Caroline Paulsen, Chapter 8, Question 5

One key topic in chapter 8 that struck me as significant was about creative destruction. An example of creative destruction that the class discussed earlier this year was about new technology involved in making roads. This is particularly relevant to Minnesotans, since our roads are plagued by potholes due to our relatively extreme weather. Although the technology to make new roads that are less easily ruined exists, we decide to keep patching up the old roads or rebuilding them with lesser technology. This is a bit like Charles Wheelan's example of the Pony Express and the telegraph. With the invention of the telegraph, messages were transferred much more efficiently than they would have been by the Pony Express. However, unlike with the present-day roads, the government didn't decide to ban the telegraph because it would cause people to lose their jobs. Wheelan also points out that in general it is more helpful to retrain people in different professions than it is to ban innovations.