Chicago Boyz Archive

Interview with Jeff Bezos — The Obstacles to Technological Breakthroughs (to America 3.0) are more Regulatory and Legal than Technological

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Delivery Drone

In a recent interview with Jeff Bezos, he notes that drone delivery will be more delayed by regulation than by technological capability.

HB: Drones. You had this amazing “commercial” on “60 Minutes” last year, about this fantastic future when drones are going to fly out and bring me my package, and it’s going to be right there. Immediately, everybody in the country, and probably around the world, was saying, “Great — when?”
 
JB: That’s a difficult question to answer. Technology is not going to be the long pole. The long pole is going to be regulatory. I just went and met with the primary team and saw the 10th- or 11th-generation drone flying around in the cage. It’s truly remarkable. It’s not just the physical airframe and electric motors and so on. The most interesting part of this is the autopilot and the guidance and control and the machine vision systems that make it all work. As for when, though, that is very difficult to predict. I’d bet you the ratio of lawyers to engineers on the primary team is probably the highest at Amazon.
 
HB: Is this a situation where everyone else in the world except Americans is going to get drone deliveries?
 
JB: I think it is sad but possible that the US could be late. It’s highly likely that other countries will do it first. I may be too skeptical. I hope I’m wrong.

It is too bad that the USA is likely to be slow moving in making this — and many other types of new technology — available to the public.

The same will certainly be true about driverless cars, or molecular medicine.

We are going to need entrepreneur and activists and, yes, even lawyers, who are committed to making new technology available to the American people, with the inevitable disruption of existing relationships and expectations.

Getting to a better America is possible, but nothing is inevitable.

There will be many struggles along the way to America 3.0.

Daniel Hannan at the Acton Institute, October 9, 2014

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This is an outstanding talk by Daniel Hannan to the Acton Institute on October 9, 2014.

Hannan notes that conservatives almost want to believe that there is no hope in the future, that we have seen the best times and they are behind us. But he disagrees.

But my friends we are at our most persuasive, and at our most electorally successful, when as Ronald Reagan did in this country, as Margaret Thatcher did in mine, when we imbue our message with a little breath of warmth, a little hint of optimism, a promise that the best lies ahead.
 
Things do get better, provided that you have trade and exchange, and that you release the genius of a free people, things will get better at an accelerating rate

We make a similar point in America 3.0, which has the subtitle, “Why America’s Greatest Days are Yet to Come.”

They really are, if we make it happen.

Lex’s Family at Thanksgiving

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Thanksgiving dinner

(No, really. That is exactly what we look like.)

Happy Thanksgiving

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Mayflower Compact

The Mayflower Compact

In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, defender of the Faith, etc.
 
Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic; for our better ordering, and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.
 
In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth, 1620.

Thanks to all the people who came to America at the hazard of life and limb and who built this country and gave it to us to build up and make better and pass on in our turn.

God bless the Pilgrims who settled in New England and brought (almost) the first seeds of Constitutional self-government to this continent. They arrived in what is now Massachusetts on November 21, 1620 (under the current calendar). It is cold in Massachusetts in November. They had thousands of miles of stormy sea behind them, and a cold, bare, unfriendly wilderness before them, not a single roof or fireplace for shelter or warmth. It was touch and go. They lost many of their number during the first winter. They had many practical details to attend to when they arrived. But the first thing they did before they set foot on the new continent was to covenant and combine themselves in to a “civil body politic” to live under law and by orderly political processes. We can learn from their example.

God bless America. God bless our Chicago Boyz contributors and readers. God bless our service members, past and present, especially those in harms way to defend our nation. God bless the people travelling and staying with families.

Thank you to Jonathan for starting this blog in 2002 and keeping it going.

May there be peace and happiness in all homes and across the land — and if we fall short of this high standard, here and there, let us work to do better in the days ahead.

I hope no one is too busy poking around the Internet and not paying attention to the turkey. Make sure you don’t over-cook it. May the gravy come out perfectly, and may there be enough pie for everybody to get two pieces of the kind they like best.

Thanksgiving-Brownscombe

Sen. Mike Lee Channels America 3.0

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Sen. Mike Lee

Senator Mike Lee has the best article yet about what the new, GOP-majority congress ought to do. It is entitled “Five Steps To Restore Trust, Transparency, And Empowerment.” Please RTWT.

Senator Lee makes several observations which are highly consistent with the picture Jim Bennett and I painted in America 3.0.

America’s health care, energy, higher education, telecommunications, security, and criminal justice needs (to name just a few) appear to be in the midst of transitions, nearing tipping points that will help define our nation in decades to come.
 
Most systems we use to provide government services were designed decades ago, before the tech and telecom revolutions that have changed the way Americans do almost everything else. In 20 years, will we need, say, a Government Printing Office or Internal Revenue Service in anything like their current forms? If disruptive innovations continue to personalize and localize the economy, will centralized, monolithic bureaucracies be the right instruments to regulate it? Or is government just as badly in need of some disruptive innovations that would enable market forces, public desires, and longstanding constitutional principles to once again show us the way and make our institutions more accountable?
 
… we know that our society and our economy have rocketed out in front of our government, and that the bureaucracy in its current form is unlikely ever to catch up.
 
Everything about American life today is becoming more decentralized, open-source, localized and personalized. Everything, that is, except government. An increasingly customizable economy and diverse social networks of mini-communities will not long tolerate the innate incompetence of clumsy, self-serving, Big Government.
 
Let Congress operate less like a nineteenth-century industrial mill, and more like a twenty-first-century open-source network.
 
In today’s world, individual and community empowerment are strengths for organizations who know how to use them.

This is all good stuff.

Yes, America is in the “midst of transitions”, and many sectors are indeed “nearing tipping points”.

Yes, America’s governmental legacy systems were designed before the contemporary “tech and telecom revolutions” occurred and should be fundamentally re-thought.

Yes, “disruptive innovations” will “continue to personalize and localize the economy” and this presents an opportunity to remake government in a more transparent and cost effective way.

Yes, the “bureaucracy in its current form” is doomed to fall behind the revolutionary pace being set by the American people and the innovations they are creating, which is making “everything about American life … more decentralized, open-source, localized and personalized.”

Yes, the old system has to be replaced, to become compatible with an “increasingly customizable economy and diverse social networks of mini-communities.” (That last phrase, a “diverse social networks of mini-communities” is particularly nice.)

Yes, Congress itself has to change from an America 2.0 model, ” a nineteenth-century industrial mill”, and move into America 3.0 as “a twenty-first-century open-source network.” (That will be cool, actually. It can be done.)

Senator Lee is being a visionary realist, the best kind.

Let’s hope his approach will be adopted by the incoming GOP Congress.

Remember: America’s greatest days are yet to come!