Seth: What do do about Detroit

“What we don’t need are giant companies with limited choice, confused priorities, private jets and a bully’s attitude.

I’d spend a billion dollars to make the creation of a car company turnkey. Make it easy to get all the safety and regulatory approvals… as easy to start a car company as it is to start a web company. Use the bankruptcy to wipe out the hated, legacy marketing portion of the industry: the dealers.

We’d end up with a rational number of “car stores” in every city that sold lots of brands. We’d have super cheap cars and super efficient cars and super weird cars. There’d be an orgy of innovation, and from that, a whole new energy and approach would evolve. Betcha.” Full post

This makes sense to me. So many of our institutions are broken or outdated or corrupt. But the people running them are too invested to ever change. So –painful as it will be– maybe it’s good a lot of stuff is crashing. We won’t get better government or financial markets or car companies until the old ones are gone.

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