Obama's American car dealerships
President Barack Obama today moved one step further in nationalizing General Motors and Chrysler, assuring citizens everywhere that he is "absolutely committed" to saving an otherwise failing American automobile industry.
All socialist implications aside, President Obama's move is part of larger picture, a paradigm that has rendered Americans blind for decades.
While many commentators will say he is simply trying to save American jobs or that he is appeasing the unions, who helped get him elected, I wish to focus on a much deeper problem: Assigning intrinsic value to commodities.
A car is nothing by itself. It enables us to move, to be free from the bondage of a pedestrian lifestyle. As such, it should be treated as a part of a larger value, the value of mobility, which itself is related to both freedom and individualism.
However, Obama seems to believe, or at least he is publicly arguing, that American cars are somehow better than foreign cars, that there is a certain intrinsic value attached to American-made goods.
This is nothing more than economic patriotism, the kind espoused by localists, environmentalists, anti-globalization advocates, and hard-nosed economic conservatives, all of whom praise American-made products and demonize any outside threat to the sanctity of their credo, "Made in the USA." They hide behind their masks of so-called human rights, of animal welfare, of environmental welfare, of energy independence, of racism, of inhumane hatred; and for what?
So that the world will know that the American Apparel tag on the leggings that sit tight on the ass of a California-born supermodel look just as amazing as the Dearborn, Mich. imprint on the underside of the Ford Mustang muffler? So that the world will know the Chevrolet Corvette is an American icon, that we have not departed from our working-man, industrialized roots? So that children who would otherwise starve without "sweatshop jobs" in foreign nations can be spared of their sub-mininum-wage salaries? So that all our wine comes from Napa and Sonoma? So that all our bananas and pineapples come from Hawaii? So that all our oranges come from Florida? So that all our strawberries come from California? So that we can claim our bold, international superiority over every other race and culture?
May such claims be damned. May economic patriotism be damned.
There is nothing noble or intrinsically valuable about locally-produced fruit or nationally-produced automobiles. Who cares what the color of the skin of the man who made your clothes is? Who cares if our coffee comes from Costa Rica or our bananas from the Dominican Republic? Who cares if Australiza still produces better Shiraz on their limestone coastline than California does in its mediterranean valleys?
May this be a call to us all to realize that perhaps America is not the fanatastic, industrialized, international monopoly it once was. May this be a call that American manfacturers learn that no longer can they rely on consumers to buy an inferior product for an increased price. May this be a call that we all realizes the benefits of globalization: that one can eat Chinese food on Monday, Mexican on Tuesday, Cajun on Wednesday, a hamburger on Thursday, and French fine dining on Friday; or that an 11-year-old boy in Indonesia is in fact better off with a job in a Nike factory, even if he is not paid what Americans believe is due, for now he can feed his mother and his sister; or that the only way to improve the environment is for the world, not just Americans, to realize our reliance on it and our need to replant natural resources in order to sustain our future.
I, like many before me, too have a dream. I have a dream that one day, I will be cruising a free and reborn America in an Italian-made Lamborghini, my only companion my half-Latina wife, herself adorned in jeans produced by a man in another land, one that is now free. Then, and only then, will globalization not be looked at as an enemy of nations, as a violator of human rights, but as what it really is: the only way to guarantee capitalism and freedom to those who are currently without.
All socialist implications aside, President Obama's move is part of larger picture, a paradigm that has rendered Americans blind for decades.
While many commentators will say he is simply trying to save American jobs or that he is appeasing the unions, who helped get him elected, I wish to focus on a much deeper problem: Assigning intrinsic value to commodities.
A car is nothing by itself. It enables us to move, to be free from the bondage of a pedestrian lifestyle. As such, it should be treated as a part of a larger value, the value of mobility, which itself is related to both freedom and individualism.
However, Obama seems to believe, or at least he is publicly arguing, that American cars are somehow better than foreign cars, that there is a certain intrinsic value attached to American-made goods.
This is nothing more than economic patriotism, the kind espoused by localists, environmentalists, anti-globalization advocates, and hard-nosed economic conservatives, all of whom praise American-made products and demonize any outside threat to the sanctity of their credo, "Made in the USA." They hide behind their masks of so-called human rights, of animal welfare, of environmental welfare, of energy independence, of racism, of inhumane hatred; and for what?
So that the world will know that the American Apparel tag on the leggings that sit tight on the ass of a California-born supermodel look just as amazing as the Dearborn, Mich. imprint on the underside of the Ford Mustang muffler? So that the world will know the Chevrolet Corvette is an American icon, that we have not departed from our working-man, industrialized roots? So that children who would otherwise starve without "sweatshop jobs" in foreign nations can be spared of their sub-mininum-wage salaries? So that all our wine comes from Napa and Sonoma? So that all our bananas and pineapples come from Hawaii? So that all our oranges come from Florida? So that all our strawberries come from California? So that we can claim our bold, international superiority over every other race and culture?
May such claims be damned. May economic patriotism be damned.
There is nothing noble or intrinsically valuable about locally-produced fruit or nationally-produced automobiles. Who cares what the color of the skin of the man who made your clothes is? Who cares if our coffee comes from Costa Rica or our bananas from the Dominican Republic? Who cares if Australiza still produces better Shiraz on their limestone coastline than California does in its mediterranean valleys?
May this be a call to us all to realize that perhaps America is not the fanatastic, industrialized, international monopoly it once was. May this be a call that American manfacturers learn that no longer can they rely on consumers to buy an inferior product for an increased price. May this be a call that we all realizes the benefits of globalization: that one can eat Chinese food on Monday, Mexican on Tuesday, Cajun on Wednesday, a hamburger on Thursday, and French fine dining on Friday; or that an 11-year-old boy in Indonesia is in fact better off with a job in a Nike factory, even if he is not paid what Americans believe is due, for now he can feed his mother and his sister; or that the only way to improve the environment is for the world, not just Americans, to realize our reliance on it and our need to replant natural resources in order to sustain our future.
I, like many before me, too have a dream. I have a dream that one day, I will be cruising a free and reborn America in an Italian-made Lamborghini, my only companion my half-Latina wife, herself adorned in jeans produced by a man in another land, one that is now free. Then, and only then, will globalization not be looked at as an enemy of nations, as a violator of human rights, but as what it really is: the only way to guarantee capitalism and freedom to those who are currently without.
posted by Tobin Spratte at 3:05 PM
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