From the Times:

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.

 

Then it got better. BMW worked out that if it made the X5 in America, the car could be sold more cheaply. Volkswagen thought the same about Mexico, and as Britain slithered further into the mire, we started to benefit from this as well. Toyota, Honda and Nissan didn’t come here because their executives liked our weather or the golf courses. They came because they were drawn here by capitalism, the need to be cheaper.