For two straight weeks in the New York times, Thomas Friedman http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/opinion/10friedman.html has surveyed his flat world, seized on the American automotive industry, and pronounced it a dinosaur. Rather than bailing out the carmakers, he says, we have to “let nature take its course.”
It’s hard to dispute the truth of it, when you focus on the bottom line. We think such predictions are, in fact, no brainers – along with the dinosaur metaphor. After all, what has a both tiny head and a huge body that makes it eventually incapable of outrunning the competition? Bean counters take note.
We are a daughter of Detroit – dad was a career engineer for Chysler. We lost him in 1992 – therefore he's not around to see the sad state of affairs today. Retirement didn’t really suit him. He loved his job. He was a battery expert, and worked on the starter system. The teenaged us remembers once banging through the screen door one summer, after clumsily failing to start the car. Dad was sitting reading the paper. “That darn starter, “ we whined. Without missing a beat or putting down the paper, Dad shot back, completely serious, “We’re working on it.”
Today we’re a prof, and some of our students are young engineers. They are very competitive. They understand a lesson when it takes the form of a game, with a prize. And when they ask us for the prize, we always say, “it’s the engineer’s favorite prize, the thing that drives every engineer at his or her heart.” Money, they guess? Sex? Chocolate? “No, “ we say, “it’s the satisfaction of a job well done!” They grudgingly agree.
We have not doubt that Detroit is still filled with men and women who value their work above all else. And what of them. Are they the “Detroit” vilified in the papers? When nature takes it’s course, what of the human cost? The people clinging desparately to the tail, wishing the head would wake up?
Sooner or later, that’s most of us.
