On the still-favored economic/entrepreneurial doctrine of "creative destruction" (or "disruption," etc.). How long, in significant examples, might such disruption last, from its beginnings to the point at which its creative fruits begin to repay society, with interest, for the destroyed capital? I look at only one example, but one which is similar enough to many others: how much destruction was involved in the shift from the midcentury American manufacturing economy to the global "information" economy that started to congeal around the millenium? In terms of the amount of time just indicated, there were two generations (ca. 50 years) of destruction involved. (And this leaves out the fact that there are, of course, still many communities in industrial regions which have not recovered their midcentury prosperity or standard of living; it also disregards persistent questions around whether the creation or sale of information per se now drives a portion of the economy comparable to manufacturing's former share.)
So the creative destruction of the traditional manufacturing economy in America (i.e., dominated by heavy industry) -- from the postwar opening of world markets to the gradual shift to a digital technology-driven economy -- has consumed at least two generations of some human life in the U.S. That is to say, there were and are millions living in these generations who will largely know neither the stability of the time before this transition, nor the fruits of the time after -- the destruction of the economy they are born into, and pass away in, is all they knew, or will know. The generation previous to these two counts itself lucky; the generation after, perhaps, begins to count itself more fortunate as well. But not these two generations, these fifty years or so; these children of industrial life have paid, are paying, the human price of creative disruption, of eventual capital gain -- through world trade and global labor markets, digital technology, and eventually, the software-driven, virtual culture of "entrepreneurs" wholly owned by the corporate interests which finance and host their ventures. These generations are paying for these creations with their lifelong economic welfare.
Any advocate of "creative destruction," then, who has nothing to say to the generation or more who may be destroyed by many such disruptions -- anyone who does not acknowledge what has long been well known, that strategies from tariffs to 'job retraining' are often only bromides spelling further obstruction and degradation for many caught up in such change -- loses their moral mandate in this regard. Let any sector, any entrepreneur, be free to disrupt whatever commerce they wish in the interest of an eventual greater good, and let them marshal as many economic, sociological and political arguments as they can; nor can they be held morally responsible for the fate of laborers whose entire lives may be disrupted and degraded by such new activity. But such activity must not justify itself on the basis of any creative-destruction thesis, unless it is ready to address the destroyed. No one can be blamed for uprooting trees to plant their garden (or as Blake says, “the cut worm forgives the plow”), but do not preach the virtues of the new garden to the cut logs. And if, one day, we were to find that we were no longer content to sacrifice a plot of trees for each new garden, then we would cease planting -- we would pause in all our newness and change -- to speak with the trees.
