Like the consummate poker player shoving the whole pot into a grandstand showdown, Schumpeter begs the whole question of economics by reducing it to a single quibble: Is the function of economics analytic or predictive? Do economists merely compartmentalize facts about life as we know it or do they serve as visionaries? In other words, is it better to know where the market has been rather than where it's going? Obviously, Schumpeter himself chose the latter role, opting to lay out a vision of future generations than to muck about with the nuts and bolts of mundane money matters.
The driving force in Schumpeter's world-picture is his accolade to the talented few, the idea people who render service to an otherwise not-very-engaging business machine set in the well-worn ruts of sameness. An even more intriguing possibility is that Schumpeter, imbued with elitist notions from childhood, may have set up this paradigm as a means of self-glorification, seeing himself as the swami of elitism.
Whatever his motivation, he has produced a passionate interest in the captains of industry — not the grasping, dog-eat-dog Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Morgans of the previous generation, but the Lee lacoccas and Donald Trumps, the Sam Waltons and Ray Krocs, whose genius expresses itself in the proverbial "better mousetrap."
Certainly, Schumpeter's contribution to economics places an emphasis on the part of the whole, which has, in past overviews, tended to fall between the cracks. Instead of stressing the inevitability of money following money or of workers locked into a predetermined social stratum, he opens a window on the spectrum of creativity. To Schumpeter, economics is less dry, less stultifying when interpreted as an outgrowth of wit, talent, and innovation.
From his perspective, the future of capitalism appears less the function of an inevitable movement toward some predetermined end and more like a shapeless lump of clay in the potter's hand. A truly humanistic approach, Schumpeter's evaluation leaves hope that there's always room at the top for the tinkerer, the visionary, or the risk-taker. In his scheme of things, the world beckons perpetually to a Walt Disney, an Estee Lauder, a Steven Jobs, or a Liz Claiborne, whose brain children never capitulate to mundane limitations.
