RE: Education and Presidential Candidates

[dhartman@phdinc.com]

Harry I. Nimon stated, "Given this perspective, competition between GM and Ford
will
not result in improvements to the automobile because one is not changing the
system...yet the improvements and change do occur.  They occur precisely
because to not do so maintains the current product at a point where one or
the other is substandard.  The customer then selects that which provides for
their needs the best."

Harry, I view the GM/Ford scenario a little differently, in that I believe that
through a little different view of automotive history their products CAN be
viewed as examples of the fact that unless the system changes competition does
not result in significant improvement.  Allow me to expound a little.  During
the 40's, 50's, and 60's I grant you that some improvements were made to the
automobile, but I also suggest that cars made during these three decades
remained technologically equal (in fact they were not much more advanced than
the their predecessors from the 20's and 30's).  We still were dealing with
carburetors, distributors, contact points, galvanized exhaust systems (in lieu
of today's stainless steel systems); painted steel exterior panels (in lieu of
today's galvanized panels); increasingly bulky/heavy vehicles (with no more
interior room than many of the smaller/lighter cars of today), and higher fuel
consumption (with less efficiency than today's internal combustion engine
demonstrates).

So what was it that brought about the significant advances that we see today?
Competition (I think that the 50 year history mentioned demonstrates that this
wasn't an effective driver of change)?  Or was there a change in the
requirements, such as: Federal mandates for emissions controls; a fuel crisis;
the entry of "new" competitors from Asia that were providing products that were
a paradigm shift in their design (small, fuel efficient, reliable, and
inexpensive).

I believe that these systemic changes are what drove the improvements that we
see in today's cars, compared to those of just a few decades ago.  Not the
competition between two monopolistic "competitors" that were satisfied just
changing the appearance of vehicles that continued to be designed for
obsolescence.

David Hartman

dhartman@phdinc.com