Regulating the Future
2nd March 2016
John Stossel turns over a rock.
We know government understands that new technologies are important. The military invests in robots and traffic cops use radar guns. But when the rest of us use robots or fly drones, government gets eager to put rules in place before things get “out of control.”
When it’s hard to innovate in the U.S., innovation happens elsewhere. The Japanese already offer largely automated hotels. At the Henn-na (or “Weird”) Hotel, the front desk clerk is a robot dinosaur—popular with the kids. Another robot stores your luggage, and another takes you to your room.
This may sound like an expensive stunt, but the robot hotel is cheaper than others nearby—partly because it employs fewer people.
That alarms politicians who fear change. Whenever there’s been innovation, experts predict massive unemployment.
Hence why none of the Adults believed Obama’s ‘Hope and Change’ slogan.
If we crushed every machine that did things humans used to do, we’d still be living in caves and hunting tigers with spears. Every time there’s a new invention, some people lose jobs, and there’s a period of adjustment.
But we come out ahead.
Not that any government employee will ever admit that.
“The future is going to be full of surprises, full of awesome things that almost fall from the sky,” says Borders. “We can’t even imagine it today.”
It’s easier to imagine if government stays out of the way.