In its lead editorial, titled “Sticker Shock,” The New York Times of Sunday, June 5, 2011, has the audacity to declare that “…Detroit and other manufacturers make big changes only when regulators force them to.”
The Times apparently forgets that the big changes constituted first by the introduction of the automobile, way back in 1894, and then by the countless improvements in the automobile since that time, such as the self-starter, automatic transmission, power brakes, and power steering, were made by "Detroit" without the presence of government regulators, indeed, in large part precisely because of the absence of government regulators. And that the same point applies to virtually every other “big change,” in very line of business that has taken place since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.
Clearly, the free market, the market insofar as it is free of government regulators, has made not merely big, but absolutely enormous changes, the enormous changes that constitute the economic progress of the last 260 years or more!
The “big changes” that the Times complains of not being made unless forced by regulators are changes that do not constitute economic progress but impoverishment. The specific change referred to in its editorial is compelling the automobile industry to produce cars so small and light that they will be able to achieve 62 miles per gallon. The obvious fact is that consumers do not want such pieces of junk and because they don’t, the automobile industry does not waste time trying to produce them. The only thing that can bring about such a “big change” is the government’s use of physical force in an act of naked aggression against the consuming public and the automobile producers who profit by serving the consumers.
