The same argument applies even more strongly. If a technology is known, but fails to come into widespread use until there is a legal system that protects people

The same argument applies even more strongly. If a technology is known, but fails to come into widespread use until there is a legal system that protects people from persecution, then the new legal system clearly played a large role in emancipating that technology from obscurity. Do I need to list every example? I was assuming they were well known. Consider what France lost by driving out the Huguenots. Consider what England gained by offering protection to the Jews. Consider this famous summary by Voltaire: "Although the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian are the two main sects in Great Britain, all others are welcome there and live pretty comfortably together, though most of their preachers detest one another almost as cordially as a Jansenist damns a Jesuit. Go into the Exchange in London, that place more venerable than many a court, and you will see representatives of all the nations assembled there for the profit of mankind. There the Jew, the Mahometan, and the Christian deal with one another as if they were of the same religion and reserve the name of infidel for those who go bankrupt. There the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist, and the Church of England man accepts the promise of the Quaker. On leaving these peaceable and free assemblies, some go to the synagogue, others in search of a drink; this man is on the way to be baptized in a great tub in the name of the Father, by the Son, to the Holy Ghost; that man is having the foreskin of his son cut off, and a Hebraic formula mumbled over the child that he himself can make nothing of; these others are going to their church to await the inspiration of God with their hats on; and all are satisfied." That such a great market could come into existence was thanks to the legal system set up in Britain during its revolutionary period, which ended with the passage of the Bill Of Rights that gave most British citizens the basic rights we nowadays assume. Also consider what Britain lost, 90 years later, when Parliament suddenly asserted that the Bill Of Rights was not a universal set of human rights, but a specific set of liberties given to people living in the British Isles, but not applying to the Colonies of North America. The people living in the Colonies of North America were so outraged by this that they rebelled against British rule and broke ties with the British government.