I think the real story of history, why systems of government change, why social consensus and morals change, why hierarchies of power evolve, is the story of *technology.* Politics is downstream of the technological environment/reality.

For that reason, I think — extending this far enough out into the future — that the political/regulatory response will largely be irrelevant. There is simply no stopping the steady forward walk of technological advancement, and the more foundational technologies will have 2nd, 3rd, and 4th order effects that are extremely hard to predict.

The crazy thing about the era we are in, is that it’s an era with explicit (rather than tangential) focus on the most foundational protocols of social & economic organization. Often the biggest changes occur indirectly and unknown to those who end up making foundational changes to human networks (ie. Gun powder had impossibly complex consequences on all human networks, but no one was thinking about how to alter political and social consensus incentives while inventing gunpowder, they just wanted to make their rock fly farther and hit harder). This time, we *are* thinking directly about designing and engineering economic and social incentive structures. Which is kind of insane when you think about it. It likely won’t be very fast, but even subtle changes make enormous differences at a generational scale.

In other words: During our lifetime, yes I agree. But take it another 2 generations forward and I don’t think it matters nearly as much.