1999-2009 [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
>>What _is_ your problem anyway?
Well, let's pretend that you asked a sincere question ;-)
My immediate problem was that people posted different answers re: the issue of whether the OnStar folks will let you die in your car if you don't subscribe. As I result, I was hoping for a direct answer from somebody who actually knows. However, we both know that the real point of your "question" was about something else, so let me answer that too.
My "problem" (if that's what it is) concerns the idea that capitalism somehow implies a complete lack of concern for what it means to be a good citizen. For the record, I do not favor government intervention. To the contrary, I've been a Libertarian for nearly 20 years, ever since my late brother-in-law who was then chairman of the South Carolina Libertarian Party clued me into their ideas. (He's dead now, courtesy of a drunk driver. I wonder if fast response to the accident scene might have saved his life.)
I don't think it works very well to have the government and the courts sticking their noses into everything and, because of that, I am interested in noticing ways that corporations can and do behave in ways that don't give capitalism a bad name. If corporations acted as responsible citizens we'd have less government intervention, as the core reason for most intervention is to protect the citizeny from irresponsible corporate behavior. I've already been lectured by someone else who felt the need to explain to me the basic principles of capitalism. All I can say in response is that there is absolutely nothing about capitalism that dictates an attitude of unbridled selfishness.
If you care to notice, there are many ways that capitalism can and does include principles of good citizenship. For example, I once had a car that came with a cell phone (old analog version) and, despite the fact that we didn't want cell phone service, it was nonetheless monitored for emergency calls. Why? Because the government made them? No. Because the courts made them? No. Why then? Simply because the company thought that was the right way to treat potential customers of their service. Similarly, in Europe both Mercedes and Volvo have accident response teams that rush to the scene of severe accidents to gain first-hand knowledge about how their vehicles behaved when crashed. They take the initiative to study accidents because they believe its the best way to learn how to improve their designs. Their concern is motivated neither by government regulation nor by immediate profit. Rather, they are committed to building the safest possible cars for their customers.
In the case of OnStar, we find GM bundling features, allegedly to "serve their customers" but their "subscribe or die" policy shows that their real allegience is to their own bottom line (which is fine) and that they are pursuing it in a way relies on hanging a threat over the customer (which is not fine). To my mind, their attitude of "buy our package or we won't enable reception of your SOS signals" is exactly the kind of thing that gives capitalism a bad name. Note that the decision is *not* "do you want SOS accident monitoring?" Will they sell you the SOS signal without other stuff you don't want? Nope. Do I think that is morally acceptable? Nope. What do I think GM should do? Easy: they should develop optional packages that people will buy because they want to buy them *and* they should not stoop to withholding life-saving responses as leverage to force people to buy what they don't want.
I've also heard that life-saving response is analagous to an insurance policy. This is a bogus analogy. Insurance is to mitigate the financial cost of various kinds of accidents and losses after they occur. Life-saving OnStar response has nothing to do with insurance. Instead, it has to do with saving lives. To my Libertarian mind, GM's willingness to let non-subscriber families die in cars without summoning help is a classic example of bad capitalism. But that doesn't make me anti-capitalism, nor does it make me "wrong". The only thing it makes me is somebody who doesn't believe that "capitalism" and "ethics" are mutually exclusive. There *is* an issue of right vs. wrong here, and I don't see why we are supposed to blindly accept that GM is somehow doing a morally acceptable thing just because we live in a capitalist system. Again, there is nothing about "capitalism" that means "ignore being a good citizen".
Of course, you are at liberty to react as if I'm an idiot. However, I can't help but wonder if your opinion would change if your child was riding in a neighbor's car, one that was OnStar equipped but not subscribed, a car wired to send out an SOS signal, and (heaven forbid) your child died because an accident occurred and GM refused to respond to that signal. Would you then think the question so simple? I wonder. (And I sincerely hope you never have to find out.)
In the meantime, why are you against the idea that we should expect that corporations (who benefit from our capitalist system) behave like responsible citizens?
posted by 199.174.1...
, Tue, 4 Sep 2001 20:17:32, Wed, 5 Sep 2001 00:53:04, Tue, 4 Sep 2001 20:19:14, Tue, 4 Sep 2001 00:54:18
No Site Registration is Required to Post - Site Membership is optional (Member Features List), but helps to keep the site online
for all Saabers. If the site helps you, please consider helping the site by becoming a member.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
