Social benefit
As part of the overall quest for a more sustainable automotive industry it is important to consider the social dimensions of how this concept would work, and compare that with the existing automotive industry. The mainstream industry has required enormous public financial support in recent years, while continuing to erode employment and generate a climate of economic uncertainty. The MFR social benefits include:
The MFR concept allows that work and wealth creation be distributed among communities and localities, and is conducive to regional economic development policies that seek to regenerate areas of industrial decline;
In practice, the low-volume workflow of an MFR facility allows longer work task cycle times, greater worker skill enrichment, and more work diversity, thereby greatly improving the quality of (working) life;
The MFR concept allows for organisations other than traditional profit-maximising businesses, and could even be adopted by social enterprises;
The concept is supportive of other social and environmental goals such as zero emissions city centres; indeed localities with an MFR facility could therefore also be beneficiaries of such policies;
Ultimately, a distributed and locally-orientated economy offers greater resilience against the turbulence of global economic conditions, while simultaneously offering a defence again low-cost imports predicated upon exploitative wage rates;
By reducing the risks to consumers and investors, the MFR concept offers a means to introduce socially-beneficial automobility technologies;
Similarly, consumers are able to buy local, thereby increasing the circulation of wealth within the local economy, and reinforcing the co-identity of interests between MFR facilities and consumers.
