Chris Anderson on freeing technology's anti-inflationary power.

Anderson brings up important points on balancing environmental protection and global costs of living. Are parts of our environmental protection effort creating unnecessary scarcity? Are countries' economic protections driving prices up artificially?

I'd add some questions of my own. Are we pushing for or supporting government policies that are holding back the development of technologies that will free us from scarcity of energy or food? Are we selecting technologies without fully viewing their secondary effects (such as ethanol leading to scarcer food corn and driving up global food prices)? Are we allowing our preconceived notions about technologies rob us of their economic (or other) benefits?

I don't agree with all of Anderson's suggestions, but I agree with what I believe is the central thesis. We need to consider more carefully the decisions we're making about what technologies we favor and which we discourage. We have to consider the secondary effects of these decisions if we're to act wisely and achieve sustainable prosperity.