ght for the day: Schumpeter on Capitalism’s Success // (Steven Hayward).

Joseph Schumpeter’s classic Kapitalism, Socialism, and Democracy – a good reminder in this age of so-called “ESG capitalism”

Modern dentistry is one example of the many things that the modern worker can have that Louis XIV would have loved to have. However, a budget at that level had little to gain from capitalist achievements. For a gentleman as opulent as he is, speed of travel may have been an issue. Electric lighting is not a great boon for anyone with enough money to buy enough candles and pay servants to tend to them. The typical achievements of capitalist production are the cheap cloth, cheap cotton and rayon fabrics as well as boots, motorcars, and so forth. Queen Elizabeth had silk stockings. Capitalist success does not usually consist in providing more silk stocks for queens, but in making them available to factory girls in return of steadily decreasing amounts.

If Schumpeter were still alive today, I believe he would consider crypto-currency a perversion to capitalism. Since generating cheaper NFTs for the masses does not appear to be the primary product from things like FTX, it is hard to imagine him including crypto-currency in that category.