An interesting concept, and one that I love...but won't discuss with my kids yet...is that of creative destruction.
Schumpeter spent quite a bit of time on this topic. "The Perennial Rain" of creative destruction, I believe, was the terminology he used.
I'm sure he didn't mean for it to refer to warfare, though it is applicable. Rather, he used it to show how the entrepreneurial spirit would continually erode large corporations as new ideas and products were developed. One business must be destroyed for another to grow.
It is a base terminology for evolution, by which certain species are "chosen" to survive while others are not. Business follows the same path. So do cultures. TC, I wonder if religions do. Certainly, religions take longer to follow this path, assuming they do at all.
The point I was making, to begin with, is that construction adds value whereas destruction doesn't (unless it is part of the process of construction). It is one of the reasons I've always felt Bin Laden is such an odd creature. He's got a degree in civil engineering, and is wealthy. Why waste the talent and money on guns and killing, when you can gain so much more by building roads and hospitals? |
