Employment growth and technological change really do tend to come from new market entrants, not those already extant. And as with new ideas that advance one death at a time as the academic establishment winnows itself, so too with companies. When one firm optimised for a specific task finds that task no longer needs doing, then corporate death is the correct response. Distribute the assets again into new places so that other problems can, and will, be addressed.
“And as with new ideas that advance one death at a time” – a cliche long ago exposed as bogus.
Well, does kind of depend on whose death, and whether they’re consecutive or concurrent.
“New market entrants” – how about Jethro Tull, James Hargreaves, Abraham Darby and Robert Stephenson who created new markets?
Dearieme, how about this paper?
http://www.nber.org/digest/mar16/w21788.html
@Diogenes, irrelevant to Worstall’s point. He wants you to imagine that, say, quantum theory was rejected by all existing physicists when it appeared, and that only their death let it flourish. Which is balls, of course.
QM is obviously correct, and was accepted right off the bat. But there were geologists who refused to accept Wegener’s continental drift theory as late as the 80’s. It really did take them dying off to stop them leading people astray.
Einstein didn’t accept quantum mechanics and neither did Planck, which is ironic given that he is credited with this “cliché” that dearieme so abhors