In Conclusion…
Okay, in light of the economic apocalypse, I just can’t resist quoting a couple of paragraphs from the final chapter of my book, Slackonomics.
In these two graphs, I am writing about the economist Joseph Schumpeter, who used the phrase “creative destruction” to describe the process by which capitalism renews itself, often through violent convulsions that cause quite a bit of pain. He was originally describing the industrial revolution, but I am repurposing the phrase by calling it creative destruction 2.0 to describe the global/technological revolution:
This is truly a new era of creative destruction, not only altering everyday life for Generation X—from how we work, where we live, how we play, when we marry and have children, to our attitudes about love, humor, friendship, happiness, and personal fulfillment—but the world as we know it. Powerful forces have been unleashed in our lifetime, and to assume that it’s all going to work out, that creative destruction will continuously renew the economy via radical transformation from within, could turn out to be the ultimate in naivete.
Schumpeter argued strenuously in favor of capitalism at a time when socialism and communism were considered viable options (“the capitalist process, not by coincidence but by virtue of its mechanism, progressively raises the standard of life of the masses.”) But he was also well aware of its shortcomings. Not only do people and industries get hurt in the churn, they become “free to make a mess of their lives” with enough “individualist rope” to hang themselves. What’s more, capitalism sets up a tension “between two interests in society, the interest in present enjoyment, and the interest in the nation’s economic future.” Schumpeter actually predicted that capitalism couldn’t survive because governments would eventually quash creativity, an understandable conclusion when communism was a serious consideration. What Schumpeter didn’t count on, however, is that capitalism can overwhelm democracy, and in the current age of creative destruction 2.0, it’s working far too well.
Fucking A.
Peter Anger
I think creative destruction will be far more profound than any generation can imagine.
With the emergence of new information technologies we don’t and will not value much of anything except our collective connectedness of information and not need much more than a workstation and something to do on it
+ food and shelter.
It seems as if all we held dear and of value has been destroyed by the information age.