2015: our customer problem & yours.

The long battle between Detroit's last automaker, BIGONE, and its major international competitors has been settled with the U.S. government's 300 percent tariffs on foreign cars. While most of the media focused on the prohibitive costs of imported autos, the real news came from a highly placed BIGONE executive, Ms. Lada Edsell, who told a small group of reporters that within a year the company's automobiles would be produced entirely by computers and robots. Remaining production workers would be laid off and BIGONE would be able to undersell every automaker in the world.

Ms. Edsell admitted that BIGONE's ability to vanquish European, Asian, and African car manufacturers would last only until these companies were fully computerized and robotized themselves. At that point, the competitive struggle would be determined by which company could get along with the smallest number of executives--a criterion by which the United States is currently lagging.

Reporters, yet to work with robot executives, asked what it was like. Edsell reported that the executive robots still broke down frequently and spent too much time in the repair clinic. Yet when at work, they behaved in most respects like their human colleagues except for their inability to make small talk, their disarming politeness when their decisions were challenged, and their annoying habit of always being right.

Edsell said that BIGONE's human relations department would be working with the departing production-line employees on job retraining or welfare certification. Certified obsolete workers might qualify for the proposed congressional tax rebates for those who permanently leave the labor market. In addition BIGONE was urging Michigan officials to revive the state unemployment insurance program, which was canceled after the congressional Libertarian-Conservative coalition abolished the federal program. Edsell said the auto workers' union would be helpful in this effort. But when most union members were laid off several years ago, the union closed its Detroit office and no one knew whether the UAW still exists. If it did, Edsell invited them to join this lobbying effort.

Finally reporters asked how the auto companies, and other industries turning to robotization, expected to sell their products since workers were also consumers. Who would buy BIGONE autos?

Edsell reported that at a recent board meeting there had been a lively discussion about the "customer problem," and that several ideas were being pursued. The most promising was to persuade the federal government to support BIGONE by providing laid-off employees with funds to buy cars. There were glitches, especially for immigrant workers imported in cost-cutting schemes by American manufacturers. Would they be eligible?

Until Congress agrees to the legislation and the necessary appropriations, the board proposed giving old model cars, which were no longer salable, to laid-off workers, and surplus luxury models to jobless American executives. Some directors even proposed that surplus old model cars be given to poor people. This led to a debate about whether the poor were intelligent enough to understand traffic rules and morally reliable enough to obey them. The marketing department was enthusiastic about the giveaway measure because it would create good will. The finance department agreed, arguing that it would make the company eligible for new IRS charitable tax write-offs.

According to Edsell, one board member speculated that some day BIGONE, together with other American corporations, would have to persuade the federal government to buy all their products and distribute them to the citizenry as universal entitlements. Other directors angrily attacked the idea as socialistic, but a supporter of the idea recalled an early twentieth-century automaker who increased car sales by reducing prices and raising wages. He turned out to be a member of the Communist party and was forced out of the industry.

The directors put off further discussion of the customer problem, but first passed a resolution endorsing the American free enterprise system, which having successfully coped with past problems of capitalism would surely come up with an answer to the customer problem as well.