This all seems a bit weird - US headlights - headlamps maybe - are worse than those in Europe. Yet the Americans are ahead of us in both wealth and most other technologies. So, what’s happening here?
The Americans have allowed the bureaucrats to take charge of headlights - headlamps. Therefore American headlamps - headlights - are shit. The lesson being never to allow the bureaucracy to take charge of stuff.
Now, yes, obviously, this is just me being my usual free market loon. Except, well:
Headlamp tech that doesn’t blind oncoming drivers—where is it?
The US is a bit of a backwater for automotive lighting technology.
Erm, why?
Despite US dominance in so many different areas of technology, we're sadly somewhat of a backwater when it comes to car headlamps. It's been this way for many decades, a result of restrictive federal vehicle regulations that get updated rarely. The latest lights to try to work their way through red tape….
This does indeed mean that Septics gain worse headlights (headlamps) than Europeans. Which is indeed weird.
The reason is also indeed that bureaucracy. Which really is weird - it’s not as if anyone is going to try and claim that the Septic administrative bureaucracy is underfunded or doesn’t have sufficient staff. The problem is that they’ve adopted the precautionary principle. It is necessary to prove - prove - to the detailed and finicky standards of the bureaucracy - and upon bureaucratic timescales - that the new tech is safe. Wholly and fully safe.
This delays that new tech by the above claimed decades.
As I’ve pointed out before economic growth is the speed at which we do new things. If we’ve an entire department of the country working to slow new things down then growth is going to be slower. Obviously.
This then gives us an idea of why the European growth rate is so much lower than the Septic. We have very much more bureaucracy insisting upon this precautionary principle than they do - even if not on headlamps (headlights). The effect of each part of it is the same on the area it applies to but if more areas are…..then all becomes clear as if illuminated by a headlight (head….ah, forget it).
Which brings me to something perhaps a little more tenuous but which I’ve also been muttering about for well over a decade. There’s a reason why so much of our observable growth is online.
Sure, some of it’s just because that’s where the technological advance is. Moore’s Law and all that, more can be done. But it’s not wholly that. It’s that in the old things we do - but which we might want to do in new ways - there is already that bureaucracy insisting upon whole and pure safety before you can do anything. Therefore advance - the application of either new tech or new methods to doing those old things - is wildly more expensive and slower than in online.
As an example, if you want to make a new metallic salt - Ooooh, I dunno, scandium fluoride say - then you’ve got to obey the REACH stuff. You either have to buy into the cartel that has proven that scandium fluoride is safe or you’ve got to go through the entire and whole process of showing that it’s safe yourself. Also, you’ll likely need a new such licence for each change of production method and each plant that deigns to produce it. And, in some readings of the laws, this applies if you want to make a few kilos to play around with to see if you’d like to use it in greater volume.
As another example you think you might be able to write some code that could achieve consciousness. So, you write the code, stick it into the cloud and see.
Amazin’ to think that advances in AI move forward a little faster than in metallurgy, eh?
I really do think that computing advances faster precisely because it is not hampered by that precautionary principle in the same way that near everything physical is these days.
Well, so far, the EU has decided to regulate AI which will solve that problem of it getting better, won’t it?
The latest nonsense (which is afflicting the UK too as collateral damage) is the EU requirement for plastic bottle tops to be 'tethered', a typically silly solution to a non-problem, of the sort beloved by Eurocrats. It makes drinking or pouring very inconvenient, while there are virtually zero European bottle tops in the 'famous' North Pacific Gyre (which largely consists of lost fishing gear).
If we were really concerned about pollution from plastic bottles, the UK could now revert to the simple, cheap and effective landfill - banned (or, more precisely, taxed heavily) by the EU, because it's not possible for the low countries (just creates a lake) and there must be a 'level playing field'.