Last night on 60 Minutes (December 1st) Amazon chief Jeff Bezos said the company is testing delivering packages using drones. The idea would be to deliver packages as quickly as possible using the small, unmanned aircraft, through a service the company is calling Prime Air, the CEO said.
This idea will never happen, of course. Millions of drones swooping above your head? Occasionally falling out of the sky?
Earlier this year, Bezos bought The Washington Post, committing himself to figuring out how to make intelligent news reporting a profitable concern in the years to come. I don’t know which will prove more daunting: trying to get people to apy what they have learned in the last decade to steal, or how to fly drones around without banging into telephone lines, dogs, and ;et’s face, the 50 million other drones that will darken our skies as soon as this thing gets off the ground.
If Bezos really wants to be a giant killer, he needs to find a bigger target. I suggest that he design a new democratic government. Our institutions are fundamentally broken, corrupted by money, and totally out of date with what we the people today value.
Look at Bezos’ company. Amazon. Now that is a company completely in tune with what we value now: choice, selection, service, low cost, efficiency. Amazon is dedicated to the proposition that people should get what they want. They are so dedicated, they are looking at drones.
Now, the government is not in the same business as Amazon. For one thing, if you can’t get what you want at Amazon, it’s not likely that amazon will be held to blame. It’s either not avoidable, or you can’t afford it. If you can’t get something from the government that you want, you’ve got a lot of people you can blame. Assigning and avoiding blame has become the real business of government, not helping people get what they want. Today we value results. Congress is in the business of delivering results to a chosen few.
We no longer live in a Madsionian world, and the Madisonian checks and balances no longer prevent the usurpation of government, but abet it. You wonder why Congress has an eight percent approval rating? It’s because they’ve earned it.