Comment by csense

If you're a market leader it might make sense to use your influence to try pushing the whole market against the per-firm incentive gradient to a better equilibrium. Factors that help:

- You're an early player using new technology so you have profits to spare

- You're in a capital intensive business so salaries are a relatively small portion of your expenses

- You have a celebrity CEO so investors give them more of a "pass" for visionary ideas that go against conventional wisdom

I'm not an expert on the history of the US auto industry but my gut feeling is that all of these applied to Henry Ford's Ford.