US Auto Industry Became 'Brain Dead' - and so ought to pay for that mistake

...somebody ought to call Steve Jobs, who doesn’t need to be bribed to do innovation, and ask him if he’d like to do national service and run a car company for a year. I’d bet it wouldn’t take him much longer than that to come up with the G.M. iCar.

NVDL: Today we cannot afford to daydream. Not in our thoughts or in our actions. Thinking has to be alert, in touch and rational. Thinking isn't necessarily innovation if it's underpinned by delusions. I guess what I am really referring to is consciousness.

Too many industries are greed-mongering machines incapable of operating intelligently and sensibly in the real world. [Japanese companies may be an exception]. That needs to change, and that change needs to start with us (who buy their sh$t).

clipped from www.nytimes.com It led to a situation whereby General Motors could make money only by selling big, gas-guzzling S.U.V.’s and trucks. Therefore, instead of focusing on making money by innovating around fuel efficiency, productivity and design, G.M. threw way too much energy into lobbying and maneuvering to protect its gas guzzlers. It included special offers of $1.99-a-gallon gasoline for a year to any customer who purchased a gas guzzler. And it included endless lobbying to block Congress from raising the miles-per-gallon requirements. The result was an industry that became brain dead. Nothing typified this more than statements like those of Bob Lutz, G.M.’s vice chairman. He has been quoted as saying that hybrids like the Toyota Prius “make no economic sense.” And, in February, D Magazine of Dallas quoted him as saying that global warming “is a total crock of [expletive].” These are the guys taxpayers are being asked to bail out.