Lost in the fatuous fake
news juggernaut about the supposed misdeeds of the relentlessly besieged Orange
Man has been real – and important news – about the longest nationwide strike by autoworkers
in almost 50 years.
The target of the strike is
General Motors. The United Auto Workers haven’t been working since September
16. Almost all GM plants have been idled since then, with the exception of the
truck plant in Silao, Mexico. But a shortage of parts caused by the idling of
the plants north of the border will almost certainly cause the truck plant to
go silent soon, too.
The closures are costing GM
about $25 million per day in lost profit, according to analysts.
But they could cost autoworkers
– and us – much more.
The UAW is wangling with GM over
several things, including some of the usual things
such as wages, health care and job
security.
That last item is italicized to emphasize something brewing that’s
extremely newsworthy but isn’t being reported much by the general press,
probably because it almost never reports anything that is alarming about the EV
juggernaut.
One of those things is what the force-feeding of electric cars will do to
car industry jobs – and not temporarily.
An EV is a transportation module with fewer parts that is much easier to
assemble than a non-electric car. It requires fewer workers to manufacture –
and maybe not any at all. It is likely that an EV production line could be
almost completely automated.
Many plants – not just GM’s – will be closing and not temporarily,
because of a labor dispute.
Also
plants that used to build engines and transmissions (EVs don’t have them) as
well as all the peripheral systems, many of which EVs also do not have. The EVs
themselves are largely disposable, too. Like a smartphone.
This has happened before, of
course – but very differently.
The horse-and-buggy industry
gave way to the car industry at the beginning of the 20th century – but organically. Because cars
were functionally superior to the horse and buggy. When they became much
cheaper than a horse and buggy – the breakthrough achieved by Henry Ford with
his assembly line technique and mass production of the Model T – almost
everyone except the Amish gave up their horse and buggy – and they kept theirs
for religious reasons.
Today, we’re being forced for religious
reasons to give up our cars in favor of the modern analog of the horse
and buggy.
Whatever putative merits EVs may
have, according to those pushing them – the facts about their much higher cost,
much reduced operating range and much increased time to resume operation are
incontestable. Ordinarily, these facts would prevent them from being mass
produced for all the obvious reasons – the most obvious one being that the
masses are as unlikely to buy EVs as people in the 1950s were likely to buy
horses and buggies.
But the difference is that people are going to be forced to buy EVs.
They are already being forced to
“help” defray the cost of mandates requiring the manufacturing of them, via
higher prices for non-electric cars – and they’re forced to “help” the few who
do want them to buy them, via taxpayer-financed subsidies.
But that won’t be enough to get
most people into an EV.
It will be necessary to make
non-EVs cost at least as much – and maybe more than – EVs. This will be done
via “polluter pays” annual registration fees (these being based on the
religious fatuity that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” . . . but only
when “emitted” at the tailpipe) and incrementally expanding bans on the use of
other-than-electric cars; first in urban areas, then spreading outward.
This will create “demand” for
EVs – in the Five Year Plan Sense of top-down-decreed artificial demand
for them. It is considered an irrelevance by the five-year-planners whether the
people downstream want – or can afford – any of this.
Regardless, the EVs will be
mass-manufactured. And there will be fewer workers involved in their
manufacture. Just as there will be fewer over-the-road (and delivery) drivers,
once the automated electric car is foisted upon us.
GM
will permanently close and consolidate more plants – and so will the rest of
the industry. “Productivity”
will go up, but wealth will not be created.
It will be transferred.
From the bottom of the pyramid to the apex.
In
addition to paying more for cars – now electric exclusively – people will be
forced to pay the social costs of all those workers no longer working. It will
be paid in more than money, too. There will be a growing anger, born of
frustration and hopelessness.
This is not capitalism – but it will be demagogued as
such by people who know better, who will demagogue it to use and manipulate its
victims – the autoworkers, for instance. Who will be victimized twice, at
least.
First, they’ll lose their jobs – not because those jobs
have been rendered obsolete but because they’ve been legislated out of
existence. Then they’ll become desperate, comparable jobs (and income) probably
not being available. Then they’ll become dependent – on demagogues, who will urge
more of the same poison – government, always government – which caused them to
be victimized in the first place.
EVs will lead to the
proletarianization of America. Reversing the gains made by average people over
the past 120 years.
The
UAW strike is a prequel of things to come.
.
. .
Got a question about cars, Libertarian politics – or anything
else? Click on the “ask
Eric”link and send ’em in!
If
you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.
We depend
on you to
keep the wheels turning!
If you
prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is:
EPautos
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079
721 Hummingbird Lane SE
Copper Hill, VA 24079