“Three Generations from Overalls to Overalls”

(p. 156) Because it proceeds by competitively destroying old businesses and hence the existences dependent upon them, there always corresponds to it a process of decline, of loss of caste, of elimination. This fate also threatens the entrepreneur whose powers are declining, or his heirs who have inherited his wealth without his ability. This is not only because all individual profits dry up, the competitive mechanism tolerating no permanent surplus values, but rather annihilating them by means of just this stimulus of the striving for profits which is the mechanism’s driving force; but also because in the normal case things so happen that entrepreneurial success embodies itself in the ownership of a business; and this business is usually carried on further by the heirs on what soon become traditional lines until new entrepreneurs supplant it. An American adage expresses it: three generations from overalls to overalls. And so it may be. Exceptions are rare, and are more than compensated for by cases in which the descent is still faster. Because there are always entrepreneurs and relatives and heirs of entrepreneurs, public opinion and also the phraseology of the social struggle readily overlook these facts. They constitute “the rich” a class of inheritors who are removed from life’s battle. In fact, the upper strata of society are like hotels which are indeed always full of people, but people who are forever changing.

Source:
Schumpeter, Joseph A. The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle. Translated by Redvers Opie. translation of 2nd German edition that appeared in 1926; translation first published by Harvard in 1934 ed. London: Oxford University Press, 1961.

Russia Expands Icebreaker Fleet to Exploit Benefits of Global Warming

HealyIceBreaker20080824.jpg “The Healy, shown in May 2007 in the Bering Sea, is an ice-breaking ship used mainly for science.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 6) A growing array of military leaders, Arctic experts and lawmakers say the United States is losing its ability to patrol and safeguard Arctic waters even as climate change and high energy prices have triggered a burst of shipping and oil and gas exploration in the thawing region.

The National Academy of Sciences, the Coast Guard and others have warned over the past several years that the United States’ two 30-year-old heavy icebreakers, the Polar Sea and Polar Star, and one ice-breaking ship devoted mainly to science, the Healy, are grossly inadequate. Also, the Polar Star is out of service.
And this spring, the leaders of the Pentagon’s Pacific Command, Northern Command and Transportation Command strongly recommended in a letter that the Joint Chiefs of Staff endorse a push by the Coast Guard to increase the country’s ability to gain access to and control its Arctic waters.
In the meantime, a resurgent Russia has been busy expanding its fleet of large oceangoing icebreakers to around 14, launching a large conventional icebreaker in May and, last year, the world’s largest icebreaker, named 50 Years of Victory, the newest of its seven nuclear-powered, pole-hardy ships.
Adm. Thad W. Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard, who toured Alaska’s Arctic shores two weeks ago with the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, said that whatever mix of natural and human factors is causing the ice retreats, the Arctic is clearly opening to commerce — and potential conflict and hazards — like never before.

For the full story, see:
ANDREW C. REVKIN. “A Push to Increase Icebreakers in the Arctic.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., August 17, 2008): 6.

A Succinct Account of the Rise of Anti-Semitism

James Burke, writing of the ninth-century AD (the century of Charlemagne’s death in 814 AD):

(p. 32) It was at this time too that anti-Semitism, previously rare, began to increase. Money-lending, which was forbidden by the Christian Church, was permitted under Jewish law, and the Jews, prevented from owning land, turned to the new business currency. Many of them grew rich and were resented.

Source:
Burke, James. The Day the Universe Changed: How Galileo’s Telescope Changed the Truth and Other Events in History That Dramatically Altered Our Understanding of the World. Back Bay Books, 1995.

Company Graveyard Scene from Wattenberg’s “In Search of the Real America”

EdselTombstone.JPG Source of image: screen capture downloaded on 9/3/08 from: http://cgi.ebay.com/PBS-TV-SERIES-IN-SEARCH-OF-THE-REAL-AMERICA-1977_W0QQitemZ330267803398QQihZ014QQcategoryZ63821QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

For years I have been trying to find a copy of Ben Wattenberg’s wonderful opening scene in the episode on big business of his 1970s series “In Search of the Real America.” He stands in a spooky, foggy, graveyard next to several tombstones. When we see the tombstones more closely, they have the names of big business corporate failures.

