Ford is chasing :melon-musk: 's business model and doing an end-run around their hordes of loyal car dealership minions. Blood in the fucking water.
This is actually a huge deal. The proletarianization of the petite bourgeois and their children is accelerating rapidly, and they will only become more fascist in response.
they will only become more fascist in response.
They were fascist already. If anything, the economic precarity they'll experience will move a portion that otherwise would have remained fascist/liberal to the left since that's the only side talking about immediate material improvements.
Even if they accept that women and minorities are the cause of their economic woes, the American right doesn't even pretend to offer immediate aid. It's no different than nebulous shit liberals promise that requires layers of insulating privilege to be motivated by.
We'd be way further along the fascism pipeline if capital had the competence/discipline to give out a crumb of property to expand the class of people who'd defend it.
If you tar them with the 'fascist' moniker at this stage, we may as well just claim America is already an explicitly fascist state. Which is a claim I am willing to entertain btw, I just don't think it is super useful for understanding these economic crisis and their effects. 'Fascism' isn't 'when capitalism targets and immiserates minorities' as that is just part of traditional capitalist structures.
American facism will likely be represented by the complete and inevitable breakdown of liberal law and order in which these people organize to attack both government and private corporations in order to preserve their private ownership. It will be funded by some corporations and opposed by others, but it will not resemble German or Italian fascism., as we have already done all the privatization that occured under those regimes through neoliberalism .
For now, most of these petite bourgeois people will be able to transfer their capital into other enterprises, such as restaurants and slums, but there is only so long before the profit margin collapses on those as well and they are driven out by larger capital entities. However, the sense of entitlement, betrayal and loss by their children will prime to move them straight into the arms of the fascist right (they will call themselves libertarians) unless they have a friend who is a leftist that can steer them in another direction. Fortunately, that might happen more and more as more and more people turn to the left, but with the complete breakdown of public education and segregation by wealth, I think this is increasingly unlikely.
the economic precarity they’ll experience will move a portion that otherwise would have remained fascist/liberal to the left
that's def what happened in 1930s Germany
Yes, they'll just walk strait into the open arms of the leftists that made sick dunks on their seadoo dealerships and hold the left blameless for their failed business.
How many dealership owners don't already hate the left?
I'm gonna guess that number is less than the number of former dealership owners who are now struggling to feed their family and make rent, and end up supporting the only guys talking about helping people struggling to feed their family and make rent.
Fascism would be here right now if either party passed free healthcare or housing or weekly checks, but heuristically targeted at white people.
There are plenty of people already struggling to feed their family, stuggling to make rent, and fully blaming the left for that fact. Brainworms are a hell of a drug.
Not really brainworms, more like failing to see a better example of actually aiding people cause the left is so fractured here
You really underestimate the sheer size of the petit bougie or petit bougie hopeful class in America. And you really, really underestimate their chuddiness.
Yup. Just a whole swath of the middle class economically garroted in the dead of night. The ubiquitous and universal giant fucking car dealership lots that blight the highways gone. It's going to be a massacre.
I think universal healthcare polls high even with republicans
The real material benefit would be impossible to overcome by propaganda in my view
Edit: 46% approval with republicans
One key thing polls don't explicitly tell you about M4A is that the demographic most opposed to it are those aged >65 - the overwhelming majority of whom are on Medicare! And their opposition isn't because they think Medicare sucks. They love it, it's just straight up pulling the ladder up behind them. So while yeah their votes count I personally discount anyone's opinion who is against M4A but is on Medicare when I'm trying to gauge how "popular" the idea is out in society.
So what this does is, that 46% of Republicans who like M4A... it's actually probably a solid majority who like it when you adjust out the boomers who think it's a "big government handout" but are still all too happy to accept it for themselves.
though at this point I think we should be pushing for and only accept a fully nationalized healthcare system like the Beveridge Model/NHS. Doing single payer at this stage of capitalism is basically cutting medical capitalists a blank check to defraud the government (and people) since regulatory power is so weak.
I agree, I say "M4A" sort of interchangeably with "universal healthcare" like the NHS, even though they're different.
Gen-X was the last generation that was pumped with straight up lies about how universal health care works in other countries. I was just a kid at the time, but in the 90s before the internet really took off, Americans were told in Europe you had to wait months to see any doctor, that every country with universal health care has "death panels", and that it's so expensive that it's bankrupting the countries that try it.
Anyone raised on the internet now can see how bullshit these arguments are. People know how absolutely shit private health care is, and I don't even think capital tries to convince them otherwise anymore. They just use their instruments of control (politicians, laws, courts) to ensure we never get universal health care, despite how popular it is.
Not endorsing electoralism and I generally think third parties are a bad idea, but given how popular M4A is and how important health care is, I wonder if a third party that was all about this single issue - literally just call it the M4A party - might have some success.
If Bernie wasn’t a fucking coward he would have run independent with that strategy after getting screwed by the DNC, basically suicide vest the democrats until they move left
"Them dang millennials are gonna drink up all the surgery juice!"
-- That Fred Flintstone guy, probably
and a democratization of workplaces. Unions are great against fascization
In this country? Idk. There's some hope, but it will probably come fast and all at once, whatever the slide is. I will say, even libs I know are starting to arm up. If these inevitable capitalist trends don't slow down, these next couple of years are going to be wild.
I watched the ford announcement stream yesterday. They called themselves out for past anti-union things they did, then went on to be like "we're gonna make 6000 union jobs in ohio and convert 3000+ more to full time union form part time".
Ford is like the anti-tesla right now.
trying to attract disgruntled tesla employees maybe?
edit: it gets spicier https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/03/feeling-super-bad-about-economy-musk-wants-to-cut-10percent-of-tesla-jobs.html
That might be the case - since Tesla's mostly built on selling EV credits and Ford is in the business of selling cars, they actually need people familiar with building EV platforms long-term.
