The best way to think about Germany is not as a country, but as a factory of widgets. The widgets are not particularly innovative, nor unique, but there are a lot of them. The Teutonic USP is not ingenuity, but domination through scale and legacy.
Except, what happens when anyone can make the widgets? Your widgets have stayed the same while other’s widgets have become better, cheaper, and more attractive to many consumers of widgets. Meanwhile, some of those consumers don’t even want the widgets anymore.
You become a zombie, is what happens. And the zombie will come for your brains — or in Volkswagen’s case, 10% of your salary.
Again, remember: When I say “Volkswagen” what I really mean is "Deutschland.” Because there is no latter without the former. Without cars, Germany is
bupkes.
That’s among the reasons why it is hard to take Germany’s Greens seriously. They come from pretty places like Freiburg and Heidelberg, where they’ve carved out little patches of vegantastic, cycle-friendly ecot…
