Creative Destruction

[Joseph Tracy]

Wo dudes, I thought you was talking about, you know, Jimi Hendrix and the whole guitar flambe' thing.  So I guess I was wrong.

Good thread. There seem to be many forms of the same idea, but I think the most frightening American version is the marriage of Milton Friedman's economic ideas with disasters: natural disasters, coups, military dictators, breakdowns of existing systems . That is the theme of Klein's Shock Doctrine.  Friedman and his creeps were always looking for a clean slate for "pure" market forces to do their magic. It's the cleaning agents present a political problem. Turns out throwing lefties out of airplanes and cutting off peoples privates and stuffing them in their mouth doesn't really generate a "growing economy" anymore than turning over a nation to the "private sector". 

Still one can understand the logic and appeal of the idea of creative destruction. Cultivation involves lots of pruning, whether you use BT or encourage natural predators. Every system which involves creation usually involves destruction. Same thing with words and ideas, you have to edit, to remove as well as to add. I don't really think video killed the radio though.  Bad radio is the problem there. NPR doing their part by continually pushing the limits of blandness. Fast food from fast corn from fast tractors with fast operators in fast futures. High speed computers with high speed internet and high speed game consoles with high speed delivery 0f smarter faster bombs and bombers doing some fast restructuring, putting everyone on the fast track to creative destruction. 

The problem is the Orwellian and anti-democratic use of the term, where the few benefit and the many suffer. Maybe  the problem is just who uses the term and why. Usually the least creative and most destructive .
Blicero sees himself as a creative spirit, his fascination with death/the flame is an aesthetic fascination, a poetic and mystical consummation where death is truth and its embrace full of creative potential.  On the other hand Blicero was sociopathic, a childish self-absorbed bully, rapist and serial killer.  Von Braun was equally at home building rockets for death or exploration, for Nazis with slave labor, or for America. Pointsman was smart ; he understood that war is a career opportunity. So it goes. You can always tell when a politician or the chairman of the board is trying to pull a fast one.  The lips move.

On Jan 18, 2012, at 5:52 PM, Richard Fiero wrote:

> David Morris wrote:
>> The original source of the term:
>> 
>> "The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the
>> organizational development from the craft shop to such concerns as
>> U.S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation—if I may
>> use that biological term—that incessantly revolutionizes the economic
>> structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly
>> creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the
>> essential fact about capitalism. (p. 83)"
>> 
>> Y'all (Ian & Richard) are taking this "creative destruction" way too
>> political/literal for my taste.  The Pynchonian aspects in my eyes
>> are:
>> 
>> 1.  Most directly, Luddism Vs CD.  The human (and inevitable) cost of
>> "progress."
>> 2.  Anthropomorphizing of "Capitalist Progress," as if it were an
>> autonomous creature.
>> 3.  Inherent Imperialism of Capitalism: "opening up of markets," and
>> thus justification of the human costs.
>> 
>> I'm just surprised I've never see TRP use the term.
>> 
>> Davis Morris
> . . .
> I don't see P having a dog in any of those fights.
> 
> The original usage of the term probably is a metaphor drawn from a misunderstanding of a machine-like natural balance. Economists have lifted a great number of metaphors from the physics and ecology of 150 years ago. We now call it Neo-Classical Economics.
> 
> Just my opinion, largely quite uninformed and shortsighted not to mention ill-advised is that the term "creative destruction" has fallen into disuse. If we want to describe capitalism, we should probably mention the rentier position of successful capitalists which is wholly unproductive. Something like our financial industry which has, under the government of friendly and bought-off politicians produced a many-headed machine for extracting wealth rather than creating wealth. Now I am striving to be ideology-free and would prefer something that actually works, regardless of what it looks like.
> Alice may claim that bankers do financial engineering of a complex and intricate nature but the fact is that bankers have staff to do that and that bankers do relationships. That these morons believed highly paid staff's assurances of the models' accuracy and low risk is testimony to their abilities which is countered by their ability to buy the officials needed to make themselves whole while dumping the costs to the public.
> Since we are in a gilded age of capitalism, it may be instructive to look at the great railroad robber barons that did not have the wits or interest to run successful roads but enriched themselves and their friends and large numbers of congress people by hollowing out their own companies. Creative destruction, indeed.
>