Business Plan for the Rescue of General Motors

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.