Creative destruction is the process whereby innovation replaces existing economic structures with new ones. Countries that embrace creative destruction, like England during the Industrial Revolution or Deng Xiaoping's post-Mao trade-friendly China, leave some behind but flourish as a whole. Problems arise when the elites quash creative destruction for their own benefit. When Francis I of Austria-Hungary banned the construction of railroads and factories in the early 1800s to preserve his feudal agrarian order, the empire's economy suffered leading to poverty and famine. Today, with a combination of increasing minimum wages and near-zero federal interest rates, our governments are incentivizing, not quashing, creative destruction.