Improving Our Standard of Living (Wattpad Edition)

Chapter 52: Dissemination of Innovation

It's commonly believed that future technologies won't benefit the general public. For instance, when life extension becomes possible, a lot of people think that only the wealthy elite will benefit from it. The movie Elysium comes to mind. The Father of cyberpunk, William Gibson, once said, "The future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed."

In countries without genuine democracy and open markets, he's right. But what he said isn't true of developed nations.

When new technologies are invented—those that are clearly useful to humanity—it takes some years for their cost to come down enough for the general population to afford them.

But ordinary individuals always gain access, and relatively quickly, in countries with even a semblance of democracy and capitalism.

At one time, only the wealthy could afford books, spices, candies, tea, coffee, toilets, electricity, radios, telephones, glasses, dental care, refrigerators, televisions, colored televisions, cars, computers, e-readers, cell phones, smartphones, internet access, touchscreen tablets, smartwatches, etc. But eventually, the cost of these technologies plummeted enough that even most poor people can afford them.

As long as a nation has basic human rights and open markets, new innovations spread to the general population sooner or later.

The technologies of the future won't be any different. For the first few years or so, only the wealthy will be able to afford them. But improvements in technology and competition between businesses will drive costs down. This will ensure that even poor people benefit from future innovations.

I'm not saying that inequality doesn't matter. It does. If a society is more equitable, more people will benefit from new inventions sooner rather than later. Greater equality also spurs innovation and competition by helping to prevent oligopoly (the domination of each industry by just two or three corporations).

Homelessness is also a real problem, even in developed countries. Homeless people can't afford mobile phones, refrigerators, cars, etc. All the more reason to promote greater equality.

Nevertheless, when it comes to technology, if it's around long enough, most people will eventually be able to afford it. The only exception being highly autocratic nations or those without sufficiently free markets.

In a competitive market, businesses have an incentive to reduce the cost of making their products. They save money by doing so, sell more goods to more customers, and reduce the likelihood of being outcompeted by other firms. Keeping prices as low as possible and selling to more consumers is far more profitable than keeping prices high and selling to only a few buyers.

In a free market, businesses must also innovate. New inventions reduce the cost of producing things even further, and they attract customers. Companies don't sacrifice quality either for fear of losing customers to the competition. Instead, businesses invent new technologies and improve upon previous designs, allowing them to produce better products at lower prices.

It's easy to be skeptical. Anyone can cite examples of things they bought that were poor quality. But that's only because we humans are naturally cynical and highly sensitive to imperfections. We take for granted the gazillions of technologies around us that work flawlessly. We complain when making a phone call takes a couple seconds longer than usual, yet we don't acknowledge all the amazing things that must happen to make that call even possible.

Countless technologies that would have cost billions of dollars not that long ago are now accessible to almost everyone in the developed world. Too few of us appreciate that fact.