I really do not think major corporations are hindering progress somehow. That assertion makes no sense to me. What happens is they come and go, others replace them over time. Remember KMart? Woolworths? Even GE got chisseled.
Well K-Mart isn't going to have lobbyists restricting new laws to prolong their business, but many do. You're citing stores against a point where I was using major industries as examples.
The corporations can't halt progress forever, but the bigger they are and the more proactive they are in maintaining the situation in which they became ultra-successful, the longer they're able to stagnate things.
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Look at the auto industry. There's a reason we all know who Elon Musk is. He's promoting a paradigm shift. Because aside from safety and entertainment developments, cars haven't changed a lot in 50 years. Why is that? Why did the largest automakers need unholy bailouts? They were fat, bloated whales and existed as such because there was no reason to be anything else. They had no incentive to change.
They only made their cars more eco-friendly when the customer started caring about that in their buying decisions (and the pollution laws that followed). Of course they fought it along the way, often in private.
I'm not saying anything radical here. When you've mastered checkers, you aren't incentivized to go start playing chess. Usain Bolt isn't going to start running the mile now. It makes sense to want to keep things how they are when you're a titan in that environment.
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Without Elon Musk, Ford, Chevy, and the like would still be poo-pooing electric cars. Their growing market share would be stagnant. Our choices would be more limited. Without individuals who want something better, progress doesn't happen.
Reliance on oil - same.
Old, slow train lines - same.
Soft drinks - same.
Tyson chicken - same.
Dozens of companies I've probably never even heard of - same. Basically any industry that gets up-in-arms about a successful upstart is who I'm talking about here. They're not specifically colluding, but they're not doing their best to break off from the pack. These big companies want to be first, in a tightly-packed group of herd-mentality companies, where no one rocks the boat. It's like the mile run at a track meet in the first 2 laps.