The Problem with Conservatism

Sparked by a couple of posts from AmericaBlog, here and here. I'm not talking about conservatism as a political philosophy so much as a mindset, a world view that looks backward while desperately holding onto a vision of the now that may or may not have something to do with reality. I think it's a structural problem that we can find reflected not only in the radically reactionary "conservatism" that we've suffered under for the past twenty years or more here, but also in the "classical" conservatism espoused by such as Andrew Sullivan. It's the default position of the bourgeoisie: maintain the status quo at all costs, and if you can bring it back to the status quo of the last generation (or, in the case of the Dobson Gang, a status quo that never existed in the real world), so much the better.

This story says a lot, I think:

“Somebody’s got to bring zero emission cars into the market—we think we can do it,” said the CEO in an interview with CNBC. “We have the batteries and we are at the point where in 2010, cars that we will be putting in the U.S. market will be totally attractive to the consumers.”

In the business sector, this conservatism is reinforced by greed (I searched for a synonym, but that's the word that works). I've no objection to a company making a decent profit, I just have sharp differences with many over what actually constitutes "decent" in this case.

The real question is, why is this coming from an overseas manufacturer? With two of the Big Three automakers teetering on total collapse and the third just barely treading water, a lot of fingers have been pointed -- unions, government subsidies to foreign competitors, "the economy" -- but the truth is that they're selling the same cars they've been selling for generations -- the only improvements have more or less been forced on them. They've had ample reason to innovate, but they don't seem to be capable of actually doing it any more. (Maybe it's the fault of marketing people and focus groups, which don't really always tell you what you really need to know.)

I wrote about this sort of thingalmost a year ago here, when I posted this little tidbit:

Whether or not Toyota wanted to continue production, it was unlikely to be able to do so, because the EV-95 battery was no longer available. Chevron had inherited control of the worldwide patent rights for the NiMH EV-95 battery when it merged with Texaco, which had purchased them from General Motors. Chevron's unit won a $30,000,000 settlement from Toyota and Panasonic, and the production line for the large NiMH batteries was closed down and dismantled. Only smaller NiMH batteries, incapable of powering an electric vehicle or plugging in, are currently allowed by Chevron-Texaco.

My comment at the time was: "Gee -- a major oil company got rights to the battery and squelched it. Imagine that." This is a sterling example of the kind of retro thinking that has made a mess of things. Which leads us right back to the second post at AmericaBlog (and actually an issue that's impacted net neutrality and a lot of other things involving telecoms) and this story:

If Internet service providers' current experiments succeed, subscribers may end up paying for high-speed Internet based on how much material they download. Trials with such metered access, rather than the traditional monthly flat fee for unlimited connection time, offer enough bandwidth that they won't affect many consumers — yet.

But as more people use the Internet to watch TV and stream movies, they could bump up against the metered rates' caps, paying expensive over-use fees. Watching a movie may then require paying two fees: one for the movie, another to the cable company.

I've changed phone companies because of that kind of crap. But at least I could -- if the telecoms and the ISPs have their way, you won't be able to.

This is the kind of thinking that's throwing American business onto the ropes -- and the rest of the country along with it: a backward-looking cast of mind coupled with the power to maintain the status quo for as long as possible. The flaw here, of course, is that it only works at home, and we do, indeed, now live in a global village.

Think about that.