Re: the share held by banks

["William B. Ryan" <w_b_ryan@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Okay, so Mazda has 1/3 interference engines. That means 2/3rds are not. And are you saying that the trade-in schema you outline below is something the manufacturers planned and executed, or are you commenting on what has happened? As far as I can tell, most people in North America keep Japanese cars longer than 40,000 miles and they seem to retain a lot of their value beyond 100,000 miles. So I'm not sure what your point is. GM, on the other hand, used the well-documented principle of built-in obsolescence. I also believe that if properly maintained, as you would maintain any car, the incidences of engines being damaged by timing belts is not that common. So I'm not sure what your point is there either: that the Japanese manufacturers set out to deceive the American consumer in an unusually diabolical way, far worse than, say, the US manufacturers set out to do so? That would not explain general customer satisfaction levels being much higher on so many Japanese vehicles than on so many North Am made ones. Doubtless there are reasons to like or dislike either set of products, and if you were a mechanic, I might understand your preference, for one or the other. But I don't see its importance for social theory, in the grand scheme of things, unless, as I said, you see a plot to deceive American consumers; a kind of variation on the "inscrutability" accusation of yesteryear. This you seem to carry on over to your example of telephones. Again, does that apply to Sanyo telephones as well? I still don't get the point of your examples or accusations?

The point is not to establish a sinister "us versus them" scenario.

The American and Japanese manufacturing sectors each face demand curves from their own consumers that are falling in respect of their costs of production.  The general case is that this is true for every national economy, which sets in motion a struggle for markets between nations that no-one can ultimately win.  In this synthetic struggle for survival people do things they shouldn't do and otherwise wouldn't do.  And it is all so pointless, for what they are fighting for are simply numbers that can be written down into account books.  It is a foolish game.  But in the process the things that really count are degraded more and more.

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