For example, the QWERTY keyboard is commonplace despite being a suboptimal layout for typing in English.
QWERTY being suboptimal has not been actually proven. So any reasoning built on that kind of thinking is dubious.
Nice overview at https://janetakesonhistory.org/2021/10/14/battle-of-the-keys-why-do-we-have-qwerty/ . The money shot: In 2009, an article in the American Economic Review gave Liebowitz and Margolis empirical support. Tanjim Hossain and John Morgan used experimental economics to determine how likely it is for market participants to continue with an inferior product over time. They found no such examples. Their conclusion:
“While the QWERTY effect is certainly an interesting theoretical possibility, the dearth of examples of the phenomenon, both in the field and now in the lab, leads us to conclude that the danger lies more in the minds of theorists than in the reality of the marketplace.”
QWERTY being suboptimal has not been actually proven. So any reasoning built on that kind of thinking is dubious.
Nice overview at https://janetakesonhistory.org/2021/10/14/battle-of-the-keys-why-do-we-have-qwerty/ . The money shot:
In 2009, an article in the American Economic Review gave Liebowitz and Margolis empirical support. Tanjim Hossain and John Morgan used experimental economics to determine how likely it is for market participants to continue with an inferior product over time. They found no such examples. Their conclusion:
“While the QWERTY effect is certainly an interesting theoretical possibility, the dearth of examples of the phenomenon, both in the field and now in the lab, leads us to conclude that the danger lies more in the minds of theorists than in the reality of the marketplace.”