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> Because that innovation is market driven and turns out "brick of glass" is what people want, no matter what you or I or the Brussels bureaucrats say. History
by growse 4y ago
> Because that innovation is market driven and turns out "brick of glass" is what people want, no matter what you or I or the Brussels bureaucrats say.
History has countless examples of how the market is very bad at accounting for externalities.
People may very well want just a "brick of glass", but regulation comes in and drives innovation when it turns out that selling people what they want in the short term actually needlessly harms society in the long run.
"What the people want" actually has a lot of nuance and variability over different timeframes.
- nickpp 4y agoHistory has even more examples of how planners and regulators are bad at accounting for… reality, really. Or the unexpected creativity of people bent on getting what they want in spite of "well meaning" regulators. "What harms society" actually has a lot of nuance and variability over different timeframes. I don’t think anybody can define it, actually. Regulators making nuclear power hugely expensive and activists making it wildly unpopular thus condemning us to burn coal in 2022 quickly come to mind. Or the idiocy of banning plastic straws in the west while the ocean drowns in fishing nets from Asia.