Why the Crisis is not Creative Destruction

Echoing Joseph Schumpeter's classic (and conservative) notion of "creative destruction", the latest Center for Creative Leadership's Leading Effectively newsletter carries a note by David Hurst arguing that the current economic crisis is merely another iteration of this phenomenon.  Hurst compares the destruction now happening around us to a forest fire that prepares the soil for new growth.

What this argument misses is that forest fires are art of a natural, ecological cycle.  The economic mess is anything but natural and ecological, unless one believes that greed and wanton disregard for the greater good are also.  This is not about new technologies supplanting old ones, or new products outpacing dated rivals.  Rather, it is all about what happens when less noble all-too-human emotions crowd out our best selves.  If the economic crisis is a forest fire, then we, not nature, threw the match.