Gary North is one of my favorite authors. I have read many of his books. He is a historian, economist and theologian - all wrapped up in one. In fact, he is the only writer I know that can put all the pieces together and I use his sources often. Just as a reminder, that is exactly the purpose of my website and blog.
THE WAVE OF THE FUTURE
Capitalism
today is clearly the wave of the future. If people had understood what Gordon
Moore said in 1965, they would have paid no attention to what Bettina Aptheker
and her peers said in 1965.
As
far as I can see, there is no equivalent of Bettina Aptheker around today, but
if there is, nobody in the news media is rushing to interview her.
We
know Aesop's story of the tortoise and the hare. Lenin in 1923 looked like the
hare of the 20th century. But the effects of what has come to be called Moore's
law should have been visible at the time. From 1890 until 1950, the cost of
information was cut in half every three years. From 1950 to 1965, this was
reduced to every two years. From 1965 until today, it has been reduced to
somewhere between 18 months and one year. This process is accelerating. The
tortoise ceased to be a tortoise. He became a hare. Then he became a cheeta.
We
should have seen this coming. In the days of Jesus, the speed of the transfer
of information was approximately one mile an hour. By 1800, this had increased
to approximately a mile and a quarter per hour. Then, in 1844, Samuel F. B.
Morse increased the speed to 186,000 miles a second, reduced only by the speed
of two telegraphers, including their note-taking, plus the speed of a runner to
get a scribbled note to a paying customer. That was a tipoff as to what was
about to take place.
Anyone who thinks that a dozen members
of the Federal Open Market Committee of the Federal Reserve System can oversee
the growth of the American economy has not taken seriously either Mises or
Hayek. More to the point, he has not taken seriously the implications of
Moore's law.
Moore's law is part of a long-term
technological process that goes way beyond silicon chips. It has to do with the
cost of information. The idea that a dozen tenured bureaucrats in a
government-created monopoly can oversee the operations of the digitized
American economy is so ludicrous that only a Keynesian could believe it.
CONCLUSION
Keynesianism is not the wave of the future. When you think
"Paul Krugman," think "Bettina Aptheker."