>If it were really that valuable to human progress The issue here is resting that value judgment on a small number of people (in this example, one person: Edis

>If it were really that valuable to human progress The issue here is resting that value judgment on a small number of people (in this example, one person: Edison) to determine if it's valuable to human progress. They could be malicious or simply wrong about their estimation. But also, no, markets aren't efficient, so they won't necessarily be correct on value-for-human-progress.