Also it seems there's gonna be a push to "onshore" jobs this next decade so there US can more freely dial up the sinophobia
I watched a video of condelica rice eating all her former words about globalism and saying that it has failed and that she was wrong.
They have no choice but to bring industry back or America is going to spiral fast.
A real shocker that you can't stamp your industrial boot over other countries indefinitely and expect everything to be chill
It's an auto correct device for all your past wrongs.
Btw the video was nice to watch cuz she was grimmicing most of the time having to admit that they had no idea what they where doing and that the profit gains and unipolar world would be so short term.
What the fuck?? I know a lot of it is probably PR but this sounds like they want to poach Tesla employees.
It'll be funny seeing Musk try to go up against actual capitalists.
Ford is going to bend him over their lap lmao
Crypto and car dealerships seem like the next petite boojies on the chopping block, Musk being the amalgamation of the two while also being the richest guy in the world is going to be quite the fall
Its part PR no doubt, but a bunch of companies are investing in ohio right now, including Intel.
Idk, maybe ford just cracked the code that in order to sell cars, people need to afford cars, and that a destitute service economy is worse for their bottom line.
Sitting in a board room some where in corp America
Guys i have an idea. What if we paid people enough to afford the things we sell?
Ford desperately trying to figure out how to make people able to afford cars is hilarious when their entire origin myth is Henry Ford doing that
I don't like pickups, or the glorification of EVs as a perfect solution, but I love the lightning for the sole reason that the were able to make a far better electric pickup than the cyber truck could ever be, in a third the time, in a form factor people can actually use.
Correct on all counts. One other nice aspect of the lightning is that it can function as a battery for your home. So, while EVs are still not a panacea, they’re a lot better if they help give the grid distributed energy storage that can make clean sources more feasible
The lightning is so unnecessarily huge and bubbly though.
Give me a 1995 Toyota Tacoma 2wd extended cab as an EV, that would be a fucking banger, and could actually be efficient
The Maverick is honestly very close to what you want. A friend of mine got lucky with getting one and its honestly really nice. A lot of cut corners to make the low cost but the corners were cut in the right place. We hauled my ~300 pound motorcycle on the back along twisty roads and it felt like nothing was in it. When I first bought the bike, I rented one of those jeep pickups to haul it and man it drove like shit with just one motorcycle, let alone two.
Maybe they'll make an EV Mav but the hybrid already gets insanely good mileage.
I think it gets like 40 mpg? Which, for a truck, is very good. I already have a hybrid that gets real life more than 50 mpg anyway though, but the maverick definitely caught my eye when it came out
I think my friend said 40+ around town, highway he was able to push it.
The maverick honestly feels more useful than an f150. Another friend has an f150 and its way harder to load shit into the tailgate at stock bed height.
I honestly rather have a single cab maverick. I mostly drive alone or with max one passenger, and the additional space in the bed would make it an absolute work horse. It can already tow almost what a base f150 can.
Yeah my first car (well, family car) was an older Toyota Tacoma and I gotta say the versatility of a pickup is pretty unmatched. It's definitely something I miss.
Also that price tag - 20k? That's insane, idk how they got it to that price. Kinda mind blowing tbh, that's the price of most economy level sedans/coups
It can get up to almost 40, but thats where it tops out iirc. You can get a fairly capable little hauler with 4 seats for around 22k which is insane when you think about it in the context of the rest of the market.
From personal experience, its nice to be inside too. Back seats are roomy, the back seat flips up for decent storage, Its all hard plastic but ford took the time to give each piece a varied texture and color so its a nice place to be that doesn't feel like a uhaul. There's mount points that you can 3d print custom mounts for or buy one, and they're all around the interior. Even some factory 110v outlets inside and in the bed for powering tools. The bed's anchor points are really nice too. It was an honest to god pleasure throwing a motorcycle in the back and tying it up, between the low tailgate height and adjustable tie down hooks.
Under the hood, they didn't splurge on much in the way of engine covers or nonsense plastic, you can basically see everything and parts are easily accessible for repair.
This move represents a concentration of capital even further up the chain, which is bad.
But the move to end this ridiculous game where you have to try and guess the price a dealership will sell you a car because they don't actually tell you, they will only tell you a fake price that they would only sell it if you don't talk to them about the price, is amazing. Haggling is so fucking dumb, such a waste of time and is ultimately a tax on people who don't know much about cars or don't have the skills to interact in that way.
I worked in auto financing for a bit, and I can tell you the contracts that came in with the largest mark-ups and rip-offs were all old ladies with bad credit
Also, monopolization and concentration of capital is the inevitable trend of capitalism it’s not really “good” or “bad” it just is. It’s necessary for socialism. You seize the monopolies. It’s a lot easier and more popular than seizing tens of thousands of small businesses
Car dealers really are the scum that everyone thinks they are. Ripping off old ladies and marking everything up, lying to your face about simple facts and then denying it later if it isn’t in writing.
Nevermind the enormous amounts of land dealerships monopolize or the way they fling their money around in local politics to fuck with elections.
A world without car dealerships is a better place.
True. I worked with dealership Finance personnel regularly and they are both dumb and huge demanding babies who throw a tantrum at everything. Even though we had a business-to-business relationship they would regularly scream and cuss at us if we inconvenienced them. They would regularly commit fraud, altering legal documents and forging customer initials, because they made an error on the document and were too lazy to get the customer to re-sign.
They didn’t even understand the leases and financing structures at all, we had to hold their hands through document they themselves created
I will say that the workers in the Service department who maintained the vehicles were chill and didn’t have these issues, but sometimes weren’t the most tech savvy when it came to reporting info to us.
