Soy Soup

They must serve soy at GM’s corporate cafeteria. It could account for the strange statement released the other day by GM’s CEO Mary Barra. It says that the main purpose of GM is to make sure that “each person . . . lead(s) a life of meaning and dignity.”

Wasn’t it to make cars?

Emphasis on was. It isn’t anymore – apparently.

“The purpose of a corporation,” the statement continues “is to serve all of its constituents, including employees, customers, investors and society at large.”

Italics added.+

“Society at large”? This smacks of social(ist) studies rather than STEM.

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But that’s what happens when a person with a background in human resources becomes the head of a car company.

And it’s not just Barra.

Ford CEO Jim Hackett affixed his John Hancock to this opus – this thesis, in the Martin Luther sense – as well. Along with Borg Warner CEO Frederic Lissalde and Tom Linebarger of Cummins and 181 titans of American business. Many of these businesses have been losing market share for years. The whole of GM today has about 8 percent less market share than Chevrolet by itself had in 1970.

Which may explain the ennui of these businessmen about business.

It’s like a chapter from Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged come to life.

Car companies and their suppliers seem increasingly uninterested in  . . . cars. Unless electric, which serves the purpose of perpetuating the fiction that these car companies are still in the car business.

When it comes to EVs, they are in the rent-seeking business.

But the new “product” isn’t electric cars, either. It’s virtue signaling. We Are Concerned. About everything.

Well, everything except what customers are interested in – like trucks and SUVs, for instance. Which GM builds with reluctance born of shame.

Better to get the government to mandate what the virtue-signalers are interested in.

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