[AstroBen]

Our society should have a way of protecting people that invest a decade into mastering a field from being made obsolete overnight. They're not business owners banking money the whole time and now needing to pivot, they're regular people being screwed out of their livelihoods. I agree that stifling innovation and disruption isn't the way, but we need something

That initial investment in time/energy is what we need to protect to encourage people to do it. This goes for IP law also in the exact same way - why invest the resources into R&D if the end product will just be ripped off before you've had a chance to recoup anything?

[csallen]

I agree with you that we should help people who fall on hard times, and I agree with you that stifling innovation isn't the right way to do so.

I'm glad we have high ceilings as a country, but I think we're a rich enough society that we can afford to have a much higher floor, too. Our problem is that we simply won't tax rich people or businesses. (I say this as a fairly well-off person myself, and as a business owner.)

I don't necessarily agree with your final point. People are incredibly motivated to take risks and try new things and to experiment with innovative business models. Just look at the web and the millions of creative things that people have put tons of time and effort into, often with no payment. It's not that money doesn't motivate people, it certainly does. I just think that people are creative about figuring out how to profit, and we don't need to create artificial monopolies and means of profit in order to motivate people to create. If there's a problem that exists in America, it's certainly not that there's a lack of ambitious innovators and creators.

[spacemadness]

Yes. The cheesy “disruption is always good” is cutthroat SV capitalist kool-aid. It CAN be good, but just assuming it is good because disruption is dogmatic at best. Especially in a country with near to zero safety net. The consumer always wins is a fairy tale.

[_DeadFred_]

Wish you would have broken out the reality that disruption plus zero safety net = some people made homeless, some people commiting suicide, lots of people going hungry. The reality that a large amount of people 'disrupted' later in life don't recover to where they were.

[csallen]

You can believe in disruption and innovation and a stronger social safety net at the same time. These aren't opposing ideas. In fact, they're complementary ideas, because countries with competitive and innovative markets have a higher GDP and thus more funds to support a stronger social safety net. The opposite is also true -- countries that are low in productivity and innovation have lower means to lift their own people out of poverty.

We have a goose that lays golden eggs. We should be using the gold to do good things instead of trying to kill the goose.

[_DeadFred_]

Sure you can have both. But we don't.

[csallen]

Which is why it perplexes me that so many people are focused on trying to tear down the good thing we have, instead of fixing the broken thing.