Cross-posted at Practical Ethics.
This is an addendum to a previous post, which argued that we may be underestimating the impact of innovation because we have so much of it. I noted that we underestimated the innovative aspect of the CD because many other technologies partially overlapped with it, such as television, radio, cinema, ipod, walkman, landline phone, mobile phone, laptop, VCR and Tivo's. Without these overlapping technologies, we could see the CD's true potential and estimate it higher as an innovation. Many different technologies could substitute for each other.
But this argument brings out a salient point: if so many innovations overlap or potentially overlap, then there must be many more innovations that purposes for innovations. Tyler Cowen made the interesting point that the internet isn't as innovative as the flushing toilet (or indeed the television). He certainly has a point here: imagine society without toilets or youtube, which would be most tolerable (or most survivable)?
But the flush toilet can only be invented once. We might have access to talking super toilets with multi-coloured fountains - but all the bells and whistles are less useful that the original flushing toilet aspect. That's because flush toilets responded effectively to a real human need: how to dispose of human waste in urban areas. Once that problem is solved, further innovation is mainly wasted.
This suggests that while we may indeed be plucking the innovation low-hanging fruits, it might not be because we lack a supply of innovation, but because we're exhausting the easy demand for innovation. What current needs do we have that we're waiting for innovation to solve? What's problems are we facing that are as important as removing human waste from urban areas?
There seem to be very few. Maybe solving death and disease: and we can make a very strong case that medical innovation is indeed slowing. Poverty is another one; but it's not like we know of a specific technological innovation that would solve poverty, if only someone would develop it. We might want easy access to space, or effective alternative energies: but the way people and governments spend their money confirms that this is not a top priority for many. Even if we had teleporters, would future Tyler Cowens be writing that they're not as innovative as the car - and would they be correct, in that a teleporter is just a more efficient way of solving a problem that cars and airplanes had already partially solved?
In summary, outside of the medical field, I don't see any conceivable realistic technological innovation that would be as transformative as the flush toilet, vaccinations, birth control, telephones, cars and airplanes. We might have exhausted the low-hanging fruits in our desires.
EDIT: some have suggested "high-throughput atomically precise manufacturing" as a general solution to material poverty, which would be an interesting counterexample.
Oh, I see.
In the US school-level education is local -- it's run by towns via school boards and is paid for in large part by local property taxes. It is not run by state or federal government. Typically each town has its own school district or several small towns might have a joint school district. The quality of school districts varies a LOT, even for districts physically close to each other.
One consequence of this arrangement is that if you go to a public school you must go to the public school of the town in which you live (there are some exceptions, but that's the general rule). You cannot go to the school of the neighboring town -- it will not accept you.
That is why buying a residence in a town is simultaneously a choice of which public school your kids will go to.
Obviously if you are willing to pay for a private school your kids can go wherever.
Thank you. Things make sense now.
For anyone reading this: The thread “Worth remembering (when comparing ‘the US’ to ‘Europe’)” is interesting. (I'd promote it to Main so that new additions to its comment thread are more likely to be seen.)