[miscellaneous]

Creating new government regulations or the removal of old government regulations?

I would posit that progress in an industry gets 'stuck' due to large companies using their resources/influence to encourage regulation that hinder competition. It then takes very significant advancements in technology to create businesses that are so different that they can compete with incumbents in ways that have not been preemptively regulated.

In fact I would suggest that regulation is the opposite of an 'extinction event'. Regulation is not a random shock and it inherently targets smaller industries/organizations. For instance, "too big to fail" is an example of regulation preventing a mass extinction event. Without "too big to fail", many of the least innovative companies (large banks, GM, etc.) would have gone bankrupt and there would be drastically more progress in these industries.