No, it's not a Mini...

Dan McNeil v2 wrote:

Overdrive wrote:

Agreed. Rarely have I heard such a load of cobblers!

You can add, to the considerable time and effort, the huge investment, mostly provided by ordinary shareholders, that go into designing, developing and manufacturing cars.

All this money and effort isn't invested just so that the Far East copycats simply plagiarise the designs and in time drive the very Western companies that produced the original designs, out of the market with the loss of thousands of jobs, because of their far cheaper labour rates and unfair, not to mention illegal, trade practices.

That is NOT the idea of a free market.

What utter rot.

You live in a capitalistic world, and you live in a capitalistic world because you (presumably) vote for and support the capitalistic policies and philosophies of the main parties.

A capitalistic world is a cold, soulless, dog-eat-dog world. The beneficiaries of a capitalistic world never complain - until the things they do to others are visited upon them.

Thank you for the "harsh reality of the world economy" lecture, no really!

Yes Dan McNeil version 2, it did occur to me that I might be living in a capitalist (for the most part anyway) world, and I'm also well aware of the Japanese and later Koreans copying Western designs in the past and reverse-engineering them too (though nothing wrong with reverse engineering - a very good way to learn). But even under a capitalist system there are some rules, such as intellectual property rights etc.

So, if we agree that it's dog eat dog world, then if a company has any sense and wants to survive, it'd better be ready to chew the ass of the other dogs that are hell-bent on nicking its designs. Heck, even the Japanese and the Koreans of the olden days weren't as blatant as the current shameless Chinese lot in copying designs to the last screw, bar the badge on the bonnet. Sad thing is though, since the Western manufacturers are so desperate to keep hold of their piece of the pie that is the Chinese market, beyond the odd feeble moan they are unlikely to raise a finger in case they cheese off the nouvo riche capital loving Commies and be barred from their huge market. My guess is, this is an approach the Western manufacturers, blinded by the dollar signs and short-term gains, will come to rue in the long-run.