Jeremy Clarkson on cars and capitalism:
As we now know, there are one or two flaws in the concept of global capitalism. For example, if you have a suit and a side parting, you can use money that doesn’t exist to create money that does, in your own bank account. And you can keep on doing this until the whole world goes completely bankrupt.
At the other end of the scale there are problems too. For instance, if you are very fat and lazy and you cannot be bothered to get a job, the system will only really care about your plight when you die and you have to be hosed out of your front room because the neighbours are complaining about the smell. “And who’s going to pay for that hosing?” the men with side partings will say.
Still, I believe that the upsides for those of us who are not very lazy but do not have side partings far outweigh the downsides. Let me give you an example. It is now almost impossible to buy a washing machine that is anything less than brilliant.
Or a burger. Because McDonald’s and Burger King offer tasty snacks in every town in the world, anyone selling inferior burgers made from stale bread and dead horses will go out of business extremely quickly. So, even at three in the morning, on the outskirts of Leicester or Wakefield, you know for sure that the meal you’ve just bought will be delicious and nutritious.
Of course, small retailers whine and complain when Tesco moves into the area because Tesco will nick all their business. Yes, it will, if what you are selling is expensive and rubbish.
That’s the core of capitalism. “Better” will always win the day. And it doesn’t matter what form “better” takes. Better can mean cheaper, more convenient, nicer, prettier, more tasty, more healthy. In some way, you have to be better than the other guy, or your kids will soon be presented with a bill for hosing you out of your sitting room.
Because the bosses of the giant corporations know this, they strive constantly to make what they sell better, and that’s brilliant for you and me. It’s why we don’t get punctures any more — because the tyre makers are constantly striving to be the best. It’s why your car never overheats any more — because the people who make radiator hoses are no longer stuck in the Seventies, believing they have a God-given right to keep on making radiator hoses, irrespective of how quickly they dissolve.
When was the last time you had a faulty cigarette? When was the last time your plane crashed? When did you last take a strawberry back to the supermarket because it was all covered in slime? It’s not governments or best-before dates or health and safety that is doing this; it’s capitalism.
And nowhere is the improvement seen more vividly than in the world of motoring.
In the olden days, car makers thought local, and that was a disaster. They really did think at British Leyland that the sun was still shining brightly on the empire and that people in Britain would always buy Rovers and Austins because they were British. We saw the same thing going on in Italy with Fiat. So what if the workforce had left its sandwiches in one of the doors and wired up the horn to the starter motor by mistake? The customer would be back. And the government would hand over a fat cheque if he wasn’t. But then capitalism went global and, all of a sudden, Terry and June could buy a car from Japan that didn’t explode every time there was a “y” in the day. So they did.
