Where's progress in home design? Folks are still living in homes averaging a half century old and with little in terms of sheer innovation to show for it.

Reams of zoning and building codes heavily restrict innovation in this area. Manufacturers with new ideas on mass produced housing or new materials and structures have died on the vine trying to get past such rules.

While automakers have learned to squeeze more miles and make vehicles out of composite materials and plastics, what revolutionary new advances have been made in comfort, safety or endurance?

There have been a lot of advances in autos. As for major leaps, the regulations for making a car legal for public roads are many. Some miniature cars have had to classify themselves as some kind of motorcycle to be sold at all. And what else would you make a road out of?

Where's the NY-Tokyo 1 hour rocketliner promised in the late 1960s?

The SST died from environmental and other legal restrictions that kept it off of most paying routes. After that, it was basically a technological money-losing showpiece.

The people building suborbital spaceplanes already realize the point-to-point potential of something with just a little more oomph. Assuming they can get permission to fly them, of course....

Where is city design? Cities are still pell nell chaos. Random construction, no goals to speak of in layout or ease of usage and universal aesthetic disasters, made more so by cheap advertising and the diversity of architecture.

The "glittering cities?" come mostly from the brains of those who see people as cogs in their Great Designs. Brasilia looks a lot better than Hong Kong, but only one of those cities is a vibrant, working place.

What of medicine?

It costs almost $800 million to have a drug approved for human use. You're not going to see a lot of innovation from small outfits in this field.

You might have noticed a bit of a trend in my comments...

Who did Tesla have to get permits from to build his demonstration projects? Did Wilbur and Orville spend most of their time in Washington trying to get permission to fly? How much paperwork was required for Edison to build his first DC power station? The wellspring of innovation has long been the small inventor and startup, but in recent times the legal barriers placed in their way have been a lot more formidable.

I am in contact with many of the small private space launch companies, and most of them will tell you, if not publicly, that the hardest task they have faced is keeping Washington from killing them, often with the best intentions.