Your contributor first tried using eBay in its early days and was not very impressed. The experiment was not repeated for several years.

However, a combination of desperation for a particular item and the persuasion of an acquaintance with a more successful experience led to the internet auction site being given a second chance over the summer – with such positive results that there is a danger of addiction.

eBay has come of age – for reasons that should bring joy to all supporters of free markets.

First, it is a perfect example of how supply and demand can be seen to be setting a fair price. If you are looking for an item that comes up fairly frequently, and are in no hurry, it is worth taking the time to watch the closing prices of auctions. There are exceptions, when someone gets caught up in the heat of bidding, or picks up a bargain while no one else is watching, but, more often than not, prices for items of the same type usually settle around similar figures.

Second, it illustrates how open markets with a free flow of information are better at improving quality than any amount of regulation. When most business was essentially local, reputation was the key to quality. One of the drawbacks of globalisation was that reliable information about reputation became harder to obtain. However, that is less of a problem on eBay now that their rating system is well-established. Most sellers, and buyers, are proud of their scores and will go out of their way to avoid them being reduced by a single negative rating.

Operations like eBay and Amazon Marketplace point the way to how most businesses will operate in future. Some products and services, by their nature, require personal contact, but, for the vast majority, the global marketplace is already a fact of life, and international marketing and sourcing the norm. This will be increasingly tough on businesses, like the proverbial corner shops, whose focus has been exclusively local, but even such businesses may profit if they take the opportunity to develop an online operation that synergises – using that word properly for once – with their existing work.

German business confidence is high. The country that gave us the Wirtschaftswunder, the original post-War “economic miracle”, may be Europe’s best hope for the future.

Perhaps the real miracle is that the Germans are so optimistic, given Germany’s underlying problems. The labour market is still over-regulated and Germany’s welfare state ensures that salaries are a relatively small proportion of the costs of employing people there. Germany is also the cornerstone of the ailing single European currency, and will almost certainly be presented with the bills for bailing out a succession of less disciplined countries in the near future.

Nevertheless, Germany has definitely retaken her traditional position as Europe’s most competitive economy – after losing it, briefly, to the UK in the mid-1990s. Other nations would do well to study the reasons for this...

1              Fiscal Discipline. Two years ago, German politicians from both sides of the political spectrum were united in their contempt for British and American plans to spend their way out of recession. Instead, they followed their own strict austerity programme. The result: Germany was out of recession before the UK and the USA, and is now two years ahead on the road to recovery.

2              Technology. Germany defies the decline of European industrial competitiveness thanks to a national obsession with constant technical innovation and precision. The Germans accept they cannot compete with the developing world on price and instead dedicate their whole economy to competing on quality. In Germany engineers have more status than lawyers – if only America could say the same!

3              Education. German Universities may not be as trendy as the American Ivy League or British Russell Group, but the German secondary education system is one of the best in the world, and their commitment to technical education is, predictably, given the national obsession, unsurpassed. A general population who are literate, numerate, comfortable in foreign languages, and technically skilled provides a better pool of potential entrepreneurs and key workers than a surplus of academic degrees.

4              Reputation. The emphasis on technical quality pays off. The German brand name is as strong as ever. Success builds success.

The passing of British “Turkey King” Bernard Matthews, CVO, CBE, brings to an end a classic story of a poor boy made good through free enterprise – the sort of story that encourages people to become entrepreneurs, but which may be increasingly rare in future.

It began in 1950, when Matthews, the 20-year old son of a car mechanic, having just completed his National Service with the Royal Air Force, bought 20 turkey eggs and an incubator at a local market. Agricultural products were a useful source of additional income for many Britons in the immediate post-War period when some were still subject to rationing. However, within two years, Matthews had turned his hobby business into a full-time occupation.

At first, he expanded “horizontally”, simply increasing the number of turkeys until he was the biggest turkey farmer in Europe. Yet his real stroke of genius was expanding “vertically” along the production chain by setting up his own processing plants. By 1980, he was even marketing directly to the public under his own brand name – something almost unique in Europe’s centralised agricultural sector – to the extent of appearing in his own television advertisements. This is something many bosses dream of doing, but advertising agents always try to talk them out of it: even those who are mesmeric in real life come across as stiff and insincere on the flat screen. Matthews was the exception: his description of his own product as “booootiful” became something of a catchphrase in 80s Britain.

He followed the now well-worn track of taking his business public, fighting off a hostile takeover bid by an American multinational, and then taking the company private again.

The last decade found him on the defensive. His previously popular “turkey twizzler” was targeted by a self-righteous healthy eating campaign, which turned it into the poster product for processed foods which are supposed to be bad for children. Far more seriously, two employees filmed committing an indescribable act of animal cruelty tried to defend themselves by saying it was part of the culture at their plant. While this was no defence, the incident showed how Matthews’ whole operation was out of step with changing ideas of animal welfare. An outbreak of avian influenza at one of the company’s farms followed soon after.

It is a tribute to Matthews that he managed to restore the company to profit before standing down as Chairman in January. Yet he was already a relic of a bygone age. It is doubtful if a man without formal qualifications would be allowed in these more regulated times to do as he did and build a major primary sector business from nothing. Whether that is good news for animals is a moot point – there is evidence that all the regulation is not helping them much – but it is surely bad news for humans that it is actually getting harder to be a genuine self-made man.