Reference: U.S. to allow small drones to fly over people and at night | Reuters
OK, maybe drones have some legitimate uses. Surveying natural disaster sites, mapping, missing person searches and military applications seem to be appropriate and could save lives. But delivering our new pair of underwear? C’mon. Talk about yet another solution in search of a problem.
Yes, our government, in its infinite wisdom, has just issued long-awaited rules allowing drones to fly over people, and at night. They have to have lights and have an identification chip so it can be identified from the ground (but not by ordinary citizens of course). As noted in the above article, “’The new rules make way for the further integration of drones into our airspace by addressing safety and security concerns,’ FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said. ‘They get us closer to the day when we will more routinely see drone operations such as the delivery of packages.’”
Whoopie. We’re not at all sure why drones have to be integrated “into our airspace.”
“In August, Amazon.com Inc’s drone service received federal approval allowing the retailer to begin testing commercial deliveries through its drone fleet.”
Wow, that’s terrific. We can’t wait.
Of course, all the big retailers are getting in on this latest fashionable craze, like the Walmarts of the world. Is this progress? Well, we suppose it is if you manufacture drones or want to deliver things. Otherwise? Meh.
This is what happens when government fails to do its job, which in turn makes us wonder what the hell good is government doing? If there is any, it certainly isn’t evident from the rolling-over-and-showing-your-belly capitulation to and acquiesence in the commercial drone business, which doesn’t appear to have any legitimate argument for its existence.
Think about it. Someday soon, which we hope we don’t live to see, the skies will be flush with busy little drones buzzing back and forth between residences and fulfillment centers. You think the people in East Boston and Milton have it bad with flights screaming overhead to and from Logan? Just wait. Any urban area is eventually going to be subject to clouds of these things blackening the skies. Want to see the eclipse? Forget it. Want to see the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter? You’ll have to get on a Space X flight. Think light pollution is bad? Don’t worry – there won’t be any, not from the sun or the moon anyway.
Now, they may have some beneficial environmental effect of getting a bunch of these delivery vans off the streets, although what all those people are going to do for work after they all have to declare bankruptcy is certainly an interesting question.
But the larger question here is the notion of “progress” and whether or not progress should be allowed to run roughshod over all of us. Since the Renaissance, it’s been onward and upward in everything. Economies have to grow or die, cars have to get bigger, then smaller, then bigger again, then smaller again, etc., wrinkles can be made to disappear with botox but you’ll look like you’re 150 year old by the time you’re 60. Just look at all these Hollywood “stars” with pouty lips run amok. The internet has basically eliminated libraries, dictionaries, encyclopedias and books you can hold in your hand with pages to turn. Social media has turned into a pox on society worse than any pandemic. Actually, the internet and social media have largely relieved many people from the arduous and time-consuming task of thinking.
And of course there are these fashionable but phony alleged-to-be-good-for-the-environment remedies for past polluting progress like electric vehicles, which are the new polluting progress. As it turns out, the environmental costs of just producing the batteries for these vehicles largely eliminates any benefit from their gaslessness. But no doubt progress will cure that too, though bear in mind the old saw that the cure is often worse than the disease.
And now, some clowns have developed drones, which will ruin privacy in any inhabited area, ruin aesthetics and ruin just about any view. It’s going to be just like a buzzing plague of locusts darkening the sky to dine on your crop except it isn’t going away once its belly is full. All in the name of getting our new pair of underwear to us as soon as humanly possible. And just because they got invented and the government has kowtowed to big business, the rest of us have to suffer. That’s progress all right! Keep it up! It’s not climate change that’s going to do us all in (which was caused by “progress” in the first place), it’s progress. Or the drone that fell on your head.