Tucker: The Man and His Dream follows the story of an entrepreneur named Preston Tucker in his pursuit to produce one of the most advanced cars of the WW2 era. Tucker has managed to do what many other entrepreneurs have not, he has created a product that is legitimately better than the majority of other products in the world. With its disk brakes, seatbelts, and 4-wheel suspension, Tucker's car was certainly ahead of its time and seemed bound for success.
Alas, Tucker ran into the same problem that countless entrepreneurs have, and that is the interference of powerful people in the industry who wish to remain on top by limiting innovation and new ideas from entering the market. In this case, Tucker's enemies and the reason for his failure were the big three car companies who had already established themselves as industry leaders.
Unfortunately, Tucker is not the first person to experience this foul play. When Uber was first starting up as a taxi company, every single major existing taxi company lobbied against them and attempted to take them down before they even had a fair shot. Luckily, they failed and today Uber is one of the biggest and most valuable companies on Earth, but they nearly stopped them from even existing, which is a scary thought. A scary thought not only for Uber and Tucker, but for any entrepreneur who wishes to innovate and invent, and even for society writ large.
Innovation is absolutely crucial for society, and to maximize and incentivize innovation, you must have a free market. Without innovation, products will not get better, and quality of life will not improve for society writ large. That is why it is such a big issue for society when powerful companies decide to meddle in the business of smaller companies and shut them down using foul play and unfair tactics because it completely compromises the ability of the free market to exist inside of a vacuum, which in turn decreases innovation and quality of life for society.
For instance, what if Tucker's car had been allowed to enter the market? Perhaps it would have outperformed the existing top cars and taken over as the most popular. This would have given society a new car that they clearly enjoyed more than the others, thus increasing the quality of life. Not only that, but the other car companies would now have to compete. Whether by lowering their prices or making a new car of their own, they would have to do something to get themselves back into a good position at the top of the car industry, which again, benefits society.
Without Tucker's new cars and Uber's new ideas, society can not function and improve on itself. Entrepreneurship, the free market, and innovation are absolutely necessary for a healthy society to operate, which is perfectly represented within the movie. The whole situation is so unfair to Tucker and negatively impacts everyone except for the big three car companies. Monopolies are extraordinarily harmful to society, and this movie perfectly illustrates why they can never be allowed to exist in modern-day society.
Works Cited
“Tucker: The Man and His Dream.” LucasFilm, 2000.
BYLUND, PER L. Seen, the Unseen, and the Unrealized: How Regulations Affect Our Everyday Lives. LEXINGTON Books, 2018.
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