During the Great Depression and afterwards, thousands of Model Ts were discarded as junk, either to rust away or to be cannibalized for parts for wagons and farm equipment.
It planned to spearhead that by using a model from the Great Depression, when small neighbourhood groups in Canada and the U.S. would meet to listen to half-hour radio broadcasts, and discuss economic and agricultural problems like grain prices or water access.
Lindner Sr. drastically cut prices by eliminating delivery costs and offering his goods through a cash-and-carry storefront, a model that proved popular with his depression-era customer base.
But with American households still in the process of deleveraging and with Europe in the early stages of what will most likely become a Japanese-style slow-motion depression, it looks less and less viable as a model for growth.
Its short-term model of an economy which could get stuck in depression was too obviously a product of the special conjuncture which had produced the Great Depression of 1929-33.
My sensible plan does not model for a 40-percent drop in the market followed by a decade-long depression and capped off by hyper-inflation, the collapse of Social Security, and civil insurrection just in time for me to retire to a diet of dog food.