| Hello, and welcome to this week’s installment of the Future in Five Questions. To kick off the new year DFD put the questionnaire to Adam Kovacevich, the founder of the liberal pro-tech Chamber of Progress, who argued in a recent X thread that the more adversarial approach to the tech industry taken by President Joe Biden’s administration was politically counterproductive. Kovacevich spoke about why Democrats should be techno-optimists, why his vision of Democratic pro-competition policy looks very different from that of the Biden administration, and his excitement about the “abundance agenda.” An edited and condensed version of the conversation follows: What’s one underrated big idea? Technology optimism. Too many Democratic politicians and elites responded to the 2016 election results by turning against the tech industry, but outside the D.C. bubble the reality is that Americans hold tech companies and services in high regard. Tech has already made it possible to access university libraries at your fingertips or get anything delivered to your door in two days. Now it’s applying AI to help dyslexic students read and make driverless cars a reality. Policymakers are much more pessimistic about tech than most Americans, but tech is making our society better in so many ways. What’s a technology that you think is overhyped? Smart cities. Most governmental efforts to build technology into city infrastructure have failed due to cost and poor execution. But the reality is that private sector services have achieved a lot of smart city goals. Waze proved that crowdsourcing traffic data was faster and cheaper than installing smart traffic sensors and signage. Tesla’s electric vehicle charging network is speeding EV adoption. Lime scooters have been more popular than city-subsidized bike-shares. What book most shaped your conception of the future? “Permissionless Innovation” by Adam Thierer. It pains me to hear Democratic politicians say Europe is “leading” in tech regulation. The fact that America has produced all of the world’s leading tech services is all the evidence you need that American tech policy has struck the right balance. A big part of that is us giving founders and engineers the freedom to innovate without having to first get government permission. Regulation is important, but it’s far better to police tech’s harms and excesses as they emerge rather than try to do it preemptively. What could the government be doing regarding technology that it isn’t? Genuine pro-competition policy. The neo-Brandeisian regulators in the Biden administration have been more anti-industry than pro-competition. They should have supported Airbnb’s challenges to the hotel industry, supported crypto and fintech’s challenges to Wall Street, supported satellite internet to challenge telecom incumbents, and supported fair use and Section 230 to help startups in artificial intelligence and social networking. Instead, they promoted increased regulation, which actually entrenched incumbents over challengers. What has surprised you the most this year? The excitement and energy in the abundance movement. It’s been exciting to see people build on the writing of Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, Matt Yglesias, Steven Teles, Jerusalem Demsas — and the work of Institute for Progress and the Niskanen Center — and see it cohere into an “abundance faction” on the center-right and center-left. We need more housing, more energy, more care and more innovation — and blue cities and states need to make it easier to build.
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