May 24, 2017
Technology doesn’t just change things, it utterly destroys
things. And that’s just fine. It happens so often that people
barely even notice when it does. Think about all the new services
that have come to market just over the past few years: Uber,
Airbnb, Redbox … the list goes on and on.
But that’s only half the story. In turn, the list of services
replaced by these new ones is similarly long: taxis, hotels,
Blockbuster, etc. And workers in these industries often lose their
jobs in the line of creative destruction. We generally accept this
as the price of innovation, but many people try to use the
government to stop this by blocking the new services.
Today we’re seeing this with more politically well-connected
industries like taxis and hotels. Pressure is put on Uber and
Airbnb, respectively, to “protect” the established industries they
are upending.
This week, Ant and James talk about why this is always a
mistake.
Learn More:
https://fee.org/articles/government-cant-stop-creative-destruction/