Peter Thiel has argued in various speeches and writing that the government has made innovation illegal, at least in the world of atoms. He says this is the primary reason for such high rates of innovation in the world of bits but low rates in the world of atoms. I think there are elements of truth in this (I've previously argued that the nuclear industry is overregulated), but on the whole, I think it misses a significant point. I think we shouldn't expect continuous improvement in all things in our world.
Thiel asks us to "Look around at all the objects around you that don't contain a screen. How can you tell you're not living 20 years ago?"
I'm looking around my room and wondering, "What innovation is he expecting?" There's a chair nearby. Soap hasn’t truly changed in thousands of years.
Here are some things I see (or know are near me)
Chairs - Maybe these could be better. I guess they could be adaptive, or maybe give me a warning if my posture is bad, etc. But I don't think they're going to look that much different in the future, and I don't think government regulation has anything to do with that. How much chair innovation are we expecting?
Clothes - In college, I had a nanotechnology class and the professor had special pants that were resistant to coffee stains. I guess that's cool but I doubt I'd pay extra for it. Shirts that don't need to be ironed are great, and I would take self-cleaning clothes, but, in general, I don't care. I just want a t-shirt with a pun on it.
Lamps - Bulbs have been improved (although lamps haven't). Smart lightbulbs are pretty cool, especially when combined with a voice assistant (e.g. Google Assistant, Alexa). So there's some innovation here.
Weights - How are weights for weight lifting going to change?
Beds - I'm pretty sure the change in bed technology will be all marketing. Unless we're going to sleep on a hovering air cloud that releases pressure from our joints, I don't see any innovation happening here.
Doors - What would a door from the future look like? What do you want from doors Thiel?
Paint - Self-cleaning paint would be cool. Or paint that changes colors. Or does something more interesting than what my paint currently does, which is not much.
Food - I have access to all sorts of fruit and vegetables that were natively grown all over the world. It would be cool to have more access to foods that so far haven't been easily produced at scale, like huckleberries. That's innovation. There's also been innovation in drought- and pest-resistant plants. What I'm most excited about is lab-grown and plant-based meat. Would they have been much further along without government regulation? I can't say for sure, but I will accept the possibility here.
Toilet paper - Just throwing out ideas here but could give color feedback if it detects something wrong. Probably not the most efficient approach since it's a one-time use. Again, how much toilet paper innovation are we expecting?
Cans - I don't think these are changing much. The idea of canning food is over 200 years old. There's been a bit of innovation in can openers - first, there were none, then a key came with cans, now we have dedicated can openers and even electric ones. The progress has continued - now there are "safe" can openers, although they don't seem to have taken off. Again, not the government. People just don't want it.
Belts - Nothing. The innovation is that my pants fit just fine and I don't need a belt but for some reason still wear one.
This list does miss out on things that can't be seen, such as WiFi. There have been major medical advances, such as arthroscopic surgery, but I will accede the point to Thiel that this is a field that has grown much slower due to regulation than it would have otherwise. But for most things, I see the "problem" as there just isn't that much more innovation to do in chair technology. And for most of the items on the list, my guess is the government has close to no regulatory burden. I don't think the government is slowing down belt design.
One area where innovation has been stunningly poor is in house-cleaning robots. Roomba came out in 2002 and I had hoped that the baseline models were pretty good by this point. I got one recently and was absolutely floored by how poor it was. My version doesn't map the rooms - it completely forgets about the layout of the house after each run. There are more advanced ones than mine that do room mapping, but in the 20 years after the first release, I had hoped this feature became standard. But I digress.
Back to regulation, how is regulation stopping robots from doing more of the housework? I don't think there's any regulation standing in the way of a robot cleaning my table, putting my clothes away, or picking up things around the house. The truth is, it's really hard to do these things. I do think we'll figure them out one day, but it's going to take more time. And I don't think the government is the main culprit in these fields, it's the inherent nonlinear rate of technology growth.