This
modest proposal’s premise is that increasing inequality within and
beyond nation-states will require enhanced efforts to protect the
propertied within global cities, and to improve border security
between rich and poor countries and regions. In the 21st Century
the global security industry will include a continuing, perhaps
vestigial public, and a growing private, sector. Global social policy
is centered on building sovereign and private wealth; those without
property, wealth, or power will remain liable to periodic revolts.
The transnational security industry will therefore be a key growth
sector and among the best of good buys for global investors.
General
Motors (“GM”) can ensure its future success as a private enterprise
by developing products for the growth market for armored vehicles
including personnel carriers, light tanks, and jail trucks, to be
used primarily for policing increasingly impoverished and restive
urban and global populations. Advancing into the sector draws upon
GMs comparative strength of building heavier, and thus safer for
security personnel, automobiles and trucks. Strategic business decisions
focusing on the security vehicles market will attract private capital
and allow the American taxpayer quickly to get out of the business
of bailing out this failed company.
GM
should seek to establish the global industry standard in the security
vehicle sector. Federal, state, county, city, and local police forces,
as well
as Homeland Security, would be an important primary market for fleets
of GM’s security vehicles. Private sector clients for fleet purchases
potentially include Pinkerton, Securitas, Blackwater Worldwide,
Kroll, and the International Crisis Group. Further, advertising
can be used to create new consumer demand for security vehicles
modified for entertainment use with paintballs. Lastly, foreign
governments with subdivisions facing similar security challenges
present a further excellent market opportunity.
Since
only 12% of the world’s population owns cars, there clearly remains
growth opportunity in GM’s traditional field of automobiles. GM
as it reorganizes should position itself to dominate a growing domestic
and global market for security vehicles for both policing and entertainment.
BlackCommentator.com
Guest Commentator and satirist, John Hayakawa Torok, is a critical
race theorist, living in Oakland, California. Click here
to contact Dr. Torok. |