1) Psychedelics: In 1966, LSD was banned in CA, and in 1968, a U.S. law came out banning psilocybin (the chemical in “magic mushrooms”). Since then, the study of these compounds and the development of related ones has been incredibly slow, only recently making a resurgence.

2) Nuclear power: While other energy technologies like solar have dramatically fallen in price, regulation (caused by well-meaning but misguided environmentalists and scared NIMBYs) prevented nuclear power from following a similar trajectory, causing it to have poor adoption.

3) Consumer supersonic flight: Even though this technology has existed for a long time, the wasteful projects that initially deployed it convinced people that it couldn’t be viable commercially (despite this being far from proven), leading to a step backward in travel tech.

This piece was first written on July 8, 2023, and first appeared on this site on August 30, 2023.