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February 13, 2004

breakfast at tiffany’s

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The hydro­gen car I men­tio­ned ear­lier costs $400K.
The thought occurs to me: in today’s money, that’s about how much a decent car (Bugati etc) cost 100 years ago. Or a top-of-the-line horse and carriage, inc­lu­ding the horsemen’s wages and hou­sing. Around $6000, back when they were real dollars.
Throughout his­tory, things we now take for gran­ted star­ted out as luxury items for the pri­ve­le­ged few. All star­ted out as evi­dence of eco­no­mic sur­plus– no dif­fe­rent than a set of jewels from Tiffany’s.
Cars. Indoor plum­bing. Elec­tri­city. Gas ovens. Hi-Fi ste­reo. Decent medi­cal atten­tion. Air tra­vel.
And it took a cou­ple of deca­des of entre­pre­neu­rial hustle to bring the pri­ces down.
Rolls Royce made lots of money selling to the Wes­tern aris­toc­racy before Henry Ford came along.
So green cars are going through their luxury phase. Just because your typi­cal mall rat can’t afford one doesn’t mean they can’t be built at a pro­fit, that they can’t be a decent busi­ness in their own right. I guess the issue is how long this phase will last. (Does this mean when we say the car is “green”, we really mean “as in green with envy”?)
Of course one environmentally-turbocharged car isn’t going to make a dif­fe­rence to the pla­net. But one car might impress the 40-year-old millionaire’s blonde-bombshell date enough for him to get lucky that eve­ning. Never unde­res­ti­mate the power of the libido in making his­tory, one blow­job at a time.

One Response to “breakfast at tiffany’s”

1. Nia says:

   February 15, 2004 at 4:35 PM

   Please. Oh, please, make a car­toon out of that last sentence.