To: letters@nytimes.com
Re: The American automobile market and the struggle for survival and advantage in the socio-economic environment
Date: Wednesday, 2 February 05

 

Dear Sir/Madam,

As an ecologist and economist, I would like to offer your readers a lesson which, I optimistically imagine, in years to come will be standard classroom practice, using the following quotes from a report in today's NYT ("Car Sales Rise 2.3% in January, but Ford Takes a Fall") to illustrate an important (in fact, vital and urgent) insight into human nature, society and the economy.

Detroit continues to lose American customers to Asian competitors.

The Ford Motor Company lost the most, with sales falling 4.9 percent in January compared with the same month a year earlier.

Ford's retail share losses are alarming . . . Their retail sales are down 11 of the last 12 quarters. How does your dealer base generate profit and cash flow?

Over all, industry sales rose 2.3 percent in January . . .

The industry expects sales to pick back up and keep pace this year with the strong levels of last year. But sales are not expected to grow beyond the nearly 17 million cars and trucks sold in 2004. In an industry with the capacity to make roughly 20 million vehicles, buying a car is expected to continue to become cheaper as competition intensifies..

Hyundai has been one of the fastest-growing automakers and is aiming for 16 percent sales growth this year. If every maker met its goals, Mr. Cosmai said, "we'd probably have sales of 20 million."

. . . . most analysts expect that Ford and General Motors will continue to lose market share, and that other struggling automakers, notably Mitsubishi, will continue to post declines.

One Detroit company showing resilience has been the Chrysler division of DaimlerChrysler, which has been bolstered by a rejuvenated sedan and minivan lineup. In January, sales at DaimlerChrysler, which includes Mercedes-Benz, were up 7 percent from a year earlier.

At G.M., sales rose 1.1 percent in January, but the company said it was cutting its first-quarter production plans even more than previously thought. G.M. also said it would bring back rebates ranging from $750 to $1,000 that it had offered in December on crucial new models like the Chevrolet Cobalt, the Pontiac G6 and the Buick LaCrosse.

Sales at Nissan rose 15 percent, Toyota sales rose 6.2 percent and Honda sales fell 2.1 percent.

The report describes the current struggle of individual automobile manufacturers for survival and advantage in the socio-economic environment which is the American automobile market. Not without good reason, it parallels very closely the struggle of individual organisms for survival and advantage in the natural environment.

I know that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is not popular in America, but it is essential for understanding the origins and functioning of biological systems, including human beings and the socio-economic structures we have created.

Man's behavioural programming (which plays a much more important role in human behaviour than most people like, or are able, to admit) evolved over millions of years to serve the survival and advantage of individuals and their family units in the natural environment.  It has had no time to adapt to the much larger social units associated with the civilisations (including our own) which have arisen in just the past few thousand years.

With the advent of civilisation a fundamental change occurred, one which at the beginning of the 21st Century has still not been widely recognised or given the importance owing to it: the focus of man's behavioural programming shifted from his natural environment to his newly, self-created socio-economic environment.

The free-market, capitalist economy has developed and been honed to take advantage (quite effectively) of man's (primitive) behavioural programming, programming that evolved to aid his (the individual's and his family unit's) survival in the natural environment, not in the socio-economic environment.

The report from which I have quoted above is a classic example of man's preoccupation with the struggle for survival and advantage in his socio-economic environment (in this particular case, represented by the American automobile market, although one could use countless other examples). The natural environment, where climate change etc. is occurring, is not completely lost from view, but is not given the same attention or priority. We all "experience " the socio-economic environment, because it is now the focus of our behavioural programming, as the more important (for most people it is the only thing of importance).

The upshot of all this is that we are heading towards catastrophe - our attention focused on the socio-economic environment, while the natural environment (our planet, Spaceship Earth) is buckling under the strains we are placing on it. We tend only to notice them at all when they impact on our socio-economic environment. The way things look at the moment, by the time that results in us giving the matter our full attention, it will be too late.

I hope very much that you will take this lesson to heart. The future of our children and coming generations depends on it.

 

www.spaceship-earth.org