Wealth & Money Quote by Peter L. Berger

Berger slips a sociologist's blade under the feel-good story of "creative destruction". The line concedes the obvious (jobs vanish, hardship follows) and then pivots to the less politically legible loss: culture. That move is the point. Economists can price unemployment and policymakers can debate retraining programs, but what disappears with an obsolete industry is a whole ecology of meaning - the neighborhood bar after second shift, the apprenticeship ladder, the pride encoded in calloused hands, the tacit knowledge passed through families, the local politics organized around a plant whistle. By naming steel, Berger invokes a 20th-century emblem of modernity and national strength, then shows how modernization also corrodes the social world that made it plausible.

The subtext is a critique of technocratic narrowness. "Obsolete" sounds clinical, like an upgrade notice; Berger insists it's a social verdict with intimate consequences. He also nudges at dignity: losing a job is not just losing income, it's losing a role that tells you who you are and where you belong. Communities built around heavy industry aren't merely labor markets; they're moral communities with rituals, hierarchies, and shared narratives about toughness, loyalty, and contribution.

Contextually, this fits Berger's lifelong interest in how institutions manufacture reality. When an industry collapses, the collapse isn't only economic; it's symbolic. The real shock is that a way of life can be liquidated with the same bureaucratic calm as a balance sheet - and the people left behind are asked to treat that as progress.