Triage needs to happen at both the corporate level and the consumer level.
I can't get too upset at a person who bought a house for personal use in 2006 and is now underwater.
The following people should get no help.
1) Anybody who bought a house as an investment. 2) Anybody who refinanced their house and took money out (as opposed to just lowering the rate)
The gov't should give no bailout money to these people.
nedfreed, 330 - days ago
There's an inherent conflict between letting companies fail and the notion of being ready for the second "technology" wave. As technology becomes increasingly complex, we are increasingly dependent on accumulated institutional knowledge.
The car companies are a good example of this. They may be whales, but the institutional knowledge needed to build cars is immense, as many of the California electric car startups are now finding out.
And rebuilding institutional knowledge costs us in the one currency we really can't print more of: Time.
I worry that a triage policy based solely on, say, current and immediately pending product viability will end up throwing out a lot of babies with the bathwater.
OTOH, the present corporate masters of most companies have already demonstrated that all they care about is the preservation of the corporate ruling class. They don't give a crap about anything else, and so cannot be relied upon to act to preserve the parts of their companies that are actually important.
Perhaps the solution lies in finding the proper terms and conditions for any sort of bailout.
Triage needs to happen at both the corporate level and the consumer level.
I can't get too upset at a person who bought a house for personal use in 2006 and is now underwater.
The following people should get no help.
1) Anybody who bought a house as an investment.
2) Anybody who refinanced their house and took money out (as opposed to just lowering the rate)
The gov't should give no bailout money to these people.
There's an inherent conflict between letting companies fail and the notion of being ready for the second "technology" wave. As technology becomes increasingly complex, we are increasingly dependent on accumulated institutional knowledge.
The car companies are a good example of this. They may be whales, but the institutional knowledge needed to build cars is immense, as many of the California electric car startups are now finding out.
And rebuilding institutional knowledge costs us in the one currency we really can't print more of: Time.
I worry that a triage policy based solely on, say, current and immediately pending product viability will end up throwing out a lot of babies with the bathwater.
OTOH, the present corporate masters of most companies have already demonstrated that all they care about is the preservation of the corporate ruling class. They don't give a crap about anything else, and so cannot be relied upon to act to preserve the parts of their companies that are actually important.
Perhaps the solution lies in finding the proper terms and conditions for any sort of bailout.