When clearly superior solutions don’t work

If one takes a rational, long-term glance at our society, there’s a lot of things that should be more prevalent, such as renewable energy-based technology and decentralized blockchain technology. Despite the Silicon Valley hype (and funding), our society rarely embraces these technologies.

The clear argument for an idea, based on a technology, is whether there’s a 1) immediate and 2) definite increase in utility, large enough to negate the cost of switching. This is as opposed to 1) future and 2) hypothetical.

Too many ideas focus on the premise that consumers will switch to something for a future benefit that isn’t even certain to occur. Such ideas include: end-to-end encrypted messaging, in which the government and/or hackers are unable to spy on your communications; a decentralized Facebook, in which your data won’t be aggregated nor sold;
solar panels on your home, in which you’ll both save money long-term and contribute less to greenhouse gas emissions; electric cars, in which you’ll also contribute less to emissions while arguably saving money.

As consumers, we want our utility, and we want it now. Electric cars are a great example — most people who acknowledged climate change and it likely being human-caused still wouldn’t buy them, especially prior to Tesla. Consumers are a mass that have to be guided towards what the founder personally and ideologically believes to be the right solution in the world of important long-term hypotheticals, via ensuring that it’s the best option utility-wise for the consumer today.

Electric cars are only becoming popular now, as their value regardless of the environment becomes superior, in areas such as acceleration, cargo space, and software updates. Solar power is gaining among consumers since the creation of a leasing model with no upfront costs.

Within blockchain technology, we’re not likely to see some decentralized dream-world in which we’re safe from mega-corporations, but it will likely be applied in areas where the value is certain and immediate. Healthcare records are an example of a space with clear value that blockchain could add; users could instantly give access to hospitals to view and edit, without needing to involve their primary care facilities.

This could also be spun as a criticism of capitalism / democracy / a free market / etc., however, it’s important to note that, in a system where people are restricted to buying what fits the important long-term hypothetical, there’ll likely never be any innovation beyond “fits our important long-term hypothetical.” They’d have electric cars that resemble golf carts, for example, but nothing close to Tesla, which was brought into existence by a need to transition the world to renewable energy.