I don't know if Joseph Schumpeter is spoken about a lot these days but I found his work rather interesting. He is from the Austro Hungarian Empire and introduced entrepreneurs as a ‘creative force in the economy’ through his 1911 piece, "Theory of Economic Development".
Jean Baptiste Say first coined the term entrepreneurship in the 1800 but limited its definition within economic resources i.e. low to high productivity, higher yield. Schumpeter expanded its definition and popularized "Creative Destruction," on the evolution of old to new technologies. This cycle of change - e.g digital/smartphone vs film cameras, streaming vs cable TV, and e-commerce vs brick-and-mortar - has been ongoing for over a century and more. AI is just another piece of the equation.
There will be a short phase of time of job loss but new jobs will be created. The global population surged from 2.5 billion people in the ‘50s to 8.1 billion today, contributing to significant job growth. The workforce doubled as women actively joined from the 70s onwards. When we zoom out, a lot more jobs have been created over time with the participation and influence of the continuity of new techs.
Schumpeter, alongside Friedman, Keynesian, and Karl Marx, rebelled against traditional economic approaches from the 1800s time. However Schumpeter was pro capitalism. In his book "Imperialism and Social Classes," Schumpeter opposed Lenin's views, and associated imperialism with nationalism and militarism. He linked capitalism early on with free trade and peace.
Marx was a big fan of tech but believed it should be under centralized governance. Gov’t are better at concealing problems to show that they have no problems, whereas entrepreneurs like to dig problems and find solutions - hence gov’t trying to control the entrepreneurship ecosystem will be a complete disaster.
As I was reading through Schumpeter’s work, I wondered how he thought so far ahead when there were limited examples around him during his time. That’s quite something.
