Tom Knighton, who I’ve “met” on my favourite woodworking forum, celebrates a small victory in the never-ending battle against the rent-seekers of the corporate world:
“SawStop” by Comfr is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 
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What does this have to do with rent-seeking?
Well, there’s a company called SawStop. They make really great table saws with a unique safety feature. They’re equipped with a brake and sensor that, when it detects moisture such as one might find in a human finger, it locks the saw and drops the blade down into the saw’s body.
It’s a really great bit of technology, and the saws happen to be really good saws, too, so the company has done well for itself.
However, it started out as a company seeking to license the technology, only no one wanted it at the time.
SawStop decided to try and press the United States government to mandate their technology on all new table saws, and the government was going to.
Was.
This video has a good rundown of the whole thing. (I’d embed it, but the channel doesn’t allow it for some reason.)
The short of it is that the rule that was being considered has now been tossed because it would specifically give SawStop a monopoly on table saw sales in the United States, legally. Yes, they were going to offer up a patent for the public domain, but it wouldn’t be enough to replicate the technology in and of itself.
Plus, at a time when woodworking isn’t the biggest hobby in the world, even if it had been enough, driving up the cost for a central piece of tooling that most consider essential for woodworkers ain’t the way to change that.
For example, Skil makes a jobsite saw that typically runs under $300. SawStop’s equivalent is around three times that much, and that’s a lot of money to spend on something you’re not sure you’ll even enjoy.
Especially since just being careful can prevent the need for the brake in the first place, to say nothing of the fact that if you cut wet wood, it’ll trigger the brake, which is a pain for a lot of people, especially building contractors whose lumber isn’t super dry to begin with.
Seeing the rug pulled out from under SawStop is great, but the real issue here is that it doesn’t happen often enough. Rent-seeking is all too common and all too often works.
