Once again, we witness the predictable calamity that ensues when centralization, bureaucratic interference, and the illusion of control are placed above the organic processes of competition and discovery within the market. Stellantis—the very embodiment of a top-heavy, overly managed multinational giant—now lurches under the weight of its own miscalculations and regulatory entanglements. Revenues plunge, inventories languish, employees are sacrificed to the false god of “efficiency,” and yet, just as so many social planners promise utopia through control, Stellantis’s leadership tells us to have faith in their ability to divine the market’s needs from above.

The causes of this debacle are plain for all who are willing to see: a willful disregard for local knowledge and entrepreneurial adaptation; an obsession with short-term gains and the illusion of predictable outcomes; and above all, the suppression of independent initiative among local managers and engineers who, in a freer environment, might have responded far more nimbly to the shifting preferences and demands of consumers. Instead, decision-making is trapped in the hands of a distant, insulated elite who, naturally, insist that the best path forward is always more central direction, more “synergy”—never admitting that their very structure is the problem.

We see how Stellantis, swept up in the fashionable winds of the electric vehicle craze, abandoned the kind of experimentation and competitive diversity that would yield real innovation. In pursuit of uniformity and economies of scale, they severed themselves from the spontaneous wisdom of countless entrepreneurs and workers on the ground. True innovation—indeed, true knowledge about what customers want—cannot be dictated by plan or committee. To reduce costs by slashing research and autonomy is to extinguish the very source of the firm’s vitality.

But the most egregious folly lies in their response to adversity: to slash investment in research and development, to double down on rigid control, and to celebrate tepid sales in marginal markets as though these were victories. Nothing could be further from a sustainable path. A firm cannot cost-cut its way to renewal if it undermines its own capacity for discovery and responsiveness. Central planners always imagine they can simply redeploy resources and reorganize structures; reality punishes such arrogance with lost markets, alienated employees, and squandered capital.

Here, too, lurks the shadow of governmental distortion. Tariffs, subsidies, and regulatory fiddling have contorted supply chains, redirected investment into non-productive uses, and shielded management from the discipline of genuine competition. When the costs of such distortions become insupportable, the public is asked to subsidize further experiments in futility. But in truth, only the spontaneous order of the market—the uncoerced actions of countless individuals, guided by their own knowledge and incentives—can regenerate vitality in this or any industry.

If Stellantis is to survive, it must at last set aside the hubris of the central planner and rediscover the humility of the entrepreneur. Empower local managers, restore real competition within and between its units, foster diverse experimentation, and commit to learning from failure rather than blaming “tough conditions.” Most of all, admit what the market has demonstrated, time and again: freedom, not centralization, is the wellspring of prosperity and progress. Without it, decline is not merely possible; it is inevitable.