Corporations, innovation, and wealth
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/08/opinion/rushkoff-one-percent/index.html?hpt=hp_bn9
A new role for the 1%
The problem with this scheme is that it works by stifling innovation and competition. The wealthy stay wealthy by extracting value instead of creating it.
Interesting perspective, and he gives a nice historical analysis of the rise of corporations. I disagree with his argument, though. Innovation happens precisely because of corporations. Innovation is risky, and it requires wealth, because a single innovator is typically unable to have the full resources needed to create a new product. Anyone in the past 20 years who got rich off the internet benefited from the major investments that the government and corporations put into expanding the internet 50 years ago. Gates, Wozniak, and Jobs relied on companies like Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and IBM to invest in and produce technology. If all we did was “invest in the people and businesses in our own communities” then we’d be living in pre-industrial America.
The only sustainable path forward is to accept that corporations extract wealth, and to create an environment that encourages corporations to reinvest that wealth into technology, productivity, and local/national infrastructure.
Textual Trajectories 