Schumpeter on Capitalist Competition
5 February 2008
Editor, USA Today
Dear Editor:
You correctly recognize that "Through continued innovation, Google, or perhaps some new company that hasn't been created, could do more to protect consumers from Microsoft's ambitions than a bevy of antitrust lawyers" ("How to look at 'YahooSoft'," February 5).
Capitalist innovation is indeed a ceaseless, powerful, and creative form of competition. As Joseph Schumpeter famously explained, capitalists' pursuit of profits "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."*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* Joseph A. Schumpeter, CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM, AND DEMOCRACY (Harper, 1942), p. 83.
Editor, USA Today
Dear Editor:
You correctly recognize that "Through continued innovation, Google, or perhaps some new company that hasn't been created, could do more to protect consumers from Microsoft's ambitions than a bevy of antitrust lawyers" ("How to look at 'YahooSoft'," February 5).
Capitalist innovation is indeed a ceaseless, powerful, and creative form of competition. As Joseph Schumpeter famously explained, capitalists' pursuit of profits "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."*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* Joseph A. Schumpeter, CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM, AND DEMOCRACY (Harper, 1942), p. 83.
Posted by Don Boudreaux on
Saturday June 28, 2008 at 10:21am