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You get what you pay for.....

Fascism anyone? It's what you have when the government takes meaningful control of key industries while allowing the semblance of private ownership. The countless governmental strings that will be attached to this administration's "bailout" of three poorly run car companies just adds to the growing list of industries coming more and more under government control. And now, it isn't just that most companies that "succeed" in the marketplace do so via the destruction of free competition through lobbied legislative and regulatory favors. While that state of affairs has grown and grown with its complicated mesh of pull and favors and owed 'cover' and protections and inside information, it does not begin to approach the injury to the (cough) "free" market that will be caused by the explicit tax supported government involvement in the auto industry. On the backs of the American worker, the beaurocrat will now be in a position to decide just what sort of automobile innovation is best, just what sort of cars 'should' be made, just what sort of competition from other companies 'should' be allowed, just how much control the auto workers union 'should' be granted. Freedom and merit shall be all but dead in the American auto industry. We the people will pay for three poorly run companies strapped with a union which bleeds its members as well as the companies. We will be forced to spend our daily thought and effort on these companies which have survived not on merit and innovation and cost effeciency, but on government 'pull.' We will get and perpetuate the continuance of exactly what we're buying - poorly run companies and the worst of corrupt unions.
Can no one see that we WANT the unwise and inefficient to fail, and the wise and efficient to succeed? Can no one see that paying for the continuance of bad businesses just gets all of us - bad businesses?
While all of this is somewhat moot until the American people take back their government from the lobbying foreign and business insterests, it sets a very dangerous precedent.

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