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by VLM 4664 days ago
>is making people like Schumpeter feel under threat

Schumpeter won't care, he's been dead 60+ years now. The Economist has a habit of naming their departments after famous people in the field to make a political statement. Schumpeter was kind of the anti-Marx and anti-Keynes of his era. Read into that what you may about the editorial board of the Economist. Somehow I don't think Fox is in any danger of having their "fair and balanced" motto stolen by the Economist LOL

He had his good points and his bad points as an economist. They're probably not all over his biorhythm / astrology based business cycles, although given how crude understanding was at the time, he did push the field forward at least a little. On the other hand he was kind of the first wise old men of technological innovation and the entrepreneurs so on HN of all places I would expect people to at least pretend to have heard of him. I would expect this crowd would not give a pass on someone who had no idea who Turing or Babbage was, so its kinda a bad scene that I seem to be the only person on HN who knows who Schumpeter was.

As for the specific claim about management being replaced, he was of the opinion that in groups people cannot self govern themselves successfully, and they pretty much need a loosely controlled republic at most, not referendums and democracy. So not knowing much about his views on management, but knowing his views on govt, he'd probably find that tool-mediated management is not going to work any better than mass media-mediated government. But who knows, someone who knows more econ than me, might dredge up an essay by the man on this very specific topic.

1 comments

Thanks. I stand by case, addressed at the author not Schumpeter. But feel rather silly.