Brand isn't patriotism

Mr. Schiavi is wrong. Schiavi's Aug. 14 column "Americans failed Detroit.

Consumerism -- consumption of automobiles in particular -- might float a particular region's economy if it is producing the in-vogue product. For nearly 70 years, consumption of American-produced automobiles ballooned the economies of Detroit and Michigan.

Detroit and Michigan got dependent upon the heady, exaggerated success of one industry, leading to the decay seen today. Instead of branching out into other promising technologies and broadening a once-healthy manufacturing base, Michigan decided to keep pumping the feel-good lever.

A global marketplace is a fact of the modern world. Why can't the Big Three produce a car Americans want instead of blaming Americans for lack of patriotism? My American heritage is not centered around the 2003 Dodge Dakota (nor the Subaru Impreza) I own and drive. It is centered around work, community and family. An automobile is merely a tool used to make necessary trips more convenient. It is a tool that has been romanticized to the most egregious levels.

I would be happy to see GM and Ford reinvent themselves as the world's best refrigerator manufacturers, the world's best public transit coach manufacturers, the world's best anything-the-world's-population-needs. I would even settle for the world's best automakers.

Do not make them the failed savior of the nation, nor Detroit the scorn of the nation. They are only a component in an otherwise healthy national economy that has seen the transformation from manufacturing to services. Detroit will flourish if it finally embraces the change the rest of America has observed over the last three decades. Michigan's auto-centered protective policy will only hinder Detroit's reconstruction and continue the unhealthy dependency on Ford and GM.

Ryan Klug
St. Louis, Mo. (a former Michigander)