Vol. 17 No. 21 · 2 November 1995
pages 6-7 | 3645 words
Turbo-Charged Capitalism and Its Consequences
Edward Luttwak
One-thing-at-a-time pragmatism is the hall-mark of good old Anglo-Saxon common sense: systemic connections between diverse spheres of human life are the teutonic vice of the likes of Sombart and Schumpeter. But sometimes vice must prevail. Consider three sets of numbers.
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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
