Schumpeter explores the concept of “creative destruction” certainly (horse and buggy anyone? Where’s Kodak these days? Can you help me find a Blockbuster video store? Hmm, still looking for that Rust Belt job?), but there are other points he makes that are worth considering.
One of them is that, while recognizing the effects of markets and market pressures, focuses on social factors and he suggests that capitalism may decline due to sociological and cultural factors, not economic failure. We’re seeing that now. Capitalism, he says, produces an educated class of intellectuals, critics, and professionals who don’t identify with capitalist values. In quaint historical context, we used to think of this as leftest sentiment, but we now see it magnified on the right to an extreme.
Along with this, Schumpeter proposes a realistic framework (v. classical or idealistic version ) of democracy: he proposes that it’s about competition between elites for the people’s vote, not a direct expression of popular will. Oh, yeah.
Because the “JCs” already used that line of reasoning to largely defund higher education. So, instead of an educated middle class, the “JCs” have promoted a restless mob of poorly educated. As Goldstein pointed out, the mob must be kept busy, lest their thoughts turn to revolution. Screwing on lugnuts is a good way to keep the mob occupied, and the “JCs” who own those factories make a profit off their labor.
Free trade goes back to Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Free trade is a Complex System (they didn’t know that). Adam Smith was against the Corn Laws because they hurt the average citizen while protecting farmers (land owners). David Ricardo took it one step further with Comparative Advantage. Neither of them predicted the ** entirely predictable** effect on wages. Stoopid smart cookies?
Not entirely an effect on wages, but on the ebb and flow of employment. I, apparently, am still missing your point. Though, I would say that, neglecting the social impacts on workers in areas lacking “comparative advantage” tends to confirm my position that “JCs” see Proles as nothing but expendable meat.
Where we differ is that I’m talking generalities, that emergent properties are not predictable and you are focusing on one specific emergent property, destruction of wages.
Consider the following, in the early days all humans did physical labor and slowly labor saving devices emerged. Labor saving devices lowered the value of human brute force. This trend never ended, it is still ongoing. The next giant step is humanoid robots, the most versatile labor saving device we have yet created. Think of how many low end jobs will be wiped out!
Your chapter on JCs is just one day in a million year story. Creative Destruction has been ongoing for ever. In recent centuries Capitalism has taken the lead role. Joint Stock Laws allowed everyone to become a capitalist. Think back to Adam and Eve, how much difference could there be? Once accumulation of capital happens on an industrial scale the Power Law takes over. But, the low end still tends to live better than our cave dwelling ancestors on the economic scale.
Is it fair? That question cannot be answered by the realm of economics, it’s a moral question. When you mix economics and morality you come up with garbage like Communism. Well meaning but destructive. Why do communes fail? Communism does not work.
That was mentioned in Goldstein’s book. As he put it, “the machine” increased productivity to the point where far more goods could be produced, than used. That would result in people being laid off in large numbers. Large numbers of unemployed would lead to civil unrest. So the forever war was created, to quickly destroy the newly produced goods, so the Proles could be kept busy making more.
Ever notice the round thing in the middle of the Indian flag? I have read it represents a spinning wheel.
I have also read that the spinning wheel increase productivity so much, that a proposal was made to ban the spinning wheel, so more “jobs” would be created by using less productive ways of making thread and yarn.
In the radio industry there was a union job called “record turner”, which stations had to have on staff when filling time with records between live orchestras. Perhaps it was a worthwhile job in the 1920’s and 30’s, but it was still around in the 1950’s, even in the 60’s in a few stations. (In many it was subsumed into the general “technicians” category of IBEW or IATSE.) I worked at a couple of those stations even in the 70’s and 80’s and you still weren’t allowed to spin a record or insert a tape cartridge into a machine.
Workers always gonna try to protect their jobs, even when they’re crappy jobs like coal mining or steel wrangling.
There was a spinning wheel design proposed by Lord Mountbatten the last British Gov. General. But that is not what the circular design is on today’s Indian flag.
Railroad locomotives still had a “fireman” in the 60s, even though the locomotives had been all diesel since the 50s. For a long time, freights still pulled a caboose, even though the brakemen were all gone. Only the conductor still used it. They finally got rid of the caboose, and moved the conductor into the cab, to keep the engineer awake.
