The Big Three Bailout

OK… I can’t keep my opinion to myself any more. Regarding the bailout of the big three automakers. I have very deep feelings about this which is rooted in a decade or more of quazee-related research.
One cannot comment on the automakers for very long without sooner or later considering the impact one man had on the industry. His name is Dr. Edward Demming (one of my personal business hero’s). Actually his work was much broader than just the auto industry but his impact was still paramount to this topic.
Dr. Demming went from America to Japan after World War Two to help reconstruct the industry base. He was a statistician, a bean counter of bean counters. He was instrumental in assisting Japan changing from manufacturing “junk” to manufacturing “quality”.
There was a scene in Back to the Future where (I believe) the flux capacitor was “blown” on the DeLorean. Dr. Emmet Brown pulled the useless part out of the car and said something like “No wonder its blown its made in Japan”. The statement shocked Marty McFly who (as memory serves) tried to reconcile his understanding of Japan as a quality building country (in 1985) verses Emmet’s 1955 “Japan is junk” mindset. That conflict within Marty was primarily the result of Dr. Demming’s decades of work (with contemporaries such as Joseph Joran of course).
In his later years Dr. Demming was known as a rather bitter man. He was bitter because American industry refused to reevaluate their paradigms of quality. They were big, they were successful and they thought they were impenetrable. Specifically the “big three” thought they were “above questioning”. Bottom line was they were arrogant, especially GM.
In spite of the rejection by his native country, Dr. Demming continued his six sigma work in Japan (with Toyota, Honda, Suzuki and a host of other companies). In his three to four + decades of teaching, Japan was changed into a country manufacturing quality. Slowly, bit by bit, Japan’s quality ate away the big three’s market share. By the time the big three moderately humbled themselves to listen to Dr. Demmings teachings they were decades behind the competition. Even then GM (for example) never really embraced the teachings culturally (still do not in my opinion).
When I went to school we studied GM’s culture as an example of what NOT to build and embrace. Their arrogance and bullying is legendary.
Why should taxpayers “reward” top level management, unions and shortsighted shareholders with a bailout when arrogance got them into the predicament they are in? Without question, they are still trying to bully and blackmail the marketplace (now politicians) with their “economic size” (employees/voters, GDP impact etc). They are not sorry for what they did, they are sorry that they got caught! Big difference!
However, that doesn’t mean they won’t get paid. It just means they own the countries check book because they can exacerbate the panicking public’s political sentiment. Both misery and irresponsibility enjoys company.