The Detroit Three got into their current quandary by making decades of bad decisions, with some help from the United Auto Workers union. Yet despite the current crisis, General Motors is still paying dividends to shareholders, the car companies are paying bonuses to executives, and the private-equity billionaires at Cerberus who bought Chrysler are trying to reap enormous rewards from their risky investment. Meanwhile the UAW’s Jobs Bank — which pays laid-off workers for doing nothing — remains in place.

Of course, we can all hope that shareholders do well, that executives reap handsome rewards for work well done, that the Cerberus billionaires make more billions on Chrysler, and that workers get paid on whatever terms the car companies agree. But we taxpayers shouldn’t subsidize any of this.

Even if Ford, GM and Chrysler were to go out of business — and it’s highly unlikely that all three will simply cease to exist — there will be plenty of good cars for Americans to buy. And many will be made in America, even if they carry foreign nameplates. Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai and other foreign car companies have expanded greatly their U.S. manufacturing operations in recent years. They’re doing so because Americans are buying their cars. Toyota and Honda, the current leaders in hybrids and alternative-fuel technology, did their research and development on their own dimes.

And what about the precedent the government would set? If we bail out Detroit, where do we stop? The newspaper industry is in financial trouble because more readers and advertisers are turning to the Internet. Newspapers are good for democracy — Thomas Jefferson said he would choose newspapers over government, after all — so shouldn’t they get low-interest government loans to help them adjust to the Internet? Of course not, and ditto for Detroit.

Any low-interest loans to develop fuel-efficient cars should be made available to all car companies, not just the Detroit Three. The law passed by Congress last year is framed to make this highly unlikely. But if developing fuel-efficient and alternative-energy cars is deemed worthy of taxpayer subsidies for public-policy purposes, it’s just common sense not to put all our eggs in Detroit’s basket.