Why Sell Cars When You Make Them Buy Insurance?

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The fewer cars GM sells, the more it needs to sell other things. Like insurance – and not just car insurance, either. Get ready to get that Great GM feeling – in your mailbox. Or rather, your in-box, since mandatory insurance payments are increasingly debited electronically.

Soon, so will you.

GM will be “bundling” car, home and renter’s insurance via OnStar Insurance Services – and you don’t even have to own a GM car to be “covered.”

So long as GM has access to the data emitted by whatever car you happen to own, which is all of them – unless they’re not new. Everything that is new leaks data like a colander when making noodles for spaghetti – and you have no control over when the “spaghetti” is made.

As Tech Crunch puts it:

“The aim  . . . is to leverage the vast amounts of data captured through its OnStar connected car service, which today has more than 16 million members in the United States.”

It’s a great deal more than 16 million, too.

While GM was the first car company to offer – to embed, whether you asked for it or not –  “connected” technology in its cars way back in the mid ’90s – everyone has jumped on board the data-mining bandwagon. GM has Onstar, FiatChrysler has UConnect, Honda has HondaLink, BMW has ConnectedDrive, Mercedes has mbrace . .  und so weiter.

Because that’s where the money is – to paraphrase what bank robber Willie Sutton reportedly said when asked why he robbed them.

Selling cars is almost a losing business. On balance, there’s not much money in it. Even when you factor in the big money made on trucks and SUVs, because the weak margins on cars – about 3 percent profit at the dealership level – hardly makes up for it. Plus, anyone with eyes not blinded by stupidity can see that trucks and SUVs have a dim future with El Presidente Biden – and his determination to force feed electric cars to the populace – on the horizon.

The industry isn’t stupid. It knows it won’t be able to sell many electric cars – no matter how many are mandated be made – because the car industry knows it cannot give them away at a net loss per car and remain long in business.

Thus a new way to make money had to be found and that way is to sell you.

Or rather, force you to buy what they’re selling, using your data to make you pay for it.

Remember: You are required to buy insurance in order to drive. And when you’re compelled (because you have no choice) to provide your data – e.g., how fast you drive, where and when you drive, whether you “buckle up” and soon, probably, whether you Diaper up – to the insurer via your car then an ideal flea-on-cat dynamic has been created, by the fleas at the expense of the cat.

Of course it is not presented this way. Here is the Newspeak version:

“Our goal is really to create greater transparency and greater control for our customers influencing what they pay for insurance and their total cost of ownership on vehicles,” says Russell Page, who is GM’s head of Business Intelligence.

Yes, really. Like the CIA – only the target is  . . . you.

Also note the italicized Newspeak.

Greater transparency? For whom? Not you. GM will have greater transparency – into your life – not just how you drive. What goes on in your home. Whether you wear “your” (as they like to style it) Face Diaper at home, for instance.

The object being complete “connectedness”  . . . of everything. Which means a leash, with them holding the other end of it and able to yank it anytime they like.

Good – or bad – doggie!

This isn’t conjecture. It is what they’re saying, openly. “Connectedness” is their term – using their tech. Imposed upon us, like it or not. You can’t buy a new car without “Connectedness.” Most homes are already “connected” in principle via “smart” meters, too. Your smartphone “connects” you to them as well. Next, the app – and perhaps the chip.

It is all . . . coming together.

Which brings up the greater control.

Theirs.

Over us.

Will you have any control over the tech oligopolists’ – not just GM’s – real-time supervisory access to your data stream, which they overtly insist is their data stream?

Remember: The car (and the home) may be yours in the sense that you paid for it – or rather, make the payments on it – but they insist the electronic guts remain theirs. This includes the guts that emit data about you, to them – over which you have zero control since the “stream” can’t realistically be turned off and may result in disabling the car in the manner of a smartphone that doesn’t get “updates.”

Or just because they can.

Exceed the posted speed limit? Accelerate more quickly than they deem “safe.” Post something online contra the tenets of the Sickness Cult?

Throw a switch – so to speak – and turn the car (and the rest of your life) off.

Tesla has been practicing this art for some time already. Its cars remain “connected” to Tesla and Tesla can adjust your car at its pleasure, regardless of yours. For example, turning off options you thought you bought or increasing or decreasing the range their car can travel. Implicit in this is Tesla’s ability to control everything the car does – and so, you.

