Postrel's arguments have special relevance in dynamic Silicon Valley, a garden of capitalist creativity and creative destruction, where innovation grows like kudzu. Japan, with a centrally decided industrial policy, was supposed to eat our lunch. It didn't happen. But fragmentation turned out to be diversity, which makes the valley resilient to downturns and brilliantly adaptable to change, Postrel argues. Companies rise and fall and remake themselves, like IBM and Apple.
Nobody's in charge.
It may seem that politics is a battle between technocrats and reactionaries, with the dynamists too busy making money to get into the game. But American culture is fundamentally dynamic, which is why we're so rich. Americans believe in progress, not in happy peasantry. We may be nostalgic for Pleasantville, but we wouldn't want to live there. Joanne Jacobs is a member of the Mercury News editorial board.