“AI is one of those really transformative technologies that is creating tremendous new possibilities and realities and is deflating the value of the human capital that some people have accumulated. If you were a computer science major graduating in 2011, things look great for you, much less so if you're graduating in 2026 or 2028.”
Razib Khan's Unsupervised Learning · Ideas & Essays · October 2026
Historian Jerry Z. Muller, asked whether capitalism will survive hostility from both parties, described it as Schumpeter's creative destruction: dynamism that leaves some people behind. He called himself optimistic about American capitalism in the medium and long term.
Transcript
Right.
…and like, you know, capitalism, as we understand it, has been around for a while now. How are you feeling? Do you think it's going to just, you know, make it through and just come back? Or are we in treacherous times? I mean, obviously, this isn't like global communism a century ago, but still.
Yeah. Well, capitalism is, I mean, its defining feature really is its dynamism. And what Schumpeter, one of my favorite social theorists, called creative destruction. And part of that process is that new ways of doing things, new products, new ways of marketing are constantly being created. And as they are being created, they create tremendous advantages for some individuals. On the whole, they tend to create a better standard of living and more possibilities for more people. But they also destroy the way of life of some people as the way because the way in which things were made or distributed in the past becomes superannuated. So that's something that's gone on really throughout the history of capitalism, from the Industrial Revolution and the Luddites and so on, through the late 19th century populist era in the United States and in Europe as you had the opening up of international agriculture, which put a strain on farmers and peasants in many countries. And so in that sense, capitalism is the history of dynamism. It's a history of some people, of some people getting left behind, left behind either in absolute…
Well, I guess the last question I'm going to ask because you brought it up, you know, I'm talking for an hour now. You know, you are an emeritus. You know, you seem like you're in good health and everything like that. But, you know, you have now witnessed, well, I have witnessed AI over the last…
Well, I think the keywords are the ones that you articulated, uncharted territory, because there really hasn't been anything quite like this. I mean, in some ways, the coming of the internet was like it in terms of a huge transformative step in the transmission of knowledge and information and…
Yeah, I mean, I do have to say, okay, I know the youth are having issues with reading, the ability to read. You know, some people are saying, we're going back to the age of orality, which is concerning to me because oral has limitations. But as you know, some people worried with the spread of…
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