Because of innovation by high-tech companies, you can deposit a check into your bank account while binge-watching an award-winning series without cable.  That probably represents the biggest innovation in the banking industry since the ATM and the biggest innovation in TV programming since Charlie's Angels.

But innovation in the United States is slowing down. 

"Productivity growth in the United States, which is powered by innovation, has been decelerating.  Total factor productivity grew substantially in the middle of the 20th century, but started slowing in 1970," notes an article in Harvard Business Review.  "This slow growth continues today, with productivity lower than it was more than 100 years ago."

Productivity has slowed for many reasons, but one is the biggest.  To find the key, we should begin by looking at the major source of the innovation we have enjoyed even throughout the 21st century: the high-tech industry.  While most other American industries (banking, broadcasting) are being heavily regulated, high technology has mostly been left to flourish with little federal oversight.

Lawmakers, however, are considering killing the only golden goose the economy has left.  This creeping bureaucratic interference with the free market resembles what the Nobel Prize–winning economist Friedrich Hayek called "Creeping Socialism": the use of government institutions to advance the goal of more government control over private-sector decisions.

Congress is considering a bill called the American Innovation and Choice Online Act.  If enacted, it would give federal bureaucrats the power to regulate the life out of the high-tech industry.  Right now, high tech is mostly regulated by the free market.  Companies that make great products thrive, while those that don't die quickly.

Instead of allowing the market to work, this bill would shift power to bureaucrats at the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).  They would take charge of what we could see on our phones, tablets, and P.C.s.  Politics, not creativity, would drive decision-making. 

This would only end up harming consumers, the very people the bill is supposed to protect.  As Sen. Rand Paul, who will oppose the bill, wrote recently, "proposals to ostensibly cut the tech giants down to size would, instead, perpetuate the dominant position of these companies and deprive consumers of the technological innovation that only free-market competition can provide."

Indeed, big companies often prefer heavy regulation because it keeps smaller, more nimble companies from coming in and earning market share.  A decade ago, one toymaker was lobbying for strict testing it could conduct in its own labs.  If that seems like an "argument against interest," it isn't.  As the Chicago Tribune explained: "The provision for in-house testing is likely to benefit the largest manufacturers because smaller ones are less likely to have labs that 'provide equal or greater consumer safety protection' than independent ones, which both House and Senate versions require."

Of course, no industry or company within an industry is perfect, and there is a reason that S. 2992 is gaining political support.  The technology industry can be too intrusive, as when Uber steals data and manipulates prices to harm consumers and employees.  Still, would anyone want to go back to the days of hailing taxis (or failing to hail them whenever it rains)?  The ridesharing business isn't perfect.  But by providing stiff competition, it has improved mobility everywhere and helped people save and make money.

"The new innovation ecosystem has a great deal of promise.  What we need is a better way to harness today's scientific advances and technical breakthroughs to accelerate productivity growth," the HBR concludes. 

Of course, we already have that system: it sprang out of Silicon Valley and operates everywhere all the time.  It put a cell phone in your pocket, sets the thermostat on your wall, and may soon be driving your car. 

Innovation is thriving in high tech.  The only thing that can stop it would be federal intervention.  The American Innovation and Choice Online Act would be a mistake we would all come to regret.  It is nothing less than a warmed-over version of socialism that has the full support of left-wing politicians in Congress and progressive bureaucrats who will end up implementing the bill if it becomes law.

Free market–oriented politicians need to stop it.

Greg Young is host of the nationally syndicated Chosen Generation Radio Show, which airs Monday through Friday on stations coast to coast.  He served as a Russian linguist at the USAF.  Discover more at chosengenerationradio.com.

Image: RawPixel.