When Amazon first revealed their plans to use drones for deliveries, I pooh-poohed the concept as impractical. I figured there was no way it would make financial sense to use a delivery method that has so little capacity and such a short range, so the whole thing must be a publicity stunt.
Well, if it is a publicity stunt, they're really good at bluffing, since they are continuing to test their drones, now at a secret location in B.C. I don't know, maybe it makes sense for them to have a delivery system that only works within densely-populated centres.
But there's another aspect of the story that I noticed: the fact that they're testing in Canada, because it takes weeks to get regulatory approval, while in the U.S. it would take months. (Of course, I could hardly not notice that aspect of the story, since Canadian news outlets proudly made that the focus of their coverage.) Is it just me, or does that happen a lot.
Obviously, Canada and its government agencies are hardly paragons of efficiency, but it does seem like the red tape is significantly thicker South of the border. This goes against the usual perception of their more minimalist government, compared to our more activist state. I wonder why that would be. It could be that government agencies there feel the need to work harder to justify their existence. Or maybe America's sheer size leads to bigger, less flexible institutions. Hopefully someone will find a way to quantify government bureaucracy so we can find a way to be smug about it. I'm getting tired of bragging about health care.
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