Words & Numbers
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Insightful weekly commentary on news & current events from economist Antony Davies and political scientist James R. Harrigan.
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Government Can't Stop Creative Destruction
May 24, 2017
Technology doesn’t just change things, it utterly destroys things. And that’s just fine. It happens so often that people barely even notice when it does. Think about all the new services that have come to market just over the past few years: Uber, Airbnb, Redbox … the list goes on and on. But that’s only half the story. In turn, the list of services replaced by these new ones is similarly long: taxis, hotels, Blockbuster, etc. And workers in these industries often lose their jobs in the line of creative destruction. We generally accept this as the price of innovation, but many people try to use the government to stop this by blocking the new services. Today we’re seeing this with more politically well-connected industries like taxis and hotels. Pressure is put on Uber and Airbnb, respectively, to “protect” the established industries they are upending. This week, Ant and James talk about why this is always a mistake.
Show Notes
- As the Economy Changes, Hold the Regulations
- Half a Century Later, Economist's "Creative Destruction" Theory Is Apt for the Internet Age
- Joseph Schumpeter: The "Father" of Capitalist "Creative Destruction"
- Unleash the Market's Creative Destruction
- The "Amazon Effect" Is Creative Destruction at Its Finest
- Creative Destruction Is Winning the Shopping Battle
- The Creative Destruction of New York in 47 Seconds
- Creative Destruction Is Not Zero-Sum
- Peace Out, iPod, I'm Rocking Spotify
- Capitalism Destroys Jobs, and That's a Good Thing
- Don't Call it Creative Destruction, Call it Creative Renewal
