History Bends Toward Sovereignty
And when sovereignty is honored, mobility becomes a blessing instead of a privilege
Every major technological shift begins with a simple recognition that the world can work better than it does today.
We are feeling that recognition again. New markets, in real time, turning the sky from a symbolic backdrop into functional infrastructure. Something long delayed is becoming inevitable.
The next chapter of mobility is not theoretical. Centrally planned economies beholden to an ideology do not benefit the majority on whom they are imposed; a few top-level mandarins prosper, but the citizen finds himself and his aspirations crushed by the dictates of the central government. The nation state itself is similarly confined by a set of self-evident truths that constrain its policy-making and exclude challenge. Innovation becomes a slogan rather than an outcome. Progress becomes something issued from a podium rather than built from the ‘ground’ up.
The United States, mainly, operates under a different logic. The constitutional split between Washington, the states, and the property owner looks inefficient only to the untrained eye. In reality, it is the hidden engine of American breakthroughs.
Low altitude air rights sit with states and citizens. Federal policy has shifted from obstruction to ignition. And the FCC’s ban on Chinese drones and key components has cut a tether to foreign dependency.
China has already run the central planning experiment in drones. Through its Made in China 2025 industrial strategy Beijing treated unmanned systems as a strategic sector, mobilising state banks, tax breaks and subsidies on a scale estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars. The result is dominance by a single national champion rather than a genuinely competitive market. DJI today is estimated to hold around 70% - 80% of the global civilian drone market and roughly 80% - 90% of the U.S. consumer segment, with some analyses placing its global share even higher. China as a whole produces about 70% - 80% of the world’s commercial drones and accounts for close to 79% of global drone related patents (fwiw), backed by clustered manufacturing in Shenzhen. From a distance this looks like a triumph of industrial policy. Up close it looks like a single country controlling the hardware stack for everyone else.
Faced with that reality many Western voices now argue for a Chinese style response. The U.S. has already created a Blue sUAS list for “approved” non Chinese platforms and trade groups call for higher tariffs on subsidised imports to blunt dumping. But copying the logic of Made in China 2025 could be a category error, if it goes beyond leveling the playing field. The U.S. advantage won’t come from a single national champion blessed by the nation state. It comes from millions of owners, builders and firms operating in a framework of clear property rights and competitive federalism. The correct answer to Chinese centralisation is not more central planning. It is market allocation or air rights and individual sovereignty.
For more than a decade, the commercial drone sector has moved at a snail's pace, markets growing on paper while deployments remain stuck in pilot mode. Analyst reports value the global commercial drone market somewhere between about $11 and $30 billion in 2024, with forecasts that more than double this by 2030, yet industry veterans stuck.
The constraint has not been on airframes or sensors. It has been property access. The FAA has approved only ~600 Part 107 waivers since 2020, with 284 of those for beyond visual line of sight, a tiny number compared to the millions of flights you would expect in a mature logistics network. However, this is now at an inflexion point. Timing is everything, and this is speeding up.
Many firms have quietly repositioned themselves as robotics or autonomous systems companies, mixing drones with ground robots and warehouse automation, not because the technology suddenly changed, but because low-altitude airspace has never really opened to routine operations.
The same pattern appears in eVTOL and air taxis. The global eVTOL and air taxi market is still only in the low single-digit billions, with estimates around $2.8 billion in 2023 and $1.4 - $1.5 billion in 2024. Flagship firms like Joby and Archer have real aircraft, real test flights, and real contracts. Joby has raised over $1 billion, delivered its first aircraft to Dubai, and completed a twelve-minute airport-to-airport flight in FAA-controlled airspace. Archer has airline and government partners and orders in the hundreds.
Yet, both are still working through certification, and investors openly debate whether current valuations are far ahead of any proven market.
The engineering is real, but most of the revenue is still hypothetical, because neither drones nor eVTOLs have routine, consent-based access below 500 feet, the private property band, the air rights. The missing piece is not the vehicle. It is the absence of clear, tradable air rights that lets the individual owner participate in, and profit from, the sky above them.
Federal Security That Liberates
Washington handles existential threats and national scale standards, then steps back. The FCC’s action earlier this year to ban Chinese drones and critical parts does more than correct a security lapse. It resets the entire ecosystem. Western supply chains become mandatory rather than optional. Domestic software stacks replace opaque foreign ones. The gravity of