One more thought on Veronique’s post: General Motors will be nationalized at some point, and you’ll be expected to feel patriotic about it.

Politicians simply can’t allow GM to go under, even though it deserved to in 2009, and its financial situation will probably merit it again in the future. Between their mismanagement and a torrent of government regulations — safety rules, green rules, and trade rules — it’s going to eventually become impossible to keep going. In some sense, it’s an arm of the government already, meekly complying with every new mandate under the knowledge that it only continues to exist because of the bailout.

It’s possible for a company to reinvent itself, and many have. Barnes & Noble, for example, is actually doing quite well despite competition from Amazon. It realized it needed to change and executed a strategy to do that. GM has not demonstrated that kind of leadership or innovation. And it can’t because it is locked into onerous union contracts.

The only way GM doesn’t get nationalized is if it hangs on long enough that all the old politicians and voters who are nostalgic for the heyday of the company die first. But either Trump or Biden would nationalize GM in an instant if that’s what was necessary to save the company. And they’d act like they were doing you a favor by spending your tax dollars to prop up a zombie firm that the government played a part in killing.