It’s worth a mention that Tesla beat GM to the insurance punch, launching its mulct-you-as-you-drive “service” in 2019. The electric truck maker Rivian has reportedly been setting up an insurance arm as well.

It’s easy to understand why.

If you can’t make money selling cars, make them buy insurance.

And so much more.

. . .

Got a question about cars, Libertarian politics – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in!

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18 COMMENTS

  1. GM ups electric and autonomous vehicle spending to $27 billion through 2025

    “More than half of GM’s capital spending and product development team will be devoted to electric and electric-autonomous vehicle programs, the company said.

    So they’re going to sell safe driver insurance to autonomous vehicles that are basically ride-share without the pesky driver or third party getting in the way of the corporate-customer “relationship?” Maybe they’re hedging their bet on the R&D spend? Maybe they figure they’ll get a bailout and free money from Uncle if they show that they’re at least trying to do the impossible.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/19/gm-ups-electric-and-autonomous-vehicle-spending-to-27-billion-through-2025/

  2. Never before has the human race faced such a diabolical threat. We have faced worse, but never on a world wide scale. There will be no more refugees, because there is no escape. The bank cartel has inflicted their fiat currency debt based economy on the entire world. Such economies always fail, ALWAYS! The bank cartel has engineered the collapse so it falls entirely on the 99.9%, who have a fraction of the assets the 0.1% do. The only escape I can see is we start creating our own sound currency, again. Which will be quite hard to do, since the bank cartel will expend whatever resources they have stolen from us required to prevent us from doing so. If we can manage to get it done, we will still suffer a 100 year setback in our standard of living across the board, in all aspects of our lives. And that’s the bright side. If the bank cartel succeeds, we won’t have a standard of living. There has never been an organization more deserving of pitchforks, gallows and guillotines. They own and profit from the two most abusive industries in the history of the species. The Military Industrial Complex, and the late arriving Medical Industrial Complex. We’ve sacrificed a lot in exchange for the “safety net” that is now going to fail to catch us when we fall.

  3. This whole thing reeks of Mafia tactics to me.
    “Nice cah ya got dere bud, shame if sumpin wuz ta happen to it, stop running or sumpin!” GM to “owner” of a GM vehicle.

  4. 1980-2000 – GM can’t make money selling cars, so they make money selling financing with GMAC
    2000-2008 – GMAC can’t make money financing cars, so they pivot to processing mortgages
    2008-2020 – GM can’t make money selling anything, so they beg Uncle for a handout
    2020-???? – GM can’t get more handouts so they switch to insuring and renting cars.

    Hard to believe they were ever a car company.

    • haha -lol.

      But i think its not just GM – so many of the once great companies in the western world have gone from making an actual product and selling it at a real profit, to some form or the other of financial fuckery to boost share prices to get management bonuses and creating paper assets for borrowing money against… its actually quite sad.

  5. I have always hated the spying and the control built into every part of the modern system. Some things like online and phone activity being spied on I have accepted as effectively out of my hands. Your choices are mostly living with it or doing without, just like doing with an old car.

    But the amount of information gathered never really sank in until a person in a minor government office said they knew ‘someone’ was at home on a certain date, because a toilet flush is consistent and they have access to that kind of data from meters.

    The absurdity of it would be funny, if it weren’t so damn creepy.

  6. Eric, in addition to controlling your car and your life, Covid has provided the next level of control; how and where you will work to put food in your mouth. With these tyrant blue governors and tin pot mayors will virtually destroy small business. Big tech or big corporate X will be the only employers. Your work history data will become theirs. Maybe they’ll threaten to share it with the other big corps if you try to leave, ask for raise, show up 10 minutes late, refuse to work weekends and extended OT, or took time off for a funeral. Maybe they’ll create a data reference system which unless you bow to them you’ll never get the required reference to move to another slave job. Sounds paranoid but we’ve seen how they behaved during Covid and Big Tech when an election didn’t go their way in 2016.

  7. The insurance schemes mentioned in this article might just be the least of our worries and will pale in comparison to the other programs headed our way…such as poisonous shots(vaccines), re-education camps, financial reset/fedcoin, forcing every aspect of our lives onto blockchains, and of course the coming food insurance requirements that will be foisted down our throats among a slew of tyrannous edicts as the New World order implements Agenda 21 and corrals us all into slave basic income coupled with the forbidding of owning anything(forced to ‘rent’ all aspects of life).

    It might take them a few years to wrap that plan fully around us….but at this juncture, nothing will stop them absent some kind of divine intervention…the mass wearing of masks and general slavish compliance is proof of that point. Good luck ladies and gentlemen, maintain the integrity of your soul at all costs. This thing is just getting started, we have’t seen anything yet.

    • Absolutely correct.
      But remember, in times past, God has used His people to , um, ‘force’ the naughty folk to go away…Keep that in mind.

    • Hi Tor,

      I agree the fix was in; so many reasons to suspect it – among the most persuasive (to me) being the supposed “record turnout” for Biden, perhaps the most uninspiring candidate since Dukakis. We are supposed to believe that he got more votes than Reagan in ’84 (proportionately as well as actually) while Trump – for whom voter enthusiasm was palpable – lost to this senescent pedophile.

      Also, that Republicans won in Congress and Senate races in states that Trump “lost.” It beggars belief.

      • Eric,

        There’s also the enthusiasm gap to consider. One reliable indicator as to who will win is the enthusiasm the candidate generates; normally, the candidate who generates more enthusiasm wins. We saw it with JFK vs. Nixon; we saw it Bush vs. Clinton; we saw it both times Barack Obama ran. Even though voter fraud likely took place during BHO’s runs, people accepted his victory because he drew much larger crowds than either McCain or Romney. SO! Now we’re expected to believe that a guy who couldn’t fill a VFW hall beat a guy who could fill a STADIUM on short notice?! When it comes to the enthusiasm gap, it’s not even close! IOW, the election doesn’t pass the “smell test”…

  8. I wonder, how long can the bank cartel continue this financial fraud? The notion that there can be prosperity without any wealth creation is insane on its face. Wealth is created by adding value to resources. Services are actually a liability, which is why the GDP is a total scam since it counts services as a product instead.

  9. Which is why I always get insurance from an independent agent, and regularly harass them for better price/value ratio. I’ve saved thousands by doing so.

  10. ‘Selling cars is almost a losing business. On balance, there’s not much money in it.’ — EP

    One of the defining transitions of the past half century has been the shift of our economy from smokestack industry to intangibles. Social media giants Facebook, Google and Twitter deliver their ‘product’ in the form of weightless electrons.

    Old-school industrial companies saddled with hulking physical facilities and maintenance bills for ‘big, ugly things that rust in the rain’ are treated as dowdy cash cows, to be milked for dividends till they fade away like cathode-ray tube television makers did.

    Which raises the question of exactly how Elon Musk is on the verge of becoming the second richest lifeform on the planet, when Tesla (whose stock constitutes the main source of his wealth these days) has three costly Gigafactories under construction in Austin, Berlin and Shanghai. Usually Wall Street would punish, not reward, such aggressive brick-and-mortar expansion.

    Elon’s wealth was boosted by 20 percent just this week, when S&P announced that TSLA shares will be added to the S&P 500 index, the leading benchmark for institutional investors. Such an extreme market reaction is highly abnormal. Typically a new entrant to the S&P 500 index rallies a modest couple of percent, not 20 percent in a week.

    Something is radically wrong with this picture. Either Elon has discovered the alchemical secret for transforming lead into gold within the dark satanic mills of his sprawling Gigafactories … or else an immense Ponzi scheme has levitated Tesla’s shares into the ionosphere on a parabolic ballistic trajectory which soon will level out and then commence a fiery descent to Earth.

    Elon’s messianic charisma cannot change the essential stubborn fact cited by Eric — that the century-old, mature auto-manufacturing industry does not and cannot magically spew hundreds of billions in instant wealth, like a blizzard of incandescent Skittles shat by a majestic white unicorn arcing across the firmament like Mobil Oil’s flying horse.

    ‘Ain’t much money in the old-time mandolin
    So I cash my check and I drink ’til I’m on my ass again’

    — Jason Isbell, ‘Cumberland Gap’

    • Well, musk sure aint no alchemist Mr Jim, so figger it out….
      And it doesnt take much to figure out who/what is behind the Ponzi either, nor their intentions.

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