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That's about the most sane take possible, to be quite honest.
The reason 'tech' has gotten so far without being regulated is simply because Gov't doesn't understand it, and it moves/changes so fast that they can't get out ahead of it to put down serious roadblocks before its already jumped to the next big thing. They've only JUST NOW sort of caught up with Social Media tech with this recent TikTok bill.
Also the general gridlock and incompetence that's accumulated lately.
Now that the tech sector is becoming more centralized, it is more legible to government actors since they can identify the chokepoints to control to bring the industry and customers to heel.
So expect it to keep getting worse, but slowly, and in fits and starts, even if there is no grand central conspiracy.
Perhaps the even more blackpilling perspective is that this is just how things naturally trend when there's a 'commons' resource that manages to elude being exploited and enclosed by existing entrenched players. Free Software is a somewhat nonclassical example of a 'commons' that throws off tons of benefits as externalities. Lord knows I've used dozens upon dozens of free, open source, and other non-commercialized programs over the years. I hate hate hate the idea of subscribing to a piece of software I'd only use intermittently and, even after paying, could lose use of at any time.
VLC, Windirstat, 7zip, GIMP, LibreOffice and Coretemp, just off the top of my head are some of my favorites that each have a very specific role and do it very well (or well enough) so I can thumb my nose at commercial alternatives.
But unlike a 'classic' commons, the software well can never 'run dry' since as long as someone, somewhere is willing to eat the (trivial!) cost of hosting the software download, then copies can be distributed endlessly without ever depleting the supply, and the marginal cost of each additional copy rounds to zero.
But every other player in this system aside from the cooperative users sees this commons as an opportunity. And what they always want to do is enclose the commons, exclude free-riders, parcel it up, and then sell access to it. If you can make people pay even $1/copy for something they were previously getting for 'free,' you've diverted part of that that huge 'surplus' into your pocket.
You already see the low-grade version of this with sites that will re-host free software but bundle it with something else that they can use to make money, or at least have ads on the download site.
So whether it's governments cracking down, OSes limiting the code that can be run to an approved list you have to pay to get on, or Software companies buying up the licenses to open-source software and shutting down the free distribution of same (apparently the VLC guy has turned down sizable offers), eventually this commons WILL be enclosed, and you WILL be made to pay to acquire and use it on your own machine. For now, at least, you're allowed to fork projects before they sell out.
Of course, I also worry that they're going to remove consumer access to hardware altogether, allowing you to only purchase gimped, centrally controlled machines and most of the programs you run will be on an Amazon Web Server somewhere such that if they DID decide to lock out certain software, you wouldn't even be able to futz with the machine itself to hack it into compliance.
Because whenever the market sees some kind of consumer surplus, the incentives ultimately push it to attack it from every possible angle until it wiggles in and can consume said surplus, returning us to the 'efficient' equilibrium it really wants to maintain. And since you can't really get rich by advocating for open-source software, few are likely going to man the wall to defend the surplus against these attacks.
I'm not 100% certain this is true. I think tech was never regulated because nobody understood it. When the TRS-80 came out, the idea that putting generalized compute in the hands of everyday people could, at any point in the future, be "harmful" or adverse to the interest of the ruling class probably wasn't even conceivable.
After home computers are out of the bag, even if they wanted to, the technology to put it back in didn't exist. It's only been in the last 10 years you see machines of all sorts able to phone home and have a central authority regulate your usage of them. I'm sure all the monarchies that vilified the printing press would have jizzed their pants over such power to automatically regulate their use.
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I hear this a lot, but is it actually true?
Relatively few people in government have actual professional-level expertise when it comes to finance, manufacturing, workplace safety, international trade, or nuclear energy, but the government seems to regulate those things just fine. (Arguably what we call "tech" is easier to understand than those things, at least the parts of it that are salient for regulation.)
If by 'just fine' you mean shut down and prevent their use from delivering benefits, sure.
Reminder that if we had a halfway sane authoritarian government anywhere in the west, nobody in that country would be burning hydrocarbons for heating or cooking unless they were out camping.
I don't understand this example. Are you implying that a sane authoritarian government would exert their power to ban the burning of hydrocarbons for heating or cooking?
How is that in any way sane, especially if they don't have the power to stop other countries from doing it? Unless you are advocating for this sane authoritarian government invading all the others and maintaining this ban through force of arms, in which case it makes more sense, but still a fair ways away from 'sane'. Doing so would require the development and manufacture of weapons at scale, which unfortunately requires large amounts of hydrocarbons.
No, I'm implying that a western country that nuclearised very heavily would have cheap power and wouldn't require even having gas lines going anywhere but into chemical plants.
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But if they had real winters, everyone would all be out camping because it would be warmer than sitting in their cold homes "heated" by inadequate electric heat pumps erratically supplied by an overloaded grid.
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That's likely a contributing factor to why tech is seeing far more innovation, far faster, than finance, manufacturing, international trade and nuclear energy. Everything before it is already stuck under a pile of stupid regulation.
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You know, for clarity's sake, I'll specify that those endowed with legislative authority in Gov't don't really understand it.
Plenty of agencies snap up tech-savvy employees, especially in the intelligence branches, and they presumably get regular briefings on new tech developments.
Finance is a funny bird because of the revolving-door between the regulatory agencies and the financial institutions. Gov't "understands" finance because the industries are heavily tied together, which is not (currently) the case with the tech industry.
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