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?
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.
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
>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.
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.
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.