InSearchOfTheRealAmericaOpeningSlide.JPG Source of image: screen capture downloaded on 9/3/08 from: http://cgi.ebay.com/PBS-TV-SERIES-IN-SEARCH-OF-THE-REAL-AMERICA-1977_W0QQitemZ330267803398QQihZ014QQcategoryZ63821QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Kronman Thinks It’s Good that We Die (and Charles Murray Applauds)

Over the weekend of August 16-17, 2008, I caught a few minutes of an interview on one of the C-SPAN channels. Charles Murray was handing softball questions to an academic philosopher named Kronman. Kronman was pontificating that life could only be meaningful because there was death. He suggested that those pursuing longevity research were misguided.
I sat there appalled, pondering how many wonderful, amazing projects we could get done, if only we had more time.
Some wise philosopher once said that you can only have useful dialogue with someone if the two of you have some shared assumptions. I don’t expect to be dialoguing with Anthony Kronman anytime soon. And that is just as well, since life is way too short to waste much time worrying about the Anthony Kronman’s of the world.
(In case you think I’m making this up, I quote below, from Kronman.)

(p. 229) The spiritual emptiness of our civilization has its source in the technology whose achievements we celebrate and on whose powers we all now depend.

Technology relaxes or abolishes the existing limits on our powers. There is no limit to this process itself. Indeed, every step forward is merely a provocation to go further. This might be called the (p. 230) technological “imperative.” . . .
. . .
(p. 230) If we lived forever, our powers, however great, would have no significance. How could it possibly matter whether we exercised them one way or another, sooner rather than later? This can matter to us only within the framework of a lifetime, that is, within the boundaries of a mortal existence. That we sometimes imagine (or think we imagine) that we want to have and use limitless powers in a limitless life is an illusion that always depends on our covertly smug-(p. 231)gling into our imagined picture of such an existence some essential feature of the human mortality we can never escape. In reality, the idea of immortality is for us quite unimaginable. It remains an empty abstraction.

PS: The following sentence appears on the copyright page of Kronman’s book: “The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.”
So the longevity of books is pompously praised, while the longevity of humans is belittled?

Don’t waste time on:
Kronman, Anthony T. Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given up on the Meaning of Life. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.
(Note: ellipses added.)

“Nuclear Power Provides 77 Percent of France’s Electricity”

FrenchNuclearReactorFlamanville20080824.jpg “France is constructing a nuclear reactor, its first in 10 years, in Flamanville, but the country already has 58 operating reactors.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 6) FLAMANVILLE, France — It looks like an ordinary building site, but for the two massive, rounded concrete shells looming above the ocean, like dusty mushrooms.

Here on the Normandy coast, France is building its newest nuclear reactor, the first in 10 years, costing $5.1 billion. But already, President Nicolas Sarkozy has announced that France will build another like it.
. . .
Nuclear power provides 77 percent of France’s electricity, according to the government, and relatively few public doubts are expressed in a country with little coal, oil or natural gas.
With the wildly fluctuating cost of oil, anxiety over global warming from burning fossil fuels and new concerns about the impact of biofuels on the price of food for the poor, nuclear energy is getting a second look in countries like the United States and Britain. Even Germany, committed to phasing out nuclear power by 2021, is debating whether to change its mind.

For the full story, see:
STEVEN ERLANGER. “France Reaffirms Its Faith in Future of Nuclear Power.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., August 17, 2008): 6. (Also on p. 6 of the NY edition)
(Note: ellipsis added.)

FranceNukeMap20080824.jpg

Source of map: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Shaw: “All Progress Depends on the Unreasonable Man”

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

attributed to George Bernard Shaw
Source:
Elkington, John, and Pamela Hartigan. The Power of Unreasonable People: How Social Entrepreneurs Create Markets That Change the World. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2008.
(Note: Elkington and Hartigan cite Shaw’s Man and Superman as the location of the Shaw quote.)

Leapfrog Competition in the Smartphone Industry

SmartphoneMarketShareGrasphic.gif

Source of graphic: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. C1) In recent years Palm lost its way. Its share of the smartphone market has been halved to about 16.9 percent over the last two years. First, Research in Motion found the sweet spot of business users with its BlackBerry. More recently, Apple grabbed consumers’ fancy with the iPhone.

