"Powerful GM"

John Stossel talks about real power in the context of Government Motors.

He makes a good point.

I confess: I don’t write everything that I say on TV. I write almost everything, but when I anchor, another writer often does a first draft.

Tonight on 20/20, we report on GM. The writer suggested I begin: "it was once the most powerful company in the world…"

GM was indeed the most "profitable," or "biggest"—that I get. But powerful? Why do people think about business that way? GM has/had no armies with which it can invade other companies. It had no power for force anyone to work there. It couldn’t force anyone to buy GM cars.

Your average two-bit government bureaucrat has more "power." He can send people with guns to take your money (tax collection). He can lock you up, seize your property, tell you what you cannot do on your property, summon you to court, and so on. Government has the monopoly on power.

I think we all need to remember that.

When government, i.e. Obama and the Congressional Democrats, talks about big, bad companies, remember this: Government has the ability to take one of the biggest companies that has ever existed and rendering it a tax payer owned company in the blink of an eye. True, GM has a big role in their own government take over, but the government had the power to just sit on teh sidelines and let the company fail and you know what- it would have sucked, but it is the nature of companies to be born, live, and die--just like people, and unlike govnerments.