Category: Openness to C. D. Book
Openness on Display at Oxford Booth at AEA Meetings
Great to see @amdiamond, author of 'Openness to Creative Destruction', at #ASSA2020. Thank you for stopping by our booth! Don’t forget to check out his book here: https://t.co/nOVr2D8Yd7 pic.twitter.com/i1s8cYNJCA
— Oxford Economics (@OUPEconomics) January 4, 2020
Does Musk Want to Reach Mars or Conspicuously Consume Real Estate?
In my book Openness to Creative Destruction, I describe and praise those who I call “project entrepreneurs.” These are innovative entrepreneurs, like Walt Disney and Cyrus Field, who are motivated primarily by a desire to bring their project into the world, rather than a desire for conspicuous personal consumption. I have been unsure whether to count Elon Musk as a project entrepreneur. The evidence quoted below suggests the answer is “no.”
(p. M1) Over the last seven years, Mr. Musk and limited-liability companies tied to him have amassed a cluster of six houses on two streets in the “lower” and “mid” areas of the Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, a celebrity-filled, leafy enclave near the Hotel Bel-Air.
Those buys—plus a grand, 100-year-old estate in Northern California near the headquarters of Tesla, the electric car concern he heads—means Mr. Musk or LLCs with ties to him have spent around $100 million on seven properties.
For the full story, see:
Nancy Keates. “Elon Musk’s Big Buyout.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, December 6, 2019): M1 & M6.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 5, 2019, and has the title “Elon Musk Buys Out the Neighbors.”)
My book, mentioned at the top, is:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Wisconsin May Have a Robustly Redundant Labor Market
From Nathan Wiese’s description, below, Wisconsin is described in as what I call a “robustly redundant labor market” in my book Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism.
(p. A1) ROSENDALE, Wis.—Nathan Wiese, a third-generation dairy farmer who is struggling to get by, says even if he has to close his family’s farm, he feels confident he could hire on as a truck driver and take home more money.
“If you want a job, you can get a job,” said Mr. Wiese, who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and plans to do so again. “I could probably get one in one day.”
. . .
. . . in an era of severe worker shortages, people losing jobs when a plant or a farm closes are quickly getting scooped up by others. This provides a safety net in the broader economy by keeping incomes and consumer spending strong.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses added.]
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 28, 2019, and has the title “How a Strong Job Market Has Proved the Experts Wrong.”)
My book, mentioned at the top, is:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Ed Cray “Was a Meticulous Craftsman of American Biography”
In my Openness to Creative Destruction, I used Ed Cray’s book on Levi Strauss as the source of my account of how Jacob Davis invented Levi jeans.
(p. B14) Ed Cray, a journalist and educator who explored a broad spectrum of Americana with well-regarded biographies of Woody Guthrie, Chief Justice Earl Warren, the California serial killer Juan Corona, George C. Marshall and the bluejeans maker Levi Strauss, died on Oct. 8 in Palo Alto, Calif.
. . .
He delved into broad subjects, including police misconduct and medical care (“The Big Blue Line” in 1967 and “In Failing Health,” in 1970) and entrepreneurship (“Levi’s: The Story of Levi Strauss & Co.” in 1978 and “Chrome Colossus: General Motors and Its Times” in 1981).
. . .
“Ed was a meticulous craftsman of American biography with a penchant for deep research,” Professor Brinkley said in an email. “What mattered most to Ed was being a judicious judge of the past. There are no false notes in his body of work.”
. . .
Professor Joe Saltzman, a former colleague at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, where Mr. Cray also taught, said in an email, “Although his books were not best-sellers, they always offered solid reporting and new insights into his subjects.”
For the full obituary, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated Nov. 1, 2019, and has the title “Ed Cray, Biographer of Woody Guthrie and Earl Warren, Dies at 86.”)
The Levi Strauss book that I mention above, is:
Cray, Ed. Levi’s: The “Shrink-to-Fit” Business That Stretched to Cover the World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1978.
Stories of Heroic Entrepreneurs
The great idealists of our economy are not the socialists, but the heroic entrepreneurs of innovative dynamism. One of the goals of my book Openness to Creative Destruction, and some of my other writings, is to tell their stories to a wider audience. Gonzalo Schwarz has let me know that his Archbridge Institute is also telling some of these stories under the heading American Originals at:
“Openness to Creative Destruction” Discussed on Power Trading Radio
John O’Donnell interviewed me at 6 PM 11/8/19, about my book “Openness to Creative Destruction” on his weekly Friday show on Power Trading Radio. (In the screen capture above, Merlin Rothfeld is on the left and John O’Donnell is on the right.)
Chapter 4 on “The Benefits–New Goods” for Free Until Nov. 8, 2019
Until November 8, 2019, Oxford University Press is making available for free Chapter 4 of Openness for Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. The chapter is “The Benefits: New Goods.” You can download it as a PDF, and then save it or print it, from:
Art Diamond Interviewed on the Small Business Advocate Radio Show
Yesterday morning, Jim Blasingame, the host of his nationally syndicated “The Small Business Advocate” radio show, interviewed me on issues related to my book Openness to Creative Destruction, and “A Disney Story for Young Socialists,” my Oct. 10 op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. You can click on the links below to listen to each segment of the interview.
Hunter Hastings Posts “Professor Arthur Diamond on Sustaining Innovative Dynamism” Podcast to His “Economics for Entrepreneurs (E4E)”
The podcast episode “Professor Arthur Diamond on Sustaining Innovative Dynamism,” is also posted at the Mises Institute site: https://mises.org/library/professor-arthur-diamond-sustaining-innovative-dynamism
Nick Ronalds Graciously Praises Art Diamond’s “Openness” Book and EconTalk Podcast Interview
After my EconTalk conversation with Russ Roberts, that was posted on Aug. 12, 2019, 49 comments were left in the Reader Comments section of the web site. I do not know Nick Ronalds, but I am grateful to him for boosting my morale. Below, I quote his comments in full:
Nick Ronalds
Aug 16 2019 at 7:59pm
I was just going to leave a quick comment that this was an entertaining podcast, but also that Diamond came across as unpretentious and totally non-defensive, which helped make the conversation entertaining. There were also some fascinating nuggets, such as the anecdote about the development of the internet at–but mainly after–DARPA.But the fact that Diamond is responding to so many comments makes him much more interesting, and suggests, at the very least, that he has an abundance of energy and a love of the fray.
The last guest who was so active in the comments section was Eugene Fama, so Diamond is in pretty good company.
. . .
Nick Ronalds
Aug 22 2019 at 8:28pm
I am blown away by Arthur’s genial responsiveness. I already got an Amazon book sample of his book but I’ll now feel like a jerk if I don’t just go and buy it.
The EconTalk podcast can be found at: https://www.econtalk.org/arthur-diamond-on-openness-to-creative-destruction/