We must return to an economy fueled by innovation, rather than disruption
The problem is incumbents get lazy and start profit-seeking. Competition is the only way we know to have a chance of fighting it. The taxi industry got away with ripping off customers and having terrible service for ages. In my country they would regularly overcharge or take longer routes. Or you call and they decide not to come, or you walk around waving your hands frantically at a taxi hoping they stop. As a tourist, its even worse because you have no idea what the rate should be.<p>I don&#x27;t know if gig companies or all VC companies are perfect, but lets not pretend industries regularly fail to innovate in the absence of competition.<p>Healthcare - the tech disruption in healthcare actually makes it easy to see a doctor over video call for small stuff and easy to track my records over time. The existing healthcare system requires me to call and wait weeks for an appointment and use some clunky UI to even message a doctor. And everyone knows how terrible insurance is..<p>Banks - In Canada, I can&#x27;t get a single bank to give me API access to my own account. Their native interfaces suck, and connecting with Mint is frequently buggy. Mint itself is much worse than Quicken for browsing transactions, grouping, charting, but Quicken&#x27;s API connection to banks sucks, despite also being built by Intuit. Crypto websites and apps are much better &amp; provide great API access. If they had a trustworthy stablecoin, i would move in a heartbeat.<p>Education - university prices keep going up even as their model remains the same. Even as the actual content of courses is freely available online. University costs are insane, student debt levels are insane. Software is the first industry where the majority of what you need to know especially as you move beyond general CS comes from the internet, _for free_.<p>Electric cars&#x2F;space - Reusable rockets were literally considered impossible a decade ago, they are reality now.<p>Like it would be great to have actual innovation. It would be nice if we had any meaningful anti trust enforcement or other ways to force innovation. But in my (relatively short) lifetime, i have almost never seen large scale innovation happen in the absence of competition. Any serious competition feels like &quot;disruption&quot; to industries accustomed to hanging out and collecting profits.