966 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
consumption maximization at precisely a time when economic success will
depend upon the willingness and ability to make long-run social
investments in skills, education, knowledge, and infrastructure. When
technology and ideology start moving apart, the only question is when will
the "big one" (the earthquake that rocks the system) occur. Paradoxically, at
precisely the time when capitalism finds itself with no social competitors—
its former competitors, socialism or communism, having died—it will have
to undergo a profound metamorphosis (p. 326).Second, Thurow continually stresses the contingency implied by the scale
change between causes of alteration in "normal" times (with greater potential and
range in social than in natural systems due to the Lamarckian character of cultural
inheritance) and the different modes and mechanisms of punctuational episodes.
Thus, the rules we may establish from our experience of ordinary times cannot
predict the nature or direction of any forthcoming punctuation.
In a period of punctuated equilibrium no one knows that new social
behavior patterns will allow humans to prosper and survive. But since old
patterns don't seem to be working, experiments with different new ones
have to be tried (p. 236)... How is capitalism to function when the
important types of capital cannot be owned? Who is going to make the
necessary long-run investments in skills, infrastructure, and research and
development? How do the skilled teams that are necessary for success get
formed? In periods of punctuated equilibrium there are questions without
obvious answers that have to be answered (p. 309).Thurow therefore stresses the virtues of flexibility, ending his book (pp. 326-
327) with an appropriate image for "the period of punctuated equilibrium" that "the
tectonic forces altering the economic surface of the earth have created":
Columbus knew that the world was round, but he ... thought that the
diameter of the world was only three quarters as big as it really is. He also
overestimated the eastward land distance to Asia and therefore by
subtraction grossly underestimated the westward water distance to Asia...
Given the amount of water put on board, without the Americas Columbus
and all his men would have died of thirst and been unknown in our history
books. Columbus goes down in history as the world's greatest explorer ...
because he found the completely unexpected, the Americas, and they
happened to be full of gold. One moral of the story is that it is important to
be smart, but that it is even more important to be lucky. But ultimately
Columbus did not succeed because he was lucky. He succeeded because he
made the effort to set sail in a direction never before taken despite a lot of
resistance from those around him. Without that enormous effort he could
not have been in the position to have a colossal piece of good luck.