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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (150840)	9/3/2002 5:32:15 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586261

That makes no sense.......how could GM get involved if the systems no longer existed. They existed in hundreds of cities at some time or another. Many of them went away before GM got involved. Others where still operating but where a finacial mess. What facts do you want.........GM bought the systems and dismantled them. They said it was good for America and many Americans bought their bs. If they where thriving and carrying a large amount of people with solid profits they probably would have been to expensive to buy up GM and its partners got them on the cheap because most of the operations where falling apart anyway. If there was so much demand for streetcars then GM buying them would not have made any difference. If GM shut them down then someone else would have started a new service. They failed because they where not very profitiable. Perhaps they could have been profitable in some places if there where no fair price restrictions but the restrictions existed and they where not put in place by GM or any of its partners. We need to regulate the hell of them so American people don't keep getting screwed. Corporations are some of the most dishonest institutions in this country and have contributed much to our messes. The government is at least as dishonest as the corporations and is massively more powerful then any corporation. It can back up its screwing us over with guns. You seem naive about this fact. In fact most of the ways corporations screw us over require the involvement of the government. For example big agribusiness taking billions of subsidies and benefiting from trade barriers, or the recent tariffs on steel imports. A lot of the regulations actually just function as a way to keep out compitition even if they are nominally for safety or to protect the environment. Large companies with tons of experience and well funded legal and compliance departments can deal with the regs, while new competition is kept away. Sure it is corporations asking for us to get screwed in those examples, but the government is the organization that has the actual power to do it. Any human institution is going to have dishonest, corrupt or just horribly misguided people. The only way we can keep from getting screwed is to not give any of them too much power. Tim