Now that the FCC has inserted itself intrusively into the Internet let’s analyze the final effect of this travesty—shall we? As many who read here know, I have been a fan of the Amazon proposal of 30 minute or less delivery using drones. Just a few days prior to the FCC vote, the FAA created a number of guidelines directly targeting the Amazon proposal by ridiculously proposing that drone operation of commercial types must keep the devices in their eyesight and not fly over crowds of people, according to the FAA proposals. The archaic nature of the FAA is to assume that drone flight would always be flown like a model airplane, and not become something of an A.I. addition to the human skyline. The restriction deliberately prevents innovation from Amazon to compete with traditional delivery methods like trucks, and vans. The FAA is voting to preserve the status quo and to reject the innovations coming out of the tech sector with the kind of nonsense so prevalent with the federal government.  While members of the FAA may believe they are protecting people from falling drones, or congested air traffic, the real intention of their proposal was control—control of an emerging market to protect traditional, and accepted forms of product delivery.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/faa-drone-regulations-blow-amazon/story?id=28997803

In its most elementary form, the FCC is trying to do the same thing.   Their aim is to slow down emerging Internet markets, and get control of the kind of information reported there. It is about stopping innovation, not protecting its continuation. The federal government wants to tax trade over the Internet and to infuse the pure market capitalism of current online activity with the socialism normally associated with all government infusion.

Tech companies like Amazon became great because of the Internet—because government was out of their way. I use Amazon all the time—mostly to find books that are rare and out-of-print. When I was a little kid I used to get a publication in the mail showing me rare books and prints available throughout the country—and I’d usually have to pay several hundred dollars for such prints. One of those books was a hard to find copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead which I considered a real treasure at the time. But along came Amazon, and virtually any book I have needed over the last decade has been found and purchased through Amazon.com. I consider them an amazing delivery service and they became that way without an ounce of government involvement.

But now they’ve hit a government regulatory wall—actually two. First the FAA shut down their delivery proposal. Pinheads in the government likely can’t foresee why anybody would want under 30 minute delivery service—but I can report that I’d personally use it several times a year. It would be very useful for me to buy a book without having to leave my house that I would want to start reading that same afternoon once a number of other tasks had been completed for the day. Traveling about takes time, and if I could save that hour of transportation time, I could gain one hour of productive time out of a 24 hour day by ordering a book from Amazon and having it delivered 30 minutes later. That would be extremely valuable to me.

Government workers don’t understand the value of such time—because they spend most of their days wasting it. They are timid creatures—those who work in government. They are afraid of every little thing falling out of the sky and hitting them in the head, and fear dramatically a free Internet without government’s grubby paws within it. So they get into the business of making rules that they can deal with so to limit the rest of the world to their weaknesses. That is what the FCC is doing with Net Neutrality. A branch of government guided by the Obama White House sought to take control of the Internet because in this case, his political party can’t compete with the flow of information that is coming out against his progressive way of thinking—so he brought in Tom Wheeler at the FCC and created an insurrection without any public comment or scope of intrusion—and just like that—the Internet is no longer a free place. Government regulation is coming and soon those who were in favor of Net Neutrality will realize why people like me were against it. The rules that are coming will be noticed, and intrusive.

Of course my interest in this is the obvious impact that a loss of drones will have on the potential skycar market. I am a big supporter of the M400 Skycar which is essentially a large-sized drone that people can ride in. I have been looking to drones to solve the complicated levitation problems that will face that industry. The M400 Skycar works right now, it could fly from one point to another today if there were some support from the American government. But, there are entirely too many hurdles to jump through to allow for such an invention to hit the un-tethered civilian market. Drone delivery services would allow for the human race to accept such things as a potentiality—whereas currently it seems like science fiction. Human beings could right at this moment have a Skycar in their driveway and could fly to their job 50 miles away as the Skycar flies itself using a form of GPS—all the while browsing their smart phones on the Internet in transit. But, due to unnecessary regulation protecting the current automobile, and aviation industry—American regulations are keeping the Skycar grounded.

The Skycar would of course be the next step beyond drone delivery. Once people realized that the drones were reasonably safe, they’d accept that personal delivery using Skycars was entirely possible. Instead of a UPS or FedEx truck driving from one point through countless steams of ground traffic, the vehicle would take off from a distribution center and land at a residence within 10 to 15 minutes avoiding traffic all together. It would be an advance guidance system that would keep track of all the sky traffic without human error contributing to any danger. However, if the FAA won’t allow a small little drone to fly through the air without a human being guiding it by line of sight, they surely will not allow large vehicles transporting human beings around in the sky controlled by Google Earth navigational systems.

The only real restriction is the federal government, and now thanks to America’s first openly socialist president, the only place where explosive innovation actually takes place through unfettered capitalism is the Internet which the FCC just voted itself to control under the careful guidance of the White House.   There are hundreds of wonderful ideas just waiting to be nurtured into existence right now, but the government is impeding them with a mask of safety—and security—yet with a reality of protection of existing, ancient technology.

Imagine if the federal government had prevented the Wright Brothers from taking aviation to the sky so to protect the union workers who made roads back at the turn of the 20^th century. Or imagine that a horse breeder was afraid that the invention of the automobile would destroy their way of life, so they lobbied the federal government to make automobiles so controlled by regulation that it wouldn’t be worth building cars—which actually happened. After all, imagine the arguments of giving human beings a guided missile to drive around possibly running into countless other human beings on a massive scale. It would be impossible to develop the automotive industry in modern America—because regulators would snuff it out of existence before it ever got off the ground. That is the cost of the FCC intrusion of the Internet—a government takeover of the freest place on earth that will limit innovation from now on. History will prove it so.

As I’ve said before, there is technology right now that could cure cancer, stop the aging process, and solve world hunger—but because of government regulation—misery, innovation stagnation, and human complacency is sending America backwards instead of toward a promising future. The federal government is against innovation in every aspect of it—and seeks to use their cumbersome management models of extreme simplicity and timidity to squash innovation before the world advances beyond their grasp to emotionally cope. The typical government supporter is content to sip wine against a big city skyline and talk about social nonsense letting rules and regulations guide their non-thinking minds from one moment to the next surrendering thought to the complacency of a bureaucrat. They make fun of the innovator who wants to cure cancer, or send a car into the air to alleviate traffic—or the delivery service who wants to perform the task in less than 30 minutes with an air drone. They pull together like Google, Free Press and New America’s Open Technology Institute did prior to the FCC vote and direct Wheeler how to change his net neutrality plan to better accommodate them, and then wonder why a decade from now the government is looking to use those same rules to shut down their businesses. They thought they were cute and slick in 2015. They’ll beg for mercy in 2025 and the innovation they tampered with and thought they were championing will end up regressing back into the Stone Age.

Yet what few people asked was how those companies, Google, the Free Press and New America’s Open Technology Institute had access to the net neutrality report before any voting American. Now you know dear reader why we still have clunky cars, cancer, and cumbersome delivery systems—because the government picks winners and losers based on their personal preference and comfort level. And that is why the FCC takeover of the Internet is one of the greatest tragedies in our lifetime. It’s equal to the government taking over the aviation industry before Boeing built their first airplane.

Rich Hoffman

 CLIFFHANGER RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT