Business giveth and business taketh away.

I'm convinced the trend of the future, if corporations can get away with it, is going to be to own their products through their life cycle and destroy them when their official life is over.

It is not a new thing. Mainframe computers, up until the industry was pretty well consolidated in the 1970s, were often leased only, and when they came back they were destroyed. That's why there are no surviving Sperry Rand UNIVAC systems from the tube or early solid state era-meaning no one can read the steel tapes from the 1956 presidential election or the mag tapes from the 1960 one. Cessna Aircraft built a helicopter in the 1960s, and when it had some problems Cessna's engineers under Drunkie Dwight Wallace couldn't fix them they simply bought them all back. They couldn't make every customer return them, by law, but they had the type certificate repealed, so no one could fly them anymore-at least not in the United States. Xerox was notorious for theoretically offering its copiers for outright sale but then invariably coming up with some bizarre reason why the machine couldn't be delivered, or refusing to sell the one already delivered.

All car buffs know about Chrysler's Turbine Car program and curse Chrysler for destroying them. That's why when General Motors offered the EV1 for lease only I knew what the lessees found out the hard way, and which GM employees denied to me until they were blue in the face up until the day it happenned-that GM had no intention of allowing any of the EV-1 cars out of its clutches ever.

Personally, I had no great desire to own an EV-1 as a car, per se. But I very much would have liked to have one as a collectible. What bothers me about GM's behavior is the lying. They sat there and lied to me, and everyone else, and for that, I'd like to see them taught a lesson.

Which is why I'm hoping for a big bloody labor fight between Ford and the UAW, despite the recent blather on Bloomberg that negotiations should go smoothly. Toyota would be likely to buy Ford, or a good chunk thereof, at the right price, and if badly enough hurt for cash flow the price could be very right. With Toyota lean management and a propensity to build plants in what used to be The South, ToyotaFord would probably pound the hell out of GM.

Another reason I'm looking for a big labor fight is that the potential loss of a lot of UAW jobs all of a sudden would put political pressure on globalism-it would make it a much more explicit campaign issue. Anything that fans the nascent fires of nationalism is a good thing between now and the election next year.

So far, the de-industrialization of the United States has been totally absent as a campaign issue-the only thing even touching on it is the immigration issue, where working class America has made its displeasure well known, but to little avail as corporate money speaks very loudly and money is what wins elections.