[johnklos]

Why is it never surprising when we hear stories like how Edison bought a thermoelectric generator company (Clamonds’s Improved Thermopile) and ceased development.

How much human progress is hampered by the desire of some to profit, no matter the cost to the world?

[carapace]

> Purportedly, the unnamed inventor of flexible glass (vitrum flexile) brought a drinking bowl made of the material before Tiberius Caesar. The bowl was put through a test to break it, but it merely dented, rather than shattering. The inventor repaired the bowl easily with a small hammer, according to Petronius. After the inventor swore that he was the only man alive who knew the manufacturing technique, Tiberius had the man executed. He feared that the glass would devalue gold and silver, since the material might be more valuable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_glass

[pjc50]

I've not heard that one. I've heard of Edison hiring the mob to beat up competing film companies; that's why Hollywood is on the west coast, to get away from him. https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2021/03/thomas-edison-th...

(thermoelectric generators have pretty terrible efficiency, though)

[agumonkey]

universe doesn't follow a straight path to optimal.. only locally optimal bits.

what if ICE never took off and we spent 100 years developing electric vehicles ?

[jandrese]

WWII would have looked very different, especially the aircraft. Naval warfare would have looked nothing like it did. Well, maybe naval boilers wouldn't be counted as ICE, but even if you allow for that it likely means no oil based infrastructure so everybody is still shoveling coal. Even that relatively small change makes a big difference.

[ca98am79]

If it were really that valuable to human progress wouldn't another company or competitor to Clamonds’s Improved Thermopile become extremely profitable and valulable?

[mjmahone17]

Maybe? But sometimes people don’t see “obvious wins” for a very long time.

Look at Musk’s electric car story: there were a variety of electric cars that companies killed off (like the EV1) years earlier than the Tesla was released. It’s unclear if anyone who had the capital would have seriously entered the space if Tesla as a company did not exist. Maybe we’d be exactly as far along, but there’s a good chance the lack of “electric car infrastructure” and internal company incentives would basically keep anyone from going far enough before killing their project.

When the path to profit is only a short journey from where we are now, you’re right that some other company will probably adopt it. But add two or three hard steps that they need to overcome first, and it’s pretty common for human progress to stagnate in a local maxima for a long time.

[ngold]

There was that before gasoline times when a lot of newly invented cars were electric. Jay Leno drove one around from the 1900s.

[c54]

Unfortunately no, there’s no law of nature which says companies/competitors will appear to serve this kind of function.

Mostly bc short term profit maximization can be thought of as a greedy optimization which is blind to long term gains. This is why the tragedy of the commons happens

[vsareto]

>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.

[fwip]

Sure, if the economics 101 version of the efficient market hypothesis were true, that's what you might expect to see.

[jandrese]

It might have been patented. By the time the patent runs out the alternatives have become standardized and refined enough that the original can't compete.