The twenty-first century economy is a rapidly evolving creature. What with automation, driverless cars, drones, aviation, the app economy, and social media, among other things, how we live and think about economic output is being transformed — causing no end of questions about labor market productivity.  You’d think we’re living in an age where such economic development and creativity go unrestricted by the hands of government. Yet government is attempting to regulate it. When you read a new study out of theMercatus Center that government has regulated innovation out of the economy to the tune of $4 trillion less growth from 1980 to 2012, you wonder: what would attempted regulation of these exciting new industries lead to? What will America lose?

Here to discuss these sectors and the specter of government regulation is Eli Dourado, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and director of its Technology Policy Program. He specializes in Internet governance, intellectual property, cryptocurrency, Internet security, and the economics of technology. He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, The Guardian, Ars Technica, and Wired, among other outlets,  and is a member of the State Department’s International Telecommunication Advisory Committee and has served on several U.S. delegations to UN treaty and policy conferences.