The Past and Future of America’s Economy

Name: The Past and Future of America’s Economy
Author: Robert D Atkinson
ISBN: 1845425766

by Robert D Atkinson

Yes, that’s right. Robert Atkinson is one of the leading scholars of what is sometimes called evolutionary economics or sometimes the neo-Schumpeterian school. He goes back to Joseph Schumpeter who emphasised the role of technology in transforming the economy. And Schumpeter was the one who coined the phrase “creative destruction” back in the 1940s. It’s one of those phrases that’s thrown around by people who have no idea what it means – they say it’s just ordinary market operations when some businesses go bust and others are formed. That is not what Schumpeter meant. What he meant by creative destruction was what he elsewhere referred to as “industrial mutation” – that is the entire replacement of one kind of technology and all the businesses built on it by a radically destructive new technology. So, for example, canals did not evolve into railroads – they were just completely wiped out and replaced. Railroads have largely been wiped out by trucking and automobile travel. The telegraph was wiped out by the telephone. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Robert Atkinson, through his books and his think-tank The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation , has been waging a battle against neoclassical economics, which says the ordinary state of the economy is one of equilibrium and if you leave it alone there is a self-regulating, harmonious economy of lots of small producers. Atkinson argues that this completely ignores the central fact of economic life, which is disruptive technological innovation. The economy is never in a condition of equilibrium. It’s been constantly rocked from one side to another by the invention of some new machine or some new technique. His book is a polemical argument about the kind of economics that is appropriate in the 21st century. I’m not an economist myself, but I definitely think there’s more to this technology-based Schumpeterian tradition than there is to these academic models that pay very little attention to technology, except as an afterthought. To those debates amongst economists, Robert Atkinson’s book is a very good guide.

Recommended by

Michael Lind

"Yes, that’s right. Robert Atkinson is one of the leading scholars of what is sometimes called evolutionary economics or sometimes the neo-Schumpeterian school. He goes back to Joseph Schumpeter who emphasised the role of technology in transforming the economy. And Schumpeter was the one who coined the phrase “creative destruction” back in the 1940s. It’s one of those phrases that’s thrown around by people who have no idea what it means – they say it’s just ordinary market operations when some businesses go bust and others are formed. That is not what Schumpeter meant. What he meant by creative destruction was what he elsewhere referred to as “industrial mutation” – that is the entire replacement of one kind of technology and all the businesses built on it by a radically destructive new technology. So, for example, canals did not evolve into railroads – they were just completely wiped out and replaced. Railroads have largely been wiped out by trucking and automobile travel. The telegraph was wiped out by the telephone. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Robert Atkinson, through his books and his think-tank The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation , has been waging a battle against neoclassical economics, which says the ordinary state of the economy is one of equilibrium and if you leave it alone there is a self-regulating, harmonious economy of lots of small producers. Atkinson argues that this completely ignores the central fact of economic life, which is disruptive technological innovation. The economy is never in a condition of equilibrium. It’s been constantly rocked from one side to another by the invention of some new machine or some new technique. His book is a polemical argument about the kind of economics that is appropriate in the 21st century. I’m not an economist myself, but I definitely think there’s more to this technology-based Schumpeterian tradition than there is to these academic models that pay very little attention to technology, except as an afterthought. To those debates amongst economists, Robert Atkinson’s book is a very good guide."

American Economic History · fivebooks.com