Liberal, competitive capitalism is the opposite of the law of the jungle

The Volkswagen scandal reveals the corruption that is rife in the Left’s regulation dreamworld

If I were Jeremy Corbyn, I would be thanking my lucky stars for the scandal that threatens to engulf parts of the car industry. Nothing is more guaranteed to galvanise the Left-wing cause than a corporate conspiracy – and the VW diesel affair, which reads like the script of a Hollywood movie, ticks all of the boxes. Lies, secret computer technology programmed to fool the authorities, a deliberate breach of environmental regulations by a rapacious corporation: it’s all there, and crying out for the full George Clooney treatment.

Fortunately, this latest blow to the reputation of big business won’t be enough to rescue the doomed Labour leader. But those of us who support capitalism must lead condemnations of VW’s egregious behaviour, and explain clearly that a functioning free market implies a scrupulous adherence to the rule of law.

What is most damning about this scandal is that an almost identical deception had already been uncovered. In October 1998 the US Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency fined seven heavy-duty diesel engine makers for equipping their engines with an older version of “defeat devices” – just like in the VW scandal, software designed to detect and trick the official tests. The automotive industry must be forced to change its ways. It must become truly transparent, and there needs to be a crackdown on abuse.

It is vital that free-marketers explain again and again that proper liberal, competitive capitalism is the exact opposite of the law of the jungle or of a Hobbesian free for all: it is a remarkably disciplined system. Individuals are encouraged to pursue their self-interest; but unlike in a kleptocracy, they can’t force anybody to trade with them and must respect the sanctity of private property rights, contracts and the legal system.

It doesn’t matter how big your company is or how rich you are: a pledge must be met; a product must deliver what it says on the tin; lies are never acceptable. Breaking the law must lead to pitiless prosecution; and selling customers a pup must result in litigation and thorough compensation.

Free markets are at once realistic about human nature – unlike naive Leftyism, they don’t assume that people are altruistic or self-policing – and civilising, in that they force people to adhere to strict norms of behaviour. As Milton Friedman put it in his famous libertarian theory of business ethics: “There is one and only one social responsibility of business… to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

There will always be dishonesty, in all walks of life, in every industry and profession, in the public and private sector and in all economic and social systems. Yet humanity’s inherent fallibility, and the need for eternal vigilance, doesn’t invalidate the fact that free markets are the best possible system to create wealth and prosperity for all.

But while corporate scandals always force the political Right on to the defensive, this particular story is just as bad, if not worse, for the Leftwing world-view. It shreds many of its favourite assumptions, highlights endless government and political failures and mercilessly exposes the flaws at the heart of the ridiculous virtue-signalling that has passed for environmental policy in recent years.

Take the nonsensical claim that the City of London is a cesspool of iniquity, home to a uniquely amoral tribe of adrenalin-junkies willing to lie and cheat whenever bending the rules is deemed to be a gamble worth taking. The truth is that no industry can claim moral superiority, and all are blighted by a tiny minority of rogues: even old-fashioned manufacturers in the supposedly gentler, law-abiding industrial capitals of Old Europe can and do commit fraud, taking insane risks to pull the wool over regulators’ eyes. The anti-London euroenthusiasts were wrong, once again.

Or consider another Left-wing shibboleth: the idea that Wall Street’s lobbying and influence means that it effectively controls the US political system. Yet the VW scandal reminds us that heavily unionised car manufacturers have traditionally been far better at getting their way, collecting handouts and bailouts and directing legislation. They have convinced politicians, especially in Germany, France and Brussels, to turn a blind eye to indefensible testing practices that would never be tolerated in any other industry.

What must be most galling to the Left is that VW is structured exactly in the way they would love every company to be. It is partly owned by a German state; the remainder of its ownership structure means that it is protected from a hostile takeover; and it has the sort of twotier board structure beloved of the dafter corporate governance activists, complete with plenty of trade union representation. Yet it didn’t make a blind bit of difference. In the fraud stakes, the Anglo-American model of financial capitalism and the Germanic and Japanese models are one and the same. Once again, the euro-enthusiast belief that everything is always better in Europe has been spectacularly refuted.

Last but not least, the scandal has highlighted the gross hypocrisy of politically correct companies, as well as how the environmental agenda can backfire spectacularly. Industrial firms should be honest: if they don’t like green rules, or believe that meeting them would impose price hikes on their customers, they should say so, not loudly sign up and bask in the moral high ground while surreptitiously ignoring the rules.

As to the embrace of diesel as a supposedly cleaner alternative to petrol, it has been a disaster caused entirely by official error. Desperate to meet Kyoto Treaty carbon dioxide targets, the European Union decided in the late Nineties to bet the bank on diesel. This reduced CO2 but increased emissions of nitrogen dioxide and particulates, an own goal if ever there were one.

The idiocy of the policy, backed by German carmakers, but for which the Eurocrats must bear responsibility, is only now becoming apparent. Nobody emerges from this sorry saga with any credit.