In the on-again, off-again discussions about bailing out three auto manufacturers who are in large part responsible for their own problems (which they admit), the major reason given for not letting them go the way of any other company in financial trouble is to create work and jobs for the people they employ. Surely better things can be found for these employees to do than to create products that nobody wants to buy? Creating manufactured products consumes precious resources ranging from metals and minerals dug out of the earth to power generated to run the factories. Then the resulting products will be stockpiled somewhere, since nobody wants to buy them, left to rust and disintegrate until they’re shredded to “recycle” the valuables left in them while the rest of the product is dumped in a landfill. As make-work schemes go, this is, to my mind, not one of the better ones.