Both Deputies Gary Gannon and Ruth Coppinger would – to one degree or another – refer to their politics as “progressive”. As the name implies, progressivism is based on the idea that human civilisation is on an ever-advancing march towards perfecting itself, becoming more equal, more fair, more advanced, and more humanitarian. Progressives advocate things like moving away from fossil fuels towards cleaner energy; abandoning old social prejudices in favour of more tolerance; and redistributing wealth in order to make society more fair.
In theory, at least. Here are Deputies Coppinger and Gannon yesterday, as quoted by our friends over at The Journal:
Speaking in the Dáil this morning, Social Democrats TD Gary Gannon said that we are at “a tipping point in the rollout of commercial drone delivery in Ireland”, where regulations have not kept up with the pace of innovation.
He said that residents in Drumcondra and Glasnevin have raised “serious concerns” around noise, planning, environmental impact and safety….
…Solidarity-People Before Profit TD Ruth Coppinger played a recording of the sound of a drone in the Dáil chamber, saying that residents in her constituency in Blanchardstown “have been suffering this for over a year and a half, and nobody’s listening”.
Coppinger said that Manna, an Irish start up from entrepreneur Bobby Healy, has been operating since last year and has completed over 170,000 deliveries in the area, with residents raising concerns around noise since then.
“This has to come to the Dáil. There has to be regulation,” she said.
Let’s be clear here, they’re not delivering blood or medicine. They’re delivering burgers and lattes for profit.
Interesting, that last line, is it not? Coppinger’s position is that the drones are too noisy, but also that her position might change if the noisy drones were delivering blood and medicine to those who needed them. Which implies she’d be more tolerant of drones whizzing about the skies of West Dublin delivering people their prescriptions from the pharmacy, instead of a Pizza from Dominoes. Her real problem is not with the noise, as such. It is, as her own words reveal, about people making profit from the noise.
Gannon’s position, by contrast, is more straightforward: He doesn’t like the noise of drones in the sky and therefore would like them restricted.
No doubt, there will be readers who sympathise with Gannon’s view. But I do wonder what those readers would say to the 20,000 or more New Yorkers who complained, in the 1920s, about the noise of the ever-growing fleet of motor cars appearing in that city. The car replaced the horse and carriage, bringing with it a revolution in transportation, human wealth, and mobility. Many people were upset for no other reason than that they didn’t like the sound of the noisy engines.
The point here is straightforward: Manna Aero, the Irish startup company responsible for the drones that upset Deputies Coppinger and Gannon, is attempting what amounts to a similar revolution in transportation. On paper, it is one that progressives should welcome: Electrified drones are much more environmentally friendly than fossil-fueled delivery mopeds, cars, and bikes.
What’s more, there’s a fundamental point here about urban life: If you want to live somewhere quiet and peaceful, then a city centre or city-centre adjacent neighborhood really isn’t for you. That’s not a dig at anyone who lives there – it’s just a fact.
Anybody who has ever watched a futuristic sci-fi movie, or who has ever read accounts from the 1970s or 80s of what people thought life would be like in 2025, knows that humanity is behind our imagined schedule. Flying cars do not exist yet. But we’re actually getting close: Over time, delivery drones may well be scaled up to become drone taxis. The Chinese are actually ahead of the west on this:
There’s another basic point here: Technology evolves over time. Today’s cars, for example, are vastly less noisy than those cars which so annoyed New Yorkers in the 1920s and 30s. As technologies develop, they become more focused and competitive over time on issues like noise, sound, and comfort.
But Irish politicians are not in the technology business. They are, by definition, in the business of statism. And statism has always been – ironically enough – the enemy of progress. Which is why post-Communist countries are reliably poorer, less developed, and more unequal than countries which encourage the development of new industries like delivery drone companies. Even China, now that it is emerging as a hyperpower, is doing so largely because it has unleashed the very kind of innovation that our two Irish TDs would like to stifle on the grounds of “noise”.
Finally, I’ll note this last point: One of the major criticisms of the Irish economy over the past few decades has been that it is not innovative enough. That so much of our employment and investment is the result of American innovation and investment into Ireland, and that all this country does is produce well-educated workers to staff factories in microchips and pharmaceuticals.
Here, in the case of Manna Aero, we actually have a domestic Irish company that is at the forefront of an emerging technology – and what do our politicians want to do? Stifle it.
Social, economic, and political problems do not emerge spontaneously. If Ireland has an economy that is disproportionately dependent on the innovations of other countries, that is because Ireland has been a country for decades that is instinctively hostile to innovation domestically. Deputies Coppinger and Gannon should be ignored on this drone issue. It is probable, sadly, that they will not be.
We live in the country that we have always chosen to be. That’s not going to change, until we start changing our attitudes about the kind of country we wish to be. Whinging about Drones and the noise they make is one of the most short-sighted things we could do, and yet here we are, doing it anyway. What does that tell you?