The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

MERRYLE STANLEY RUKEYSERIN THE NINETEEN SEVENTIES, businessbaiting, no less virulent thanin the past, has become more subtleand sophisticated. It consistsof efforts to equate technologywith utter disregard for ecology.The new attack is sometimeslaunched in a flood of tears forconsumers. Behind the new ~for national economic backslidingis the runaway expansion of thewelfare state which exalts leanersat the expense of producers. Thenew politics denigrates the systemfor cultivating progressthrough rewards and incentives.Theorists and their youthful adherentsrepudiate concepts of developmentand plump for a zerogrowth in population and materialwell-being. They stigmatize the useMr. Rukeyser is well known as a business consultant,lecturer, and columnist.of electricity in labor-aiding toolsof production as antisocial pollution,and blithely advocate thereplacement of mechanically drivenequipment with the primitive"sweat and groan" of human musclepower.Such academic naivete brings tomind a conversation years agowith an economic minister in India.As we discussed the low levelof living in that sub-continent, Iasked what steps native leaderswere taking to supplement theefforts of the human muscle withadvanced machinery. In a patronizingmanner, he called my attentionto India's surplus of workers,as though it were self-evident thatIndia, in the circumstances, hadno use for "labor saving" capitalgoods. But what the Minister didnot seem to grasp was the fact367