Page 92 - The Drucker Lectures

9

Structural Changes in the World

Economy and Society as

They Affect American Business

1977

y topic is “Structural Changes in the World Economy,”
Mand I perhaps best begin by saying that contrary to what
most of us believe, the present kind of transition period is an old
and very familiar story. Every 50 years or so, since something
you might call a modern economy first emerged around 1700,
there has been a “go-go decade” in which there seemed to be no
limit to growth: 1720, 1770, the 1830s, and the 1870s.
One began in the early 1900s, which was aborted in Europe
by World War I and in this country it continued to 1929. And
now it occurred again in the 1960s and the early 1970s. And
these rather giddy periods are always followed by a pretty mas-
sive hangover in which everybody believes that growth has come
to an end forever. Let me also say that everybody during every
one of those hangover periods believed that we were going to run
out of materials. This is the third time in my life that I’ve heard
this, and by now I don’t believe it anymore. And frankly there
is no reason to believe it. This is one of the normal symptoms
of this particular hangover. Every time so far this prediction has
then been disproven pretty fast.

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