Picking up on this. I have More Thoughts™ on why I don’t think regulation and state control is much of a bottleneck/chokepoint in tech compared to raw resource and capital control.

Picking up on this. I have More Thoughts™ on why I don’t think regulation and state control is much of a bottleneck/chokepoint in tech compared to raw resource and capital control.  https://warpcast.com/vgr/0x75b59b39

Blogger at ribbonfarm.com, running summerofprotocols.com, host of /gloom ☀️

Preamble: 

First, I think control of resources is morally and politically legitimate. You have a right to know how to make nuclear bombs and anything else you care to learn. You don’t have the right to freely acquire enough fissile material to actually make one. It’s similar to free speech vs free reach argument.

Second: I think capital as a gating mechanism for access to resources is necessary but is not and should not be sufficient. You should be free to earn billions but not to use those billions to buy uranium on the free market. Many resources of both high collective value OR risk should be publicly controlled.

This second position is subtle. It relates to whether you think resources are default public and privatizable by exception or vice versa. “Private” property is always artificially created and we always set limits on that game. For eg, declaring Antarctica off limits as real estate (until a superpower defects)

Ok that preamble out of the way, what stops you from just grabbing and using any technology for your own benefit given the necessary knowledge and no restrictions on either raw materials or capital accumulation constraints? How much does regulation stop people?

Take an inventory of most things you might want to do and you’ll realize it’s almost never the case that someone is withholding knowledge, restricting resources, or free market sale. Invariably it will be your lack of talent and/or motivation. That’s 99% of people 99% of time. I’ll talk about the 1%/1% in a bit

Concrete example. In my case the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do that would be stopped by regulation is build a hobby rocket with a guidance system (MTCR prevents that). And I could probably scratch that itch with simpler, legal projects. 

Of course I’m a normie. Not in the 1%/1%…

I think a lot of stridently ideological people with a burning sense of Evil Forces™  withholding technology from The People™ have this idealized sense of mass hungry desperation for more technological agency that is simply a myth. 99% of people barely use any of the vast agency that *is* lying around to use.

Hell, STEM supremacists have to struggle and push on strings to get people to take the slightest interest in even absolutely trivial bits of agency like changing a setting on a phone, let alone jail breaking one. Most people don’t care. **Technological agency is not a natural hunger/drive/craving like food or sex**

You have to really stress people with extreme privation before they’ll do even the simplest hacks or exercising rudimentary tech intuitions. Mere necessity is not the mother of invention. It’s only the mother of shopping and clicking “I Agree” without reading. We mostly solve for minimum energy convenience.

The point of this analysis is that increasing tech agency is *never* a mass movement or ideology. You’re bullshitting yourself if you think you’ll spark some glorious mass revolution of innovation and progress by unshackling a few magic tools for The People.™ They don’t care unless it’s apocalyptic conditions

Which brings us to the 1%, 1% of the time. Both good and bad.

The diabetic who wants to hack lab insulin

The altruist who wants MTCR controlled guidance for rocket based disaster relief supplies delivery 

The Tony Stark who has an idea for a miniature arc reactor suit.

And terrorist versions of all of them

Tony Stark is an interesting fictional case study. He *has* access to MTCR tech as an armaments maker but even he only made the iron man suit out of missile parts under the threat of guns as a captive of actual terrorists. Regulation didn’t stop him initially inventing the suit in his lab. It took desperation.

So for 1%, 1% of the time, there are really 3 choices to do “restricted” things

1. Go where the toys you want are legal (govt lab etc)

2. Do illegal stuff, risk law (representing will of your fellow citizens) cracking down

3. New country in a desert island and hope a big power doesn’t drop a bomb on your lair

For 90% of humanity there is a step 0: Emigrate to a free-ish, sufficiently prosperous country where choices 1-3 even exist. It’s amazing that India landed a rover on the moon, but I emigrated in 1997 to study aero engg because frankly I don’t care enough to pursue that interest in much harder Indian environment

So is regulatory strangling of natural innovation drives truly a big enough factor in the rate of technological progress, to the point that reforming or exiting it calls for the energy of mass political movements? I don’t think it is, which is why I don’t think such movements will ever gain critical mass.

If you actually want an Innovation Revolution, take away the bread and circuses, oppress The People ™, create the desperation that’s the mother of invention.

The biggest problem with increasing mass tech agency is the *demand* side not the supply side. If you say “here are legal, cheap superpowers, take them and be happier” you’re *already* talking to <1%

If you say here’s a tech you *deserve* to have, fight the Evil Power stopping you, you’re talking to 0.01%

This 0.01% is some mix of rare good-for-humanity geniuses, messed-up mediocre people with grudges against the world, harmless eccentrics, and yes, a bunch of people most other humans would classify as psycho Bond villain terrorists who *should* be stopped

Overall, an underwhelming cause for at least me to join

What’s a practical way to address low demand?

First, more open borders to let what demand exists to get to what supply exists. Immigration to the US remains the biggest piece of low-hanging fruit here. 

Second, more creative education techniques that unlock the inventor itch and addiction in more kids, much earlier

Eg: nothing is stopping me from working hard to make a billion dollars and then spending it all on RPi robots that run around my mansion estate? It’s not lack of access to knowledge, resources, or freedom to buy parts. It’s simply lack of talent and motivation. That’s what stops most possible efforts.