Innovation deteriorates human rights, contributes to financial crisis, and replaces workers.

It is true that the political agenda has been oriented towards stimulating economic competition, wealth creation and productivity through technological progress, which, in turn, have improved some of the economic and social indicators in most market economies. However, at the same time, innovation-induced industrial activities have had important negative consequences, in terms of both environmental disasters and deterioration of human rights (Giuliani 2018). Indeed, modern economic growth is based on intensive use of non-renewable energy sources, industrial chemicals and the production of massive non-recyclable waste. For instance, Luzzati, Parenti, and Rughi (2018) show that increased incidence of cancers is becoming a public health issue in most of advanced economies, allegedly due to their population’s exposure to the toxic emissions of industrial activities. Use of chemical inputs, such as pesticides, are another example of failed ‘economic progress’ as a result of technological change; it strikes that the traces of 12 of the most toxic chemicals ever invented, which were banned after the 2001 Stockholm Convention for their noxious impacts on human health and the environment, can still be found in the most remote areas of the world, such as deserts, open ocean and arctic regions, where there is no human activity or chemicals applications (Lohmann et al. 2007). Innovations have also had perilous consequences in finance, for their calamitous contributions to the 2008 financial crisis (Dosi 2011, 2013): financial innovations such as sub-prime mortgages, collateralised debt obligations (CDO) and credit default swaps (CDS) all played a central role in creating the crisis, giving rise to a process of ‘destructive creation’ (Soete 2013). In another context, scholars have noted that, at times, technological change has also had detrimental effects on employment which have not been entirely compensated by the wave of opportunities coming from the change. For instance, Korinek and Stiglitz (2017) recently showed that the diffusion of artificial intelligence and other forms of worker-replacing technological progress, could have a negative impact on both income distribution and employment.