Mostly Weekly Series Finale: Creative Destruction
In the final episode, we tackle how free markets break and make stuff.
Reason's webseries "Mostly Weekly" is wrapping up–for entirely legal reasons that absolutely do not involve tax evasion. No reason to be suspicious.
The final episode of the series tackles creative destruction. In free and open markets people are able to make new technologies and business models, which displace older, established ones. That process of starting new companies and jobs destroys some professions while creating others.
It's entirely understandable that people who lose their jobs want to keep them. But industries like manufacturing, coal mining, and mall retailers aren't dying out because of competition from China, they're being outmoded by automation, cheaper fuel sources, and online sales.
Despite the uncertainty that markets bring, they also create new jobs and entirely new professions. There aren't gangs of unemployed lamplighters roaming the land; their descendants became Uber drivers, social media coordinators, and webseries producers.
In the end, it's better for everyone to look at the world as it is and to move forward than to try and halt progress through the force of law.
Mostly Weekly is hosted by Andrew Heaton with headwriter Sarah Rose Siskind. Watch past episodes here.
Script by Andrew Heaton and Sarah Rose Siskind with writing assistance from Brian Sack.
Edited by Austin Bragg and Sarah Rose Siskind.
Produced by Meredith and Austin Bragg.
Theme Song: Frozen by Surfer Blood.
