The 'market' handled the above changes - and the changes worked. The correct change doesn't happen when control freaks like Obama or communists committees start making the call. We don't need '5 year plans'.
As long as we protect people's rights to make market choices, they'll make the right ones for themselves - and as a by product, the right choices for society.
If elites and 'know it alls' are out of the loop the solution will just happen.
But what if technological changes mean the market no longer works?
There is no law of nature, AFAIK, that means free markets will always result in economic improvement for most people. That has indeed been the case for the last 200 years, but is there any real reason to be “positive” that it will always be the case?
I think that is true, but I make the following observations:
1) We are not a market-driven economy. Big Government allies with Big Business in an economy of fascism and control. This works against workable solutions.
2) We could achieve workable solutions for the future (as we have done in the past) if we could break the stranglehold of Big Government and its crony capitalism tendency.
3) Big Government always seems like a good idea when people want to avoid suffering. How many government programs have been imposed on us "for the children"? If we really want market solutions, then we really have to hold Government Charity at arms length, and we really have to accept a certain amount of real suffering, so that society can move toward real solutions.
Based on our current social and political state, I have no reason to believe that either politicians or voters will tolerate market-driven solutions.
We should have a free market. We sometimes tell ourselves that we do have a free market. But we don't. And without a free market, real solutions do not "just happen". What we get, instead, is just more Control.
Exactly. A healthy capitalist economy creates new markets and new jobs. The iPhone market didn't exist 10 years ago for instance.