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A few days ago, some people were discussing Schumpeter's idea that (very) large companies drive innovation. I'm curious what they would make of Google Search.



The core of Schumpeter's position here is that innovation requires making large long-term capital investments in risky projects, which small firms can't afford.

Things are somewhat different today then when Schumpeter was writing. On the one hand, governments and venture capital firms are now major sources of R&D funding. On the other hand, the growth of the financial sector has to some degree crowded out higher-risk investments within large firms.


The financialization of like, literally everything, makes most of that “classic” work of political economics people like to cite wobble badly. Hell, so does advertising if you look at the classic Austrian Econ stuff. It’s invisible in Mises’ Human Action (because it barely existed at the time! no fault of his I guess), and it causes massive tensions if you try to confront his framework with it.




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