The Auto BailoutBy Thomas E. BrewtonClassic socialism in action.Socialism is characterized by ignoring the free marketplace and  empowering intellectual planners to control the economy with a cocoon  of regulations and directives.  In Europe (and today in China)  economically moribund companies are designated national champions and  kept alive at taxpayer expense, even when they can't compete in the  free market without government subsidies.This flows from socialist governments' belief that full employment  can be maintained only by massive deficit spending.  J. M. Keynes,  the economics guru of the the New Deal era, opined that it would be  suitable government policy to hire men to dig holes one day, fill  them up the next day, then re-dig them and refill them ad infinitum.In contrast in a free marketplace economy, consumers, not government  planners, are the final arbiters of which products and which  companies survive and prosper.  Despite the endlessly repeated  liberal-progressive-socialist dogma, no corporation is able to trick  consumers, let alone to force them, to buy its products by use of  advertising.If that were possible, GM, Ford, and Chrysler would not be in  trouble.  They would simply increase their advertising budgets and  compel consumers to buy their vehicles.The simple fact is that automakers' rearguard efforts to offset labor- union-inflated production costs have been unsuccessful.  Their  production economies, coupled with the anti-company antagonism and  shoddy workmanship, even deliberate sabotage, by their unionized  workers, have resulted in over-priced products of inferior quality.   Consumers have recognized this and turned their preferences to the  products of foreign manufacturers manufactured in the United States  by non-unionized, reasonably priced labor.Bailing Detroit automakers out of their financial dilemma, as well   as Federal support of unions' monopolistic extortions, thus are  classic socialistic management of the economy.  A bailout will not  cure the problem.  It will only exacerbate matters and make ultimate  resolution more expensive and disastrous for all concerned.Everyone has to regret the distress that will befall the thousands of  workers and suppliers in the auto industry and related companies if  the Big Three go under financially.  Remember, however, the root  cause of this distress is President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal  Wagner Act that enabled communistic and socialistic unions to  hamstring the auto industry.Note also that the incoming Obama administration has signaled its  support for measures that will tighten the unions' python grip on  American industry.  Labor unions expect a payoff for their having  massively supported, as usual, the Democrat/Socialist Party with  campaign contributions and get-out-the-vote free labor.Then, as Lenin famously asked, what is to be done?  The solution is  this case, however, is not a radical turn to socialism.However painful, the cleanest and most effective approach is to allow  the Big three to file for bankruptcy.  That might open the road to  washing out all the crippling union contracts, creating new and  economically viable corporations that could re-employ many of their  former employees at competitive labor rates.Stockholders, of course, would likely lose their investment in the  bankruptcy workout.  But that too is the nature of a free-market  economy.  Investors take a risk in expectation of a profit.  They  can't always be successful, particularly when impending doom has been  on the horizon as long as has the Big Three situation.Were the bankruptcy courts to approve such a settlement, the  restructured, slimmed-down corporations emerging from bankruptcy  would have a far better chance to survive against foreign  competition.  And their domestic suppliers would be in a sounder  position, no longer squeezed by wafer-thin, cram-down prices and  attenuated payment schedules.Thomas E. Brewton is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, Inc.  The New Media Alliance is a non-profit (501c3) national coalition of  writers, journalists and grass-roots media outlets.His weblog is THE VIEW FROM 1776http://www.thomasbrewton.com/