Creative Destruction vs Trump’s Destructive Reduction.
Creative Destruction was a term first popularised by economist Joseph Schumpeter. The premise is that innovation and technology will ensure progress on the basis of replacing old industries, markets and economic structures with new more efficient concepts. The architects who accomplish this are entrepreneurs who think outside the box, question existing systems and introduce new ways and means. Never has this been more relevant with the impending impact of AI putting us on the cusp of what many believe will be a major revolution. Some believe it will bring about comparable change to that fostered by the Industrial Revolution. Regardless this change will be led by the key leaders that Schumpeter relied upon: entrepreneurs and tech genii.
Enter Donald Trump, certainly a disrupter but only in a literal sense. The proverbial bull in the China shop. The antithesis of the dynamic innovators that Schumpeter championed. A man apparently stuck in the past. A strong proponent of returning to the ‘good old days’ of the 1890’s, his model for what the U.S. should be. Let’s call that ‘Destructive Reduction.’
Subtraction by reduction. Attacking allies. Breaking trade agreements. Withdrawing from international organisations. Renouncing treaties. Axing social benefits. Deporting immigrants. Recklessly slashing jobs within the bureaucracy. Reductions without analysis in an ill-fated attempt reduce the national debt, offset quickly by tax cuts in his ‘Big Beautiful Bill’. The man hates complexity. Give him a one pager and a burger and he’s ready to act. Rationality be damned. Right to a fault? ON and ON Don!
Admittedly AI may help him with the odd element in this quixotic attack on well, just about everything. Forgotten is that the firm foundation of growth for the past hundred years for the U.S. has been research and development. For the past fifty years and more the U.S. has spent roughly 40% of the amount spent on R & D across the entire world. It’s been a proven formula for wealth creation and economic success. So what does the Big D do? He cuts the funding for leading research institutions like Harvard. This is perverse logic but then logic had been abandoned in a flurry of executive orders with the size of the signature rivalling that of John Hancock.
I wonder who will fill the many voids created by this executioner of trust? Trump’s drift toward isolationism, based on groundless economics, creates great opportunity for none other than China. A country that quietly invests in areas that the U.S. largely chooses to ignore like Africa and South America. Areas that have been insulted by the Big D. Projections show that by 2100 there will be twelve billion people on Earth. Nine billion of those will reside in Africa or Asia. Every continent but Africa will be facing ageing populations. China has a plan. It has a much longer window than anything America conceives. China will quietly encourage the decline of the American Empire, if you can call it one. Donald has given their plan a nice boost.
The world is changing. Are we ready? These are the questions that make my novel The Noah Project a wake up call to action.
