Among some on the left, capitalism gets a bad rap. They object to the inherent unfairness in which some get richer than others, and some lose their jobs in the incessant "creative destruction" that capitalism drives. But
Howard Bloom argues – persuasively - that in fact capitalism ( The "Beast" in this book) is simply one more
expression of a basic driving force in nature, and that the boom-and-bust cycle
typical of capitalist economies is in fact a natural, if brutal, driving
mechanism for evolution seen throughout nature – evolution of organisms,
evolution of societies, and evolution of cultures. The boom and bust cycle, Bloom argues, is really nature's way of exploring all possibilities, a cycle of expansion followed by a cycle of retrenchment, digestion, and reshaping based on what was learned in the expansion. Yes, capitalism is unfair - nature is unfair. But, Bloom would argue, the very instruments that the dissenters use in their dissents - language, printing, cell phones, TV, airlines, etc, etc, are all the fruits of this brutal but effective system.
Bloom is a wonderful out-of-the-box
thinker (see his first book, The Lucifer
Principle, 1995), and this book is well worth reading.
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