Re:The Legend of the QWERTY Keyboard (2013)
by ZeroGravitas on Thursday December 15, 2022 @04:57AM
(#33997352)
The 'myth' of qwerty is a libertarian fable, popularized by economists who believe that the market is infallible.
If we were all using an inferior product due to lock-in, network effects or path dependency, then the free market would be flawed and need regulated. So they wrote a lot of propaganda to make it seem like any popular example of path dependency (e.g. qwerty, vhs, recycling, fossil fuels causing climate change) was in fact just the market magically finding the best solution and ignoring all evidence to the contrary.
If we were all using an inferior product due to lock-in, network effects or path dependency, then the free market would be flawed and need regulated. So they wrote a lot of propaganda to make it seem like any popular example of path dependency (e.g. qwerty, vhs, recycling, fossil fuels causing climate change) was in fact just the market magically finding the best solution and ignoring all evidence to the contrary.