Get Out of My Life: Part Two

Above: Edison’s Electric Vehicle                                         

I have no doubt that small teams of five people or less can use robotics to manufacture an electric vehicle. This essay considers why that is technically possible, and why it may not happen because people can’t seem to get out of each other’s lives.

Around 1905, there were dozens of car manufacturers in the U.S., many of which were making electric vehicles. In 1968, teams from Cal Tech and MIT built electric vehicles that raced across the country.

The problem is that people interfere with other people’s lives. This is mainly a problem of government interfering with individual’s lives, but it includes the problem of big corporations interfering with small teams of startups to gain a business advantage. Had Thomas Edison lived under the totalitarian governments we know today, he might never have invented the electric light bulb.

The first problem of government interference is taxation. In the U.S., we live under levels of taxation that were not known at the beginning of the republic. That’s why we can build electric vehicles in the lab but cannot mass produce them reliably for the public. The situation is similar to that in the old Soviet Union, where mass produced cars were notorious for having a life expectancy of 20,000 miles.

The second problem of government interference in our lives is Equal Protection doctrine gone berserk. The debate over Equal Protection has sunken to the level that we usually attempt first to put exactly the right number of women and minorities on the team, regardless of the activity. The main reason the Asian trade deficit exists is that the U.S. is primarily focused on Equal Protection rather than achieving the objective of producing a good product at a low cost. That deficit in 2008 with China and Japan is equal to about half of what the U.S. spent on defense. China and Japan don’t spend ¾ of their time arguing about race and sex. For the most part, they don’t have Equal Protection.

The U.S., compared to other nations, has made remarkable progress on the issue of Equal Protection. Asians as a class have the most money in the U.S. these days. We have an African American President, and many of our mayors are African American. In recent years, women were a majority of the freshman entering college in the U.S.

In the U.S., Equal Protection is a necessary part of our law, but there are limits, as there are with any concept. When it costs more to regulate than to stay out of people’s lives, government eventually gives it a rest. Equal Protection should not be used to completely destroy society; however, unless something changes, Equal Protection will probably be the end of the republic.

I come from the nation that first put a man on the moon. We did that by focusing on what we were doing, not by turning Equal Protection into a religion.

In the next part of this series, I’ll consider other aspects of the “Get Out of My Life” issue.