Not quite.

I am saying that there are areas in which government regulation (not the same as government control) would, IMO, be more effective than relying on the private sector ("free market") participation in voluntary guidelines.

National security issues relating to the nation's infrastructure would be one of those areas.

Wall Street (banking/financial services) is another...as are environmental protection, food safety.....

AKA, Big Government = Better.

Not exactly.

Reasonable government regulation = better than voluntary industry compliance of essential services in order to protect the health and welfare of the citizens.

Previous attempts at that have created big bloated bureaucracies, inefficiency, and cost over-runs. Sorry, I don't buy into that.

Time will tell with the intervention and take over of the numerous banking, credit, and insurance sectors, and now with the auto industry. But they have failed miserably in health care.

It succeeded with protecting the environment. It succeeded with protecting food and drug safety and other consumer products. It succeeded with ensuring workplace safety and basic workers rights. It succeeded with ensuring the safe transportation of hazardous material by rail or truck as well as airline passenger safety (I could go on) ....to no detriment of the regulated industries.

And no one is talking about government "taking over" anything for the long term.

It is fear mongering to compare government regulation with government take-over or government control.

Environment- yep, till Bush got into power, then no.

Food and Drugs- Nope, not under either Bush or Clinton.

Workplace safety- 50/50. Pretty good job.

IMHO it is not fear mongering when the President of his minions can have the president of a major US Automaker step down. It is not fear mongering when you watch as the Government slowly takes over or gains influence over the major banking, credit, and lending aspects of the private industry while it bankrupts our grandchildren's future with deficit spending.

A case could be made that if not for the deregulation of banking/financial services by Reagan/Clinton/Bush....perhaps we would not be in this mess where even more stringent short term measures were deemed by many to be needed to right the ship.and those additional deficits avoided.

And government regulation still does not equal government control.

Certainly.

It depends. When the government has the power to dismiss a major US car maker and it controls a major portion of our banking, insurance, and credit market, I would disagree.

You can't blame the government for that, it's the result of those industries fucking up bigtime, because nobody regulated (controlled) them. Now the government has to step in and straighten out the mess, which is hardly what the government wanted.

I want to believe that. You have to admit it does set a very dangerous precedent when the government can intervene in a free market like that rather than letting some of those places just fail outright. Now here we are after throwing all that money at GM and it looks like they are going to have to go to bankruptcy anyway. How much did that cost us?

I don't think bankruptcy for GM was ever not an option from my perspective. The money went to keep their hundreds of suppliers from going under also. Saving all those small/medium businesses from folding, through no fault of their own, and the millions(?) of jobs that go with it, was necessary unless you want a depression that would take decades to recover from. It still may take that long.

Well now that bankruptcy looks more inevitable what about their hundreds of suppliers and all those small/medium businesses? Isn't much of that going to happen anyway? I watched an interview with the interm CEO and he said they are going to produce only one pick-up truck in all of the GM family. That alone is huge. Not to mention re-tooling costs, etc. Not to say it is not an inevitable evil anyways, just that we poured billions of tax payer $$ into a hole that would never have been saved in the first place. I don't know. But I am not happy about it.

Government intervened to create the public corporation, so I see it as a wash when government intervenes in the operation of such.

Yea, but at that cost to the people? Hell, they should have just gone in and nationalized them. It would have been a hell of a lot cheaper.

They may, or may not, fail in the future, but they were paid for what they produced in the past. I'm sure some will fold, some will survive by changing their product line, and some will continue to make autoparts, but at least they're starting into the future without being in an impossible hole.
I think they are talking about eliminating either the Chevy or GMC line of trucks, which were identical except for trim anyway. I can't imagine not having the choice between 2 or 4 wheel drive, that would suck. Eliminating the choice of 2 or 4 door, maybe. Long or short bed, probably.
More likely they are talking about one line, rather than one truck.
It wouldn't be additional tooling but eliminating some existing tooling, other than changes, which is possible.