The great “high tech” platforms – Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook – are crushing innovation, which is the core of creative destructionthe unbeatable axis of North American capitalism.
On the contrary, the duo Silicon Valley/Stanford University It is a systematic effort at disruption, and it is committed to the full deployment of creative destruction with a continuous emergence of startups with new technologies, brand new markets and constant “destruction” of dominant firms.
The large “high tech” platforms were initially startups deeply disruptive and created, in a process of ruptures and confrontations, personal computers (“PCs”), the Internet, and “smartphones.”
It happens that, in the last 20 years, they have dedicated themselves to absorbing the new startups potentially disruptive, and they have done so through a campaign of mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
In this way, they turn innovation into a routine laboratory task, but one lacking the genius typical of startups.
Hence, the innovation process has tended to stagnate, systematically exhausting the creative flame of the American “genius”, to the point of making it the rule of the last 2 decades.
The creative destruction – Schumpeter said – is the central process of capitalism, by which the most productive sectors are moved, while the most backward are abandoned; and the vigor of this extraordinary internal engine is intensified, and ultimately realized, through successive technological revolutions, the last of which, and the most decisive, is the Artificial intelligence (AI), the fundamental technology of the 4th Industrial Revolution.
An absolutely crucial strategy is deduced from the “Schumpeterian vision”, which is the deliberate affirmation of the competence as the main instrument of technological progress, which is both the future and power.
This is what is at stake today in the United States around two fundamental changes: the drastic and complete deregulation of the system, in order to exponentially exacerbate internal competition, and a new and deep tax cut, bringing it to the smallest possible level. in the history of capitalism in relation to the product.
The tax cuts decided by Donald Trump in his first term amounted to US$3.4 trillion, and were the result of a decrease from 35% to 21% in corporate taxes; He now aspires to bring them to 10%, the lowest level in the world, and do so on a permanent basis.
The drastic and complete deregulation of financing and investment, especially in high technology, It is a joint claim of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
In this aspect, its main adversary is the bureaucracywhich is the social class of the advanced world endowed with a notorious desire for hegemony.
At this crucial point Elon Musk It plays a central role in this bid in which the fate of the United States and, by extension, the world is decided.
Max Weber said that “…the 20th century is the struggle between charisma and bureaucracy,” and this is more true than ever in 2024.
The critical point of the current moment of American capitalism, revealing a change of era, was the purchase of Twitter by Elon Musk for US$ 44,000 million (October 2022); and his first decision as owner of the re-named 60 million followers, after January 6, 2021 (Assault on the Capitol).
From that moment on Elon Musk became the main “high tech” figure in the US, the axis of the global system.
What is at stake today in the North American superpower is the possibility of unleashing a new and gigantic process of creative destruction, at the pace of the Artificial Intelligence product cycle, which is less than 2 years; and this contrasts with the hyper-regulatory desire of the Biden government, which proposes doubling the level of corporate taxes.
Capitalism is an endogenous system of accumulation that advances at the pace of successive technological revolutions, through an incessant process of savings, investment, and expanded reproduction (Schumpeter + Marx).
That is why Wall Street is today the essential ally of Silicon Valley and both demand at the same time to be absolutely deregulated, that is, debureaucratized, and subject to the only rule that drives productivity, which is competition.
Musk has decided to move all of his Tesla businesses from Californiawhich he considers highly bureaucratized, Texaswhich he considers more friendly to entrepreneurs.
At the same time, he appreciates that his compensation as “CEO” amounts to US$56 billion, which has had the enthusiastic support of 77% of his shareholders.
In that same movement, Elon Musk has transformed Tesla into “…an Artificial Intelligence and robotics company”, to which he will direct the mass of his immense resources.
The November 5 elections are absolutely decisive for the world system.
