producing the electric cars, but the car companies have violated other people's rights, such that they 'kill' all the electric cars that owned by the citizens. Like Hospers said,"[t]hey own freedom to do things what they want unless their action interfere with liberty of others to act as they choose", the car companies do not even have right to take away the electric cars from their owner and destroy it as the owner do not interfere the liberty of the car companies.
If the capitalists still oppose the invention of electric cars, they might think about it again once the natural resources (i.e. oil) is run-out completely and during that time they will definitely agree that the production of electric cars giving them a huge amount of profit.
Nice work here, Eric. You demonstrate a firm grasp of "capitalist logic," I think. I sometimes wish WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? provided a clear answer as to why exactly the EV-1 was removed from the market--or never introduced to more than just a small number of people--but it seems to me that the line of reasoning (or the need to obey M-C-M') you describe is a very plausible account of what happened.
Capitalism is something that is very hard to understand today. This concept of the "invisible hand" is hard to grasp, but when applying it to a capitalistic world one would say that it is through an individual's persistent self interest he or she would benefit everyone. I agree with Hasnur, and Eric when they say they both would love a fuel efficient car, but I feel there are a number of different perspectives that may be taken when looking at General Motors EV1 recall. Yes, it would be in the better interest of oil companies as well as other General Motor automobiles. This is actually referred to as cannibalization, which is when a company comes out with a new product, and that particular new product takes revenue as well as sales away from their old product. That is why I think that it was good for General Motors to recall the EV1, only because they predicted fewer sales on other models other than the EV1. That is why I do not see the EV1 as a capitalistic venture. If GM did not recall the automobile then of course I would feel obliged to see the EV1 as a capitalistic venture, because it would of benefited the people as a whole. Less pollution and lower fuel costs are only two of the many benefits of a fuel efficient car. However, now that time has elapsed, and oil is a problem for everyone across the board, fuel efficient cars are becoming more prevalent within society today.
Eric is the smartest, cutest, bestest, vegetarian, most anti-capitalistic person I know. I think I might marry him someday.
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