You know, new technologies in transportation are proceeding at such a fast pace,
far faster than many people ever expected.
Who would have imagined five years ago that we would be talking about self-driving cars
or seriously looking at ways to safely integrate drone use into our national airspace?
What happens when that Amazon distribution facility in your neighborhood,
that's going to have tens of thousands of flights coming out of it per day,
is operating in your neighborhood 24/7 with tens of thousands of flights?
Innovation and regulation often intersect and, obviously, that creates tension.
Right, you have a new technology and the regulator is looking at that, you know, usually
trying to protect the consumer, which makes perfect sense, but it's hard to adapt the regulation,
which is a very slow process, with innovation, which is a very rapid process, by definition.
So, the FAA has an interesting history.
In the 20s and 30s, flights that were purely intrastate were
entrusted largely to the states.
Flights that were interstate were matters of federal control.
And then along came a few, sort of, theories that even a flight that was purely intrastate
might interfere with an interstate flight, and all of a sudden the federal government
decided they needed to harmonize these things with a safety justification.
Over the last, you know, 70 or 80 years, I say it's served us decently because the FAA's focus on
being the sole regulator has certainly ensured we have a safe national airspace system,
but we have one of the least modernized national airspace systems in the world.
What you see in aviation is a lack of innovation.
You know, a lack of innovation for the past, you know, decades.
There is a federal role in regulating these new, emerging technologies.
At some point, there are legitimate concerns for safety, security, and privacy.
We've become very accustomed to thinking that we need a safety assessment
performed by some government entity before we do something.
And, it's a very unsatisfactory place to see the future, right?
In one where it's a ban first, ask questions later perspective from regulators,
be it the FAA or any other regulator, for that matter.
But then it puts the onus on innovators that they're guilty until proven innocent.
So, all we're going to, I think, find, going forward, is that more and more innovations
find themselves, somehow captive, somehow subject to regulations.
Just as the Model T was rolling off the assembly line, you know, regulators at
that time were trying to ban, you know, horseless carriages, right: cars.
So like, that is something that's existed since the beginning of innovation
and I think it will continue.
You know, most people are, they want to comply and they want to do the right thing, but when
there's ambiguity in the government regulations, well that's just a surer path for more litigation,
and, which will be, again, will have a hampering effect on innovation and creativity.
But, the question, of course, is how much innovation is lost in the meantime?
How much, how much technological growth is prohibited? How much wealth is lost?
Regulations have a tremendous impact and regulators need to very careful
that what they are proposing does not do more harm than good or levy more costs than benefits.
If we go back to Thomas Edison, imagine if he had to pause for a moment and say,
"Should I invent this light bulb? I'm not sure.
Let me run through this whole light bulb thing, figuring out whether or not
there's a government agency that will accept light bulbs instead of candles."
Right? And apply that to every modern innovation.
It's really a troubling thing for us to have that happen.
I don't think that regulations and innovation need to be at odds with one another,
especially if government regulations are based on sound science.
So, if you have the right regulatory regime, it actually can promote innovation.