In many areas the difference between the best and the second best is already the difference between making a profit and making a loss.
Without this issue the “wait it out” solution would seem almost completely satisfactory to me for a gap as small as 1% (or even 5%). Most of my comment was about making unsafe projects less efficient, which (I think) addresses this point.
Also note that 1% productivity benefit only leads to >> 1% efficiency if you are trading extensively with the rest of the world, so that most of your revenue is from sales (and the rest of the world can tell you are the most efficient, or at least that you are selling a lot of stuff cheaply). It’s much easier to regulate or make life harder for someone who is trading extensively with the rest of the world than someone who is operating in secret, so this seems to strengthen the arguments given in the body of my my comment.
Without this issue the “wait it out” solution would seem almost completely satisfactory to me for a gap as small as 1% (or even 5%). Most of my comment was about making unsafe projects less efficient, which (I think) addresses this point.
Also note that 1% productivity benefit only leads to >> 1% efficiency if you are trading extensively with the rest of the world, so that most of your revenue is from sales (and the rest of the world can tell you are the most efficient, or at least that you are selling a lot of stuff cheaply). It’s much easier to regulate or make life harder for someone who is trading extensively with the rest of the world than someone who is operating in secret, so this seems to strengthen the arguments given in the body of my my comment.