The phrase “creative destruction” is typically used in an economics context, and was originally defined in 1942 by it’s author as a vital mechanism “that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.  This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.” (Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, page 83).

In the current issue of the Hillsdale College publication Imprimis, John Steele Gordon shows how the process of creative destruction has played such an indispensible part in the unprecedented and miraculous expansion of the American economy from the colonial period to the present day.  Among his many historical examples is one that forms the core narrative of a currently popular American television series (entitled Hell On Wheels) in a paragraph which alert readers may spot toward the end of the piece.

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