alt Hacker News> and that's why heavily regulated industries like healthcare, education, and transportation have seen basically no innovation in 50 years.
Not to get distracted, but aren't these three all incredible examples of innovation over time? Healthcare alone is significantly better than it was 50 years ago and it's not really close. 50 years ago, this hip new treatment called electroshock therapy was being used to "treat" being gay. It was also within touching distance of getting a lobotomy for depression or anything else your husband thought was a problem.
The rates of depression in the US are at an all time high [1]. The primary theory behind the cause of depression and mechanism of most antidepressants has been abandoned [2]. Not treating homosexuality as a disease isn't an innovation, it's a cultural change.
You could maybe argue mRNA vaccines or semaglutides are big innovations, I think we've made a ton of progress against HIV, and it seems like we've made progress against cancer, but when you factor in how much government money goes into this research and compare it against the advancements we've seen in computational technology it's a lot less impressive. You could buy a raspberry pi for like $50 today that outperforms every computer made 50 years ago, whereas the cost of most medical imaging has actually increased [3]. Likewise the inflation adjusted cost of college degrees and building new rail lines or really any infrastructure has increased precipitously since 1970.
1. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/releases/20250416.html
2. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/jul/no-evidence-depression-c...
3. https://www.jacr.org/article/S1546-1440%2822%2900710-4/fullt...