Article of the Day: Selections from USpace

“As goes General Motors, so goes the nation,” Lee Iacocca reportedly said. With GM’s bankruptcy headlining the news in recent days, Ken Jameson’s article in USpace called “Castle or the tipi: rationalization or irrationality in the American economy” seems timely (originally published in 1972 in the journal Review of Politics). Written in response to the American economy in the 1960s, the article discusses the tension between an economy based on the castle and one based on the tipi. Jameson concludes that the contradictions in these two economic approaches can lead to fundamental change. GM represents the castle metaphor Jameson uses: it’s multinational, expansive and has several lines and brands. Now owned 60% by the federal government, perhaps Jameson would say GM is moving more towards the tipi: fewer distinct products, smaller geographic area of business and fewer mergers and acquisitions. While we watch what happens with GM (and our nation’s economy as a whole), Jameson’s final analysis provides some perspective: “castle and tipi interrelate in a fashion which yields stability to a system which would otherwise be unstable.”