Slowing progress? Why is this a surprise? Take HN threads on drones, where it's taken for granted that they should be regulated so as to be "perfectly safe".

Slowing progress? Why is this a surprise? Take HN threads on drones, where it's taken for granted that they should be regulated so as to be "perfectly safe". New personal transport tech, that I hear of mostly via they're being variously banned. Shenzhen with few-hour delivery on assorted scooters, vs NYC's long-term debates over just what kinds of scooters to un-outlaw. A visiting teacher from a high-school that still has lathes, near a middle-school with bandsaws, and their New England colleagues shock. Fire and building codes that are a century thick accumulation of violations of the guidance that you shouldn't make major life decisions in the immediate aftermath of disaster trauma. Built on assumptions of decades-old now obsolete tech. A high-water mark of running directly onto the BOS-LGA shuttle, with flight attendants later walking the aisles to collect two twenties from everyone, now sunk to security theater and prohibitive expense. Greyhound leveraging corruption in politics and law enforcement, and press incompetence, to crush low-cost competitors. Leaving a black market mostly for illegals, the poor screwed, and the labor pool less flexible. An industrial policy around patents that's been recognized as badly adjusted for tech for my entire multidecade career, and I don't expect to be fixed before retirement. Extensive valleys of death between research and commercialization, and between commercialization and long-term availability. Progress in human interface devices being straightjacketed for decades into DIY by patents, then building towards ferment around VR/AR, only to be laid waste by acquisitions. If the soviet-design-bureaus of FAMG quickly achieve mass deployment, then it may have sort of been worth it, but what a cost of missed opportunities. One could go on, but I'm unsure even this was useful. The US has been a major driver of world technological change. And it seems the US has come to embraced friction over ferment, a geriatric peaceful quiet over the dirty disruptive inconvenience of progress. Watching US writing about China, I'm repeatedly reminded of an old Europe writing about a new US. Sclerotic societies marveling and contemptuous and angry at one less mired. They did eventually improve - rebuilding after massive death and cities become rubble. Hmm, the Black Death had a similar effect. Perhaps with improved social tech and AR, we can manage a less painful rejuvenation?