[screye]

It's been a bizarre watch. The automotive industry (and nations that rely on it) has sabotaged itself for a good decade. Unsurprisingly, China has caught up. Classic case of 'we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas'.

Unions sabotaged automation efforts and limited hours worked. Quarterly financial pressures kept research investments to a minimum. Nations refused to scale up nuclear, and cost of electricity kept rising. The one well-run EV company (Tesla) decided to destroy its brand value overnight. Toyota went on a pig-headed hydrogen tangent and Honda still hasn't tried to make an EV. Korea has done surprisingly well. But, they're the exception that proves the rule.

China's rise as a manufacturing superpower was inevitable. But its rise as an automotive superpower involved major capitulation by the primary competition.

[malfist]

Please share how unions sabotaged automation efforts. As far as I can tell, unions are losing every fight these days.

[jonkoops]

Unions in countries like Germany and France are much more powerful. Especially VW is extremely unionized, half of the seats on the Supervisory Board are allocated to worker representatives. These employee representatives are elected or selected by the workers (usually via union and works council processes), so VW employees indirectly influence board decisions through these seats.

[abdullahkhalids]

> Unions sabotaged automation efforts and limited hours worked.

It's completely rational for unions, and the workers, to prevent automation. The short term results of automation are only negative for workers, and positive for every other part of the market (customers, suppliers, capitalists). The results might be positive in the long run, but why should only one group suffer.

Perhaps, the capital-owning class could make the deal positive for the workers by giving the workers ownership of a substantial portion of the firm. Then whats good for the firm would become good for workers, and the union would not oppose automation so much.