While we await the umpteenth peace that Trump has promised since the Iran ceasefire, it might be a good time to address the rising calls to impose controls on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and to reduce the power and wealth of the leaders of the enterprises leading the technology. After all, bringing concentrated knowledge and computing power to the masses can overturn the social order and threaten humanity.

Leaders in both parties appear to be tripping over each other, demanding that the Government take control now before it’s too late. From GOP Senator Josh Hawley to Democratic socialists, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), there is pressure to go much further with government intervention.

None of this is new, as I’ve pointed out in my series, “The Long Journey to More.” At the start of the Industrial Age, the handicraftsmen known as  Luddites destroyed weaving machinery. Farm mechanization provoked a mass migration away from farm work. More recently, Computers connected to the internet caused an upheaval in how we do almost everything. The great economist Joseph Schumpeter called this process “Creative Destruction.”

If your source of income is at risk of destruction, chances are you, like the Luddites, don’t view the change positively. Labor Unions and others have used their political and other powers to slow change, even though we employ vastly more people with higher incomes with every creative change.

China has joined our unions and other anti-change groups with funding to gain a competitive advantage. This wave of negativity has resulted in an Echeon Insights Poll showing support for AI regulation has grown to 62%. Public concern has even prompted red-state governors, such as Ron DeSantis of Florida, to propose state-level regulation. Just what we need, 50 different sets of regulations. President Trump issued an executive order on voluntary AI model submissions to the federal Government to forestall state actions, opening up the possibility of federal regulation.

Where did we get the idea that the Government must regulate everything? While it was the case for thousands of years, it went out of style during the Age of Reason and the American Revolution. The notion took hold again during our Gilded Age (1870-1913), which was the US’s industrial revolution on steroids. Progressives claimed this period of rapid change made some people fabulously wealthy, but left most living in tenements with little. Monopolies gouged them with high prices because they could. Only government intervention could right the ship.

The only problem with this picture is that it isn’t true. The US economy tripled during the period. With so much growth, rewarding those who invest their lives and capital in successful enterprises that produce such abundance is a given. However, with a much bigger pie, ordinary people gained substantially, too. Real wages grew at the fastest rate in history. Rather than those “Monopolies” gouging people with high prices, we saw prices fall.

The proof of all this advancement in the US living standards is the great migration of people from farm labor and abroad to our industrial society. More than 11 million people left farm work, while more than twelve million immigrated to the US. We never find mass movements toward misery; people move to better their lives, and most succeed in the Gilded Age.

We don’t have to go so far back in history to recall a similar era of rapid change. The 1990s saw the emergence of personal computing and the internet. Worries of job destruction, some companies dominating our lives, and the creation of unjust wealth for their leaders. A lot of us remember how companies such as Prodigy, AltaVista, Netscape, and CompuServe were riding high, and their leaders were very wealthy. America Online (AOL) dominated the media. The Government sued to break up Microsoft under antitrust law. These big tech companies were going to run our lives. It all seems so quaint, now.

Microsoft is still a tech leader, but nobody sees it as a predatory monopoly. Too many competitors are lurking. The fact is, predatory monopolies can’t exist for long without government protection. Even then, when a city grants a cable company exclusive rights to an area, satellites and streaming can put it out of business if the cable company charges too much. High profits attract competitors like honey to a bear.

To many, the classic historical monopoly that needed breaking up was John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust. Few realize that the price of refined oil products dropped significantly during their existence. It was never a Monopoly. Competing with coal, whale oil, and other oil companies, both foreign and domestic. Rockefeller sought efficiency, leading to lower prices. to expand its markets. At least the whales appreciated the adoption of petroleum products.

The then-dominant catalog retailer, Sears Roebuck, used the “Roebuck Effect” of selling many solid goods at low prices and earning higher profits. Selling 10 watches at $100 each pales in comparison to selling 10,000 timepieces at a $1 profit. At certain price points, a product goes from something only the rich can afford to a mass-market product. Few owned the early Cellphones at around $4,000, but today almost everyone has a better one at a much lower price. Apple is still among the most profitable companies.

This elasticity of demand and competition make price gouging exceedingly rare. How many times have politicians demanded an investigation into grocery stores during inflationary times, only to come up with empty?

Profits are the way we judge efficiency and add to our investment risk capital. Successful businesses generate risk capital that, in the hands of astute investors, grows our economy. While rich entrepreneurs might have lavish lifestyles, most of their wealth is reinvested in other ventures or given away. As the market has a far better record of picking winners or losers than Governments, why would we want to take resources away from success to give it to losers? The market has produced “Super Abundance.” Why would we deprive the market of its lifeblood, risk capital?

Rather than painting everything as a crisis, let’s distill the information we find and let the market sort it out. The waste and harm caused by panic over climate change and COVID should give us pause before turning things over to Government “experts.” Do we really think they know more than the market participants?” Our journey with markets has worked better than anything else in history. Get on board and enjoy the trip.