ABSTRACT
The question whether technological progress restricts the scope of legitimate governmental intervention is not really novel, nor is the impact of technology on the scope of legal intervention an issue specific to human genetics. The claim has been made, especially by scholars presuming that the unique goal of legislation is to facilitate welfare-enhancing transactions, that technological advances, as they have the potential to prevent market failures, also decrease transaction costs, increase the safety and efficiency of free exchanges, enhance protection of consumer interests and decrease the need for state policy in their operative domains. In that view, the appropriateness of state policy is inversely proportional to the state of technology, as advances in technology provide good arguments in favour of a laissez-faire market policy (Foldvary and Klein, 2002). Moreover, when technology prevents market failures, it is argued, property rights are much more efficient than previous natural state monopolies. A further argument sustaining that technology reduces the scope of legitimate governmental intervention states that technology, complicating the economic system by accelerating changes and multiplying connections between activities, makes the notion that regulators could know and manipulate the system less credible.
