The Curse of the Car

NYT—The White House on Sunday pushed out the chairman of General Motors and instructed Chrysler to form a partnership with the Italian automaker Fiat within 30 days as conditions for receiving another much-needed round of government aid.

A Rebbe a century ago remarked: you should do everything at least once just for the experience with the exception of driving a car; seems the Rebbe did not like cars. Perhaps it was not the car which was repugnant to the Rebbe, but the manner in which the car is massed produced.

Henry Ford, a known anti-Semite and inventor of the assembly line, was famous for saying: why do I need to hire a man when all I need is his hand. That curse has extended into all parts of society where one can sell their brain, their ability—the thing they love most for a buck.

Now the question is whether there is enough good in this complicated dehumanizing apparatus to justify continuation.