Giant Corporations and Governments = Death Spiral

It's very difficult to come up with genuine improvements to the technology toolkit of humanity. It's a slow process of trial and error. The road bicycle provides a great long term example of a piece of technology that's been honed and improved continuously since it was first invented. For every genuine improvement, there are dozens, probably hundreds of failures.

It doesn't take much capital equipment to make road bike components so there are many smallish companies that make bike parts or whole bikes. Similarly, it doesn't take much for an individual to buy some component and install it on a bike. Consequently, there's a constant froth of experiments going on with bikes.

Even though there are "scientific" methods for testing the improvements, for example, one can go to a wind tunnel and determine if a new handlebar offer improved aerodynamic efficiency. However, the real world efficacy of an improvement ultimately determines its fate. The real world efficacy is generally impractical to measure in a scientific/lab setting because the broad spectrum of real world scenarios can't be systematically tested.

This scenario applies to technology in general and really to life in general and is why central planning fails over and over, whether it's in the context of a government or a corporation. The road bike keeps improving because there's no controlling authority limiting the range of uses and experiments.

In scenarios where a controlling authority directs development of technology, or experiments that go on within an individual household, for example, to improve ways to get household chores done, or whatever, the range of options and possibilities that can be tried and tested is drastically reduced and the process can be entirely corrupt of course.

Giant Corporations, Giant Governments, or Something Else

Two of the big markets in the US, the automobile market and the housing market are utterly fucked. In certain locations, it's basically impossible for a young person to buy a house. The average house price to median income ratio is at an all time high. It used to be about 3:1, now it's about 6:1. New cars are stupidly expensive. Only a very wealthy household, like top 3% can really afford to waste the tens of thousands of dollars of depreciation per new vehicle purchase, and even for them, it's a major financial setback to buy a couple of new cars every few years. On top of that, even companies that used to be known for reliability, like Toyota, struggle with quality control issues.

To me, it looks like a big delamination in the US economy and in society in general. Big institutions like governments and corporations and universities are completely bonkers, corrupt, and ineffectual. They are floating away from the rest of the population in a bubble of their own insanity. The mom and pop american people don't have the luxury of ideological insanity and don't make a living off graft and corruption and financial circle jerking.

I think there's going to be a period of innovation outside the corporate/financial system in the next years driven by the necessity of life and the outsized corruption and incompetence in the system itself. It's never been easier and cheaper to produce various goods. It doesn't seem likely that individuals in the US will continually subsidize and slave away for corporate executives, investors, and shareholders.

The institutions controlled by "the left" are outmoded for similar reasons. Why will individuals indefinitely subsidize college professors and giant, corrupt regulatory agencies and hoardes of bureaucrats?