Which would be funny, since many companies are putting up with Crowdstrike to make insurers happy.

Availability (or not) of insurance coverage is surprisingly effective in enabling or disabling various commercial ventures.

The penny dropped for me whilst reading James Burke's Connections on the exceedingly-delayed introduction of the lateen-rigged sail to Europe, largely on the basis that the syndicates which underwrote (and insured) shipping voyages wouldn't provide financing and coverage to ships so rigged.

Far more recently we have notions of redlining for both mortgage lending and insurance coverage (title, mortgage, property, casualty) in inner-city housing and retail markets. Co-inventor of packet-based switching writes of his parents' experience with this in Philadelphia:

"On the Future Computer Era: Modification of the American Character and the Role of the Engineer, or, A Little Caution in the Haste to Number" (1968)

<https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P3780.html> (footnote, p. 6).

Similarly, government insurance or guarantees (Medicare, SSI, flood insurance, nuclear power plants) has made high-risk prospects possible, or enabled effective services and markets, where laissez-faire approaches would break down.

I propose that similar approaches to issues such as privacy violation might be worth investigating. E.g., voiding any insurance policy over damages caused through the harmful use or unintended disclosure of private information. Much of the current surveillance-capitalism sector would instantly become toxic. The principle current barriers to this are that states themselves benefit through such surveillance, and of course the current industry is highly effective at lobbying for its continuance.

That’s interesting because on the TV episode, it states that insurers wanted the risk of piracy spread out over many smaller ships that would be lateen rigged. I have one of the Connections books, so I’ll check to see if this is covered in it https://youtu.be/1NqRbBvujHY?si=WfysDHPLhSJkGhzd

Interesting discrepancy, yes. I'm pretty sure of my recollection of the book.

It may be that the opportunity to diversify risk (over more smaller ships) overcame the reluctance to adopt new, untested and/or foreign technology.

It doesn’t explicitly say insurers but it’s a pretty small logical leap from the wording (the timeframe is also c. 11th-12th century so could be before formal insurers)

Right.

The books and video scripts also differ amongst Burke's various series. I'll see if I can find a copy of the text to compare.