U.S. government loses $9.7 billion in GM bailout

[Mercor]

Quote from Ricter:


Edit: GM is a better company today.

GM is better because a better company came along and made a better product that forced GM to improve. ( Toyota, Honda)

Giving 50 billion dollars in free money is another way to make a company better, for awhile

 

[Ricter]

Quote from Tsing Tao:

The government has no right to pick and choose winners. That is not capitalism by any stretch of the imagination.

This part, "pick and choose which companies to [invest in] based on a [...] calculation on how much ROI would be generated" is very much capitalism. As to whether the government has a right to be in those brackets, to do that or not, that's a decision we make, not an objective truth. And our government has been doing this kind of thing since the founding (thought the scale has changed).

 

[denner]

Quote from Ricter:

This part, "pick and choose which companies to [invest in] based on a [...] calculation on how much ROI would be generated" is very much capitalism. As to whether the government has a right to be in those brackets, to do that or not, that's a decision we make, not an objective truth. And our government has been doing this kind of thing since the founding (thought the scale has changed).

It's more appropriately called "crony capitalism", since the ROI becomes secondary to which political interests are served by making said investment.