Pushing Buttons Like the Jetsons

In the classic and futuristic television series from 1962 to 1963 — I admit that I adore this show and could watch every episode 100 times — people work only a few hours a day, travel at 500 miles per hour in flying cars that go as fast as 2,500 miles per hour, and the main job is "pushing buttons."

The galaxy is their home. Healthcare is a complete free market with extreme customer care. Technology was the best (but of course it still malfunctions, same as today). Business is rivalrous, prosperity is everywhere, and the state largely irrelevant except for the friendly policeman who shows up only every once in a while to check things out.

The whole scene — which anticipated so much of the technology we have today but, strangely, not email or texting — reflected the ethos of time: a love of progress and a vision of a future that stayed on course. Appropriately, it was the first show shown on ABC television in color instead of black and white. It was neither utopian nor dystopian. It was the best of life as we know it projected far into the future. People did not dress in uniforms or obey some dictator on a monitor in their homes. The people in the show were as fashion conscious as any American. Their food was not embedded in pill food. They had the equivalent of fast-food delivery services in their homes.

The message is a true one. Human nature and the structure of reality itself doesn't change. Only the gizmos we use change. We can become poorer or we can become richer. But the fundamental facts of how the world is built are immutable. Things are scarce but the possibilities for economic creation are infinite in a world of trade, boundaries, law, and private innovation.

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