Palm has tried to innovate beyond the five-year-old Treo with little effect. It announced with great fanfare last year that it would build the Foleo, a cross between a smartphone and notebook computer, only to cancel the project three months later. While cellphone makers like Samsung, LG and R.I.M. brought out products to compete with the iPhone, Palm has told Treo loyalists and investors to be patient. They will need to be. Palm’s stock price is down 90 percent since its high in March 2000.
Mr. Rubinstein, the executive chairman, said he is convinced he can bring Palm back. “Everyone is trying to make an iPhone killer,” he said. “We are trying to make a killer Palm product.”

For the full story, see:
LAURA M. HOLSON. “Palm, Once a Leader, Seeks Path in Smartphone Jungle.” The New York Times (Weds., August 20, 2008): C1 & C5.

ColliganRubensteinPalmExecs.jpg “Ed Colligan, left, Palm’s chief executive, and Jon Rubinstein, the executive chairman, who was hired to revive the company.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

A Schumpeterian Policy Program Promotes Innovation and Creative Destruction

McCraw on the nature of “a Schumpeterian program” :

(p. 169) Yet it is not difficult to identify a Schumpeterian program—at whatever level of analysis one chooses: the individual entrepreneur, the business firm, the industry, or even the country. At all levels, Schumpeter’s litmus test is whether the players are pursuing innovation and bringing about creative destruction. If they are, then the program is Schumpeterian.

Source:
McCraw, Thomas K. Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2007.

A Standing Ovation, and a Salute, for Colonel Jack Moelmann

MoelmannColonel20080823.jpg “Colonel Moelmann, a retired Air Force officer, sold seats for $50, but had to spend almost $120,000 of his own to perform.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

I do not share Colonel Moelmann’s particular dream, but I do salute him for paying for his dream himself, rather than trying to force taxpayers to finance it, as so many do in pursuit of their dreams.

(p. A18) Col. Jack Moelmann, a retired Air Force officer from O’Fallon, Ill., blew $118,182.44 on a one-night stand in New York on Saturday. It was everything he had dreamed of, and more: three hours with the mightiest of the mighty Wurlitzers, the legendary pipe organ at Radio City Music Hall.

The experience left him sweaty and exhausted — having your way with a mechanical marvel that contains more than a million parts is hard work — and it reduced his net worth to “the mid-five figures,” he said. But Colonel Moelmann had no regrets. He soldiered through tune after tune, from “The Trolley Song” from “Meet Me in St. Louis” to patriotic songs like “America the Beautiful,” “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Which, as he pointed out before he climbed onto the bench of the giant ebony console at the left-hand edge of the Rockettes’ high-kicking home, guaranteed him a standing ovation.
. . .
“Not many people get their name on the marquee,” he said.
Not many people spend a large chunk of their life savings to buy their way in, either.
The idea for a Radio City concert began with the president of the year-old Theater Organ Society International, the Rev. Gus L. Franklin, and Mr. Page, a member. “We turned our pockets inside out and said, ‘It’s not going to happen,’ ” Mr. Page said.
Colonel Moelmann, the society’s secretary, decided to make it happen — “I looked in the mirror and said: ‘Jack, you have a dream. Go for it.’ “– even though, he said, it was a foregone conclusion that “we’re going to lose money big time.”
He and the organ society put the price of the tickets at $50 a seat, but the show was far from a sellout. Even with the three balconies closed, the orchestra level was about a third full.
Some in the audience were Moelmann fans from way back. Susan Conrad Wells, a law librarian from Granby, Mass., said she had met Colonel Moelmann through an organ club in 1967, when he was stationed in Massachusetts.
Colonel Moelmann said that playing at Radio City presented its own challenges. “You can’t listen to what you’re playing,” he said. “If you listen note by note, once you’ve hit the note and you hear it, it’s too late to say, ‘Oops, I hit the wrong note.’ ”
In the end, he got his standing ovation.

For the full story, see:
JAMES BARRON. “Organist Rents Radio City to Play, Fulfilling Wish.” The New York Times (Mon., August 11, 2008): A18. (B4 in NY edition)
(Note: ellipsis added.)

MoelmannColonelAtOrgan20080823.jpg “Jack Moelmann always wanted to play Radio City’s pipe organ, above, even after playing at Westminster Abbey and the Pantheon.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Schumpeter Learned from His Failures

McCraw (2007, p. 112) quotes from Schumpeter’s diary:

Really, I don’t quite regret any of my efforts and failures—every one of them taught me something about myself and life that uniform success would have hidden.

Source:
McCraw, Thomas K. Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 2007.