>"lifestyles would improve more than damage done by negative externalities"
Just because you assert this doesn't make it true. Tragedy of the commons is at play - we have no good way to measure if your statement is true or not - which is it's own issue.
It is easy to imagine how your statement could be wrong, despite what we see.
Starting with a non-industrialized society, you add in some tech, like cars. Some people use them for personal benefit. Of course a few cars don't cause everything to go suck just by themselves, and even so, the benefit for their users outweigh the harm to them personally, so they use them! Some other people are now going to need to use cars to compete with the people who do use them. Eventually the harms really become apparent, but there is no going back. And even if some people would choose not to use cars because of the harm, it is much harder to choose to abstain when practically speaking, things are still going to suck because everyone else is.
So, taking cars as an example, how do you know you are right?
Just because you assert this doesn't make it true. Tragedy of the commons is at play - we have no good way to measure if your statement is true or not - which is it's own issue.
It is easy to imagine how your statement could be wrong, despite what we see. Starting with a non-industrialized society, you add in some tech, like cars. Some people use them for personal benefit. Of course a few cars don't cause everything to go suck just by themselves, and even so, the benefit for their users outweigh the harm to them personally, so they use them! Some other people are now going to need to use cars to compete with the people who do use them. Eventually the harms really become apparent, but there is no going back. And even if some people would choose not to use cars because of the harm, it is much harder to choose to abstain when practically speaking, things are still going to suck because everyone else is.
So, taking cars as an example, how do you know you are right?