It's Just Not Fair!
L. Neil Smith at The Libertarian Enterprise - when simple new inventions make big, complicated, old technology obsolete, it's just not fair. "Good," says Neil.
For long years afterward, Henry VIII, who used archers to good effect, himself, had to put up with exactly the same whining: the French and other aristocrats complained bitterly about this invention, the Welsh longbow, that nullified a lifetime of training with animals and equipment in which they had invested fortunes, and which could now be defeated by mere farmers using couple of sticks and a piece of string.
"It's just not fair!"
Do what they would, the age of armored knights was over, and that was a very, very good thing. It set up the psychology under which our ancestors, equipped with another revolutionary weapon, the flintlock Pennsylvania or Kentucky rifle, cast off the rule of kings altogether. Most Americans today don't appreciate what was really revolutionary about that rifle: compared with firearms that had preceded it, it was so simple in design and cheap to manufacture, every family could own one.
Politicians and bureaucrats still haven't gotten over it.
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