Technology

Riiight. Id like to learn more about Dodge; I'm gomna check if there's a Ken Bursesque History of Dodge documentary.

Edit: there is no such documentary.

Edit 2: But there is a fairly decent one.

Ford owed them dividends since they had shares from when they worked for him. And the Dodge Bros asked for these dividends but Ford basically already spent it on cutting wages, building factories, lower the price of cars, kissing puppies etc. All of which, as you may have noticed, is shit that investors (i.e. the Dodge Bros) hate in the short term, while, of course, expanding his business in the long term. Ford had a plan to buy them out, ya see. And, honestly, I can understand why they took him to court for that. Cuz he purposely made decisions that went against their interests as investors because they were his competitor. And the Dodge Bros, they're not some pampered plutocrats, they came from a fairly impoverished backround - the details of which I won't bore you with, as they are the same as every other rags to riches Americana. Though I do think its worth mentioning that they were not initially accepted among the social elite as they would drink beers and roughhouse with the men.¹

All of this is very interesting, but it kind of muddies the water in terms of serving as an example of greedy investors forcing the corporate hand. But what if the hand that guides the corporate hand is not the investors' but the invisible hand of the market?² And the Dodge Bros and Ford are just puppets to the invisible hand³ as it guides them along with a relationship to the wellbeing of actual humans⁴ that could be characterised as arbitrary at best and malicious at worst. Maybe that's the lesson here.

That and that Henry Ford is a scary motherfucker.

1. Which is, I suppose, another rags to riches Americana story, but its one that's pretty charming, a kind of, still one of the boys attitude, a dream that you can become wealthy and not be innately corrupted by that wealth. Like the Dodge Bros eventually were.

2. Which, looking at it now, I appreciate is a contrived metaphor, but it sounded good in my head.

3. The invisible hand is doing one of those Godfather cover art pupeteer with strings and shit. They're not sock puppets. I did consider making a fist-of-capitalism-up-your-ass joke here but it sidetracks the issue a bit, and its a bit sexist/kink shamey.

4. And plants and trees and animals.