Alan Mulally Quotes
The automobile has moved into the mainstream of our integrated digital world.
Mulally, Alan. Keynote Address. International CES. Consumer Electronics Association, 2010.
What Mises says in this quotation is true. What he does not say that by the time the automobile was developed and then the airplane, the Railroad monopoly had impeded and destroyed so many different entities that the governments had cracked down and curtailed much of the ability of the Railroads to exercise monopolist power. If the Railroads had as much power in 1920 as they did in 1870, there probably never would have been a thriving auto industry and the airlines would likely never have succeeded. Mises again exaggerates a basic point that large monopolistic companies and industries often have not been able to stave off new technology and approaches. While true in many cases, the cause is not necessarily fundamental to economics but has sometimes (as with the railroads) been caused by Government regulation and reform. A better example is that the large sail dominated shipping industry was not able to stop the coal fired steam engine ships. Indeed the shipping owners embraced the new technology. The best examples of Mises point occurred after Mises died. For example, Microsoft was not able to prevent Google from dominating many of Microsoft’s positions in the IT world.
Alan Roger Mulally is an American aerospace engineer and manufacturing executive. He is the former President and Chief Executive Officer of the Ford Motor Company. He retired from Ford Motor Company on July 1, 2014. Ford had been struggling during the late-2000s recession, returned to profitability under Mulally, and was the only American major car manufacturer to avoid a bailout fund provided by the government. Mulally's achievements at Ford are chronicled in the book American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company by Bryce G. Hoffman, published in 2012. On July 15, 2014, he was appointed to the Board of Directors of Google.
