Comment by wanderingstan
2 days ago
I think you might be in agreement with me in the main, just quibbling on the timing?
The US's addiction to "fat oil profits" goes back over a hundred years, and that's what the NYTimes author argues is driving the current administration's push to keep those profits going. Whether there actually are such profits is a different question.
This is exactly the behavior of the big companies in "The Innovators Dilemma": continuing to try and squeeze profits out of the dying old paradigm. (IBM clinging to hardware and mainframes, US motorcycle manufacturers not embracing small sport bikes, etc.) That's to say that, yes, countries and governments can indeed behave like companies.
No, that's not the behavior of big companies in "The Innovators Dilemma".
Those companies optimize for corporation profit. If the US was optimizing for societal wealth or government revenue they would be pushing the country into renewables.
On reality many big corporations get corrupt management that destroy corporate profit and optimize for the managers personal wealth. Those ones act like the US is acting. But that's not the behavior that book is about.