Cars

Some random thoughts after reading about the Model T:

 

Given the road quality, I think the invention of the car must have turned us into a nation of mechanics. It's interesting on several levels that the Model T was so little changed for 20 years. There wasn't enough competition for Ford to sense the necessity of rapid innovation--most of the innovation that occurred in this period was directed at cost reductions rather than quality improvements. Considering this, I can see how the early communists all over the world might have come to underestimate the power of incentives and innovation. Stalin copied Ford's manufacturing methods with considerable energy and efficiency (without which efforts, Hitler would have won)--but, then the command economies stagnated as modern economies became too complex for their centralized planning to manage.

 

Reading an article about the Tata Nano (a $3,000 car made in India) I noticed that, adjusted for inflation, the Model T also cost about $3,000 in the 1920s, with similar capabilities. You might think that today we could get more for our money--but, even with labor in India being cheaper than our labor was in the 1920s, we have made little progress at the bottom of the market.