Inexorable Arithmetic

General Motors, Michigan, the Republican Party all face the problem of inexorable arithmetic.

Let’s say you begin with a normal population of ten, one talented or ambitious person, one loser, and eight middling when opportunity, or the hope of opportunity disappears. Half leave. The ambitious one may stay because there’s still some room for him or her but five of the middling leave. The loser immediately goes from being 10% to 20% of the population.

Let’s say each of the remaining people marries an outsider and produces two children. The ambitious will have one talented and one less talented child, the middling will produce the usual variety and the losers, for lack of a better term, clone themselves. Again half leave. This time, the more talented of the previous generation’s ambitious one leaves with three of his or her classmates. Six remain, and the ones who can’t help themselves are now a third of the population.

If the same pattern repeats itself, the ones who we call the losers become half the eight who remain, then two-thirds. At some point, the population stabilizes but there’s less chance with each generation that someone will move in to revitalize the community. There’s also a point where those who remain begin to feel threatened by outsiders and discourage the in-migration of people who might improve conditions.

My Michigan hometown is between the first and second phases. Historically, many left each year, but were replaced each generation by the ambitious from elsewhere. Beginning in the 1950's the number of jobs began disappearing, the number who left increased some, and those who moved in went elsewhere. There are still people there, now nearing retirement age, who are trying to find a way to remake the community with no national economy to support them.

General Motors has been laying people off since the 1970's. Generations are shorter in an institution, and the habits of seniority, even among executives, mean the less talented have increasingly been the ones who decide who stays. When that happens, the shift to the incompetent is accelerated.

Daniel Howes recently complained in The Detroit News that General Motors is replacing its 60-year-old leaders with 50-year-old ones who, if they had ever done anything noteworthy, would already have improved the company. He says the company is claiming it can’t recruit outside talent because the government is limiting its ability to pay competitive salaries and bonuses.

That’s nonsense. If you were talented and had an idea how to change things, who would you talk to: the still open Toyota, the risky but possibly innovative Fiat, or General Motors. If money is the only thing it can offer, then all GM will attract are those who come for the money and leave. It no doubt can recruit such turnaround specialists from those who lead K-mart to its demise.

I was in Philadelphia when Arlen Specter was becoming politically active. The Italians like Frank Rizzo were taking control of the Democratic party from the mainline progressives. There was no room for an ambitious young Jew. Specter did not see his switch to the Republican party as opportunism, but as the only available opportunity in town.

At the time Specter became a Republican, those angry with the Democratic party’s acceptance of civil rights were also changing political affiliations for the same reason: unlike the hypothetical free market, in a two party system, there is always only one alternative.

Once in the party, those who had left the Democrats were determined they wouldn’t have to make such a change again, and began actively shoving out those like Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney who were more open-minded to change. That process of purification has now reached a point where voters have already declared their independence, Specter is homeless, and the only leaders it can recruit are morally dubious, even within the party’s narrow, religious definition of morality.

My hometown can die and the only people who will care are those who once lived there. General Motors has already died and the people who might have cared were already buying Toyotas and Hondas. When you have only two parties and states are guaranteed representation in the Senate, then the laws of arithmetic mean it’s possible to come to an impasse like our current congressional one where a small minority, who cannot be dislodged, can control our destiny and drag us all into its vortex.

Notes:
Howes, Daniel. "Insiders at New GM Same as They Ever Were," The Detroit News website, 24 July 2009.