Turbo-Charged Capitalism and Its Consequences

Letters

Vol. 17 No. 24 · 14 December 1995

From Adam Kadmon

Edward Luttwak (LRB, 2 November) argues that the Boeing Corporation is increasing productivity, reducing labour costs and discharging workers thanks to computer-aided design and the computerisation of clerical work etc. But who is making the computers, and the work stations, and the micro-processors and the software? US corporations. Even the Japanese are now slipping before the recovery of the semi-conductor industry in the United States. No one in Japan matches Intel and the processing chip. No one in Japan, or anywhere else in the world, matches American software. So what is the point of Luttwak’s complaint? He wrote a ludicrous book a few years ago predicting the decline of the American economy, and he was wrong. But as an old Roman strategist, Mr Luttwak knows that you never retreat: you attack again. But with what weapons?

Adam Kadmon
Cambridge, Massachusetts