Torture versus collateral damage; the bigger evil?

[Fuchs]

In the long run free is better even with the ups and downs. Creative destruction and all that.

You're also talking about the "too big to fail" sector here...

Seriously, there's not much creative destruction any more in the U.S. economy or in European economies. Cassette tapes got pushed aside by CDs and there are some other anecdotes, but the big creative destruction moves don't happen because the existing winners are entrenched and have much influence on politicians and media. They can also pervert the patent and other copyright laws to their ends, by using them to kill off true innovators with fraudulent challenges.
It's also very difficult to innovate and destroy something old in a world where technology has advanced so much that tech wizards in garages simply don't cut it any more. You need teams of dozens of people even for smallish development enterprises. There aren't many Dysons around.

[carl]

Fuchs:

Sadly I must agree. Little that is established is allowed to fail, especially in the financial world. We made noises about not letting things be to big to fail but the banking world is more concentrated than ever. I read an article in the Atlantic (that used to be a good magazine until it went straight party line about two years ago) years ago that said if the IMF was handling the US crisis in 2008, all those big banks would have been nationalized, broken up and sold. But of course it wasn't because the too many of the superzips would have been hurt. As you say, the existing winners protecting themselves.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...t-coup/307364/