Title: Technology, innovation, growth, and capitalism
Headings: Technology, innovation, growth, and capitalism
Technology, innovation, growth, and capitalism
“Innovation pessimism”
Capitalism and growth
The impetus of war
Stagnation and decline
“Race against the machine”
Artificial surplus population
Two sides of the same coin
Creative destruction
Not liberating, but enslaving
Ebbs and flows
A society of superabundance

Content: the imperialist nations could expand no further without re-dividing up the world. Thus began a period of two world wars, with the Great Depression in-between. The impetus of war
It is notable that the main development in technology and innovation from this period came not from capitalism and the competition of the free market, but from the state control over industry and the planning that capitalist nations were forced to adopt for the purposes of war. Nationalisation and public control of the key sectors of research and development were introduced in the advanced capitalist countries during the Second World War in order to innovate and develop new technologies. Aircraft, plastics, synthetic rubber, medicines, telecommunications, nuclear energy, etc., all of these technologies and many more were either invented or given an enormous boost due to WW2, alongside a general development of industry and the introduction of new production techniques for the purpose of the war. This rapid period of development in terms of the research and application of new technologies and techniques, along with the destruction caused during the war itself and the expansion of world trade that followed, in turn led to the post-war economic boom – the so-called “Golden Age” of capitalism. Suddenly, whole nations, whose industrial base had been flattened during the war, were given Marshall Aid from the USA – which came out of the war greatly strengthened with its industry and economy almost untouched – and were able to import and implement the most modern industrial methods, providing a great leap forward in terms of productivity. This, the tremendous q