The free market economy provides an unparalleled example of a continuing healthy circulation of elites. In this dynamic economy, failure to keep up with competitors, failure to satisfy the demands of consumers in the best possible way, will topple elites quickly and establish new ones who do the job better. Ludwig von Mises wrote frequently of the inappropriateness of leftists referring to so-and-so as the “Steel King” or the “Automobile King”; for consumers frequently uncrown these alleged monarchs. Dethroning of financial monarchs on Wall Street is a frequent phenomenon. There are innumerable striking examples of big businesses failing to grasp the importance of a new product or new development, and of losing out to newer upstarts. I will refer to only two glaring cases experienced in my lifetime: the cry of leftists to “break up A&P” in the 1930s because of its alleged “monopoly” of the retail grocery business; and the failure of the old-time photography “monopolist” Eastman-Kodak to grasp the enormous significance, after World War II, of either instant photography or xerography, thereby leaving the field to newer, and more alert competitors.
--Murray N. Rothbard, "Bureaucracy and the Civil Service in the United States," Journal of Libertarian Studies 11, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 4.
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