The world is undoubtedly moving in a direction where some industries fall into a grey area of morality. Many of these future industries I have talked about, for example genetic engineering, stem cell research ect. The United States has always become wealthier primarily because they have adopted new technology, embraced it without heavy regulation and let companies work freely. We saw this with the rise of automobiles, the rise of the internet and the sale of military arms and vehicles. However today we are facing moral pushback for certain industries that might eventually cost us millions of jobs throughout a 100 year period.
An industry, if important and generally useful , will always survive even if a country chooses not to pursue the prospects of it. Some other country eventually would because the monetary pay off is too great to pass us. If we didn’t pursue better military vehicles, or if we didn’t pursue nuclear weapons, someone else eventually would have. This is the key part of the debate that people don’t seem to understand. Stopping something in the short term doesn’t mean in the long term it won’t be released.
In the United States, due to mainly religious ideology, we are having pushback against the genetics and stem cell research fields. We have already lost years of potential estimated research time due to lobbying, protesting and anger from civilians. Eventually though, if we continue to give into the demands of a group of people who are against the progress of human evolution, we will lose the scientific advantage to other countries.
The biotech industry is still in its complete infancy and has the potential to become a trillion dollar market that could extend average lifespans by decades in the future, but there is so much red tape around the industry, there is only so much a company can do. If you break your neck say horseback riding and become paralyzed, there is a real chance that today you can use stem cell research to fix the problem, but it would cost you millions of dollars. This is because getting stem cells in the United States is extremely hard and expensive.
We could supply the industry with more than enough if we used unorthodox methods, but the government is protecting the interests of a small group of people. Even if god does exist, we were put here on earth to enjoy our time here, not to become a paraplegic and avoid the possibility of treatment because of a red line we cant cross in a flourishing future industry. If we lose the race to the table now, we wont just be behind, there is a possibility we wont even be part of it.
What tends to happen with new industries is the people that are the first movers end up being the only real companies in the space for a long period of time. Just look at where the automobile companies during the majority of the 1900s and where the internet companies were focused. For all we know we might just be throwing away an industry that will be the biggest in the world because of moral pushback. We need to continue research and avoid regulation on industries that are the future, even if some people don’t approve of them.