Stakeholder: noun; a person with an interest or concern in something, especially a business. (Google)
***********
Cut to the chase, a “stakeholder” is someone with no direct invested risk (land, labor, capital) in an enterprise who wants the power to impose their political opinions on those that do. Stakeholder is a euphemism for those who want to screw up your investment for their benefit, however defined. “Stakeholder” is a buzzword, for instance, that strives to create the stampede to end the internal combustion engine (ICE) and push everyone into electric vehicles (ev’s).
I can’t, and we oughtn’t, leave this phenomenon of the ev alone.
As a 30-year veteran of the public schools, I’m well aware of “stakeholders”. Instead of the simple equation of producers (teachers, principals) and consumers (students, parents), we’ve got “stakeholders” to give us diversity/equity/inclusion (DEI), the principal tenets of critical race theory (CRT), “restorative justice” for classroom disruptors, gender-identity grooming, and the rest of the neo-socialistic chaos of the modern classroom. Student performance in the academic core craters but all of that is brushed aside by the education industry’s “stakeholders”. And you and your kids are the guinea pigs, not the principal “stakeholders” of the whole enterprise. For most of the “stakeholders” and their kids, elite prep schools await.
Now the jive is overtaking the relationship between car buyer and car producer. It works like this: create a mania (the role of “stakeholders”), politicize the mania (the role of “stakeholders”), the subsequent politicization transmutes into government mandates (jobs for “stakeholders”), and the rest of us get to live a life imposed by those far removed by from our needs and wants. This isn’t a free economy at work; it’s politics. “Stakeholders” are political activists!
And as is true with all ideological ninnies who want power to tell us how to live, we end up grappling with their crackpot choices. Classic example: the ev. And you know what? A “silent majority” in the auto industry c-suite in their quieter moments recognize the shambolic nature of the scam. Others in the know are beginning to write about it. The Wall Street Journal and National Review’s Andrew Stuttaford, among others, are part of a growing chorus writing about this shortsighted stampede to the ev.
Take the recent comments by the CEOs of Suzuki (Maruti Suzuki India, Ltd), Toyota, Nissan, and Stellantis (Fiat Chrysler/Peugeot) who have expressed misgivings. In the drumbeat of NFL game ads and the enthusiasm blanketing the whole gamut of media, you’d never know of their anxiety. Producers can’t completely ignore the manufactured mania, but amidst the monotonous din some drum up the courage to say the obvious: the “stakeholders” are looney.
It’s like the manufacturers being caught on an open mic. President Akio Toyoda of Toyota Motor Corp. was reported in The Wall Street Journal as being “among the auto industry’s silent majority in questioning whether electric vehicles should be pursued exclusively, comments that reflect a growing uneasiness about how quickly car companies can transition.” Oh, they can abruptly transition, but how much carnage would follow in its wake? Interesting question.
In January 2022, the CEO of Stellantis was quoted as saying, “What is clear is that electrification [of cars] is a technology chosen by politicians [and their stakeholders], not by industry . . .” Further, according to him, it takes about 44,000 miles to begin to experience the carbon benefit of an ev over your ICE. By that time, your ev is half worn out. Then, what do you do with the toxic thing with its toxic batteries? Recycle? Hogwash. You can’t cost-effectively refurbish the things in the quantities that they will have to be produced. And you thought that your fossil-fuel contraption was an eco-disaster.
Chairman R.C. Bhargava of Maruti Suzuki India Lt. was encapsulated in a Bloomberg report, “. . . the automaker that sells every other car on the nation’s roads [India], believes electric vehicles aren’t the answer to reducing carbon emissions in the world’s third-biggest releaser of greenhouse gases — at least not in the immediate future.” Yep, because millions of Indians in ev’s requires a steady flood of electricity from – you guessed it – coal and natural gas. See, the stakeholders’ central planners are all about the glitz in the flashy tv ads, like the stakeholders themselves, and are not into the grimy details. Don’t expect practical advice from political activists posing as “stakeholders”. They’ll get you into trouble.
Nissan Chief Executive Uchida Makoto predicates more ev production on government help in the form of regulations to herd consumers into his products and cash payouts from taxpayers to his company’s pocket to make the things. It’s the same attitude that turned Detroit’s Big Three into basket cases in the 1970’s and required TARP in 2008. After WWII, Europe and Japan were wrecked and Detroit was riding high. Then, our competitors’ stone age ended in the 1960s and 70s and Detroit and its featherbedding unions turned to Uncle Sam for protection. Ironically, another European import, the Fascists’ idea of corporatism (the tripartite alliance of big corporations, big government, and big labor), entered the go-to manual for American policy makers and their “stakeholders”. It was already resplendent in FDR’s New Deal as a policy maker’s template.
American automakers are well-versed in taking hat in hand to Washington, D.C. Uchida likes the idea, and so does GM. GM pledges to go all electric by 2035. Of course, when things get sticky, they’ll expect Uncle Sam to continue to manufacture the market for them. In the throes of eco-stakeholders, DC will comply. In other words, we’re back to where we were with TARP . . . and a bunch of impractical four-wheelers crowding our driveways
We’ll then experience déjà vu for that fuel-injected ICE under a dusty cover in the garage. Remember the time when a fill-up took a couple of minutes, and the a/c didn’t cause a frantic search for an open charger in the 110-degree Texas/Mojave heat?
You see, the electric vehicle has nothing to do with the creative freedom of entrepreneurs and voluntary interaction of free consumers and producers, the stuff of an economy in a free society. It’s a central planner’s dream. A central planner is a government employee. “Stakeholders” use political clout to make government empower central planners to make you live according to their lights. Out of the mire comes the ev and your struggles to get the kids to school, show up on time at work, and visit grandma for Thanksgiving. Of course, the “stakeholder” says that you don’t have to do any of that. The whole crusade is soft totalitarianism, soft because of the absence of a massive extra-legal secret police, but then again there’s the unceasing state indoctrination in teacher training and control of the curriculum in nearly every classroom K to grad school. It sounds to me like a totalitarian perpetual motion machine self-generating the support for power to the state’s “stakeholders”.
Interestingly, the problem is not with the electric vehicle itself. It’s the forcing of the things on the entire public. A golf cart made to look like your car is your future, whether you like it or not. The concerns of the auto industry’s execs stem from the exclusive focus on the ev. Hybrids, alternative fuels (biomass, compressed hydrogen, etc.), our trusty reduced-emissions ICE, and many others should also be part of the mix in a truly free society, one without the so-called “stakeholders” running the show. Yeah, it used to be called a free market.
The “stakeholders” aren’t into freedom, or a market with “free” – the autonomous soul – in front of it. They’re into making you think like them. Your life is to be rigged by them to be loyal clients of big-corp whose production decisions have been constricted by big-government under the influence of big-activists, aka “stakeholders”. Once government has a “stake” in electric vehicles, it’s going to make you buy them. Count on your state to resemble the hellscape of California.
RogerG
Read more here:
* “Toyota Chief Says ‘Silent Majority’ Has Doubts About Pursuing Only EVs”, River Davis and Sean McLain, The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 18, 2022, at https://www.wsj.com/articles/toyota-president-says-silent-majority-has-doubts-about-pursuing-only-evs-11671372223
* “Electric Vehicles: Mr. Toyoda is Worried”, Andrew Stuttaford, National Review Online, Jan. 1, 2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/01/electric-vehicles-mr-toyoda-is-worried/
* “India’s Top Carmaker Bets on Hybrids Over EVs in Clean Shift”, Ragini Saxena, Bloomberg, Jan. 26, 2022, at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-26/india-s-top-carmaker-bets-on-hybrids-over-evs-in-clean-shift?cmpid=BBD062722_GREENDAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=220627&utm_campaign=greendaily&sref=KgEBWdKh&leadSource=uverify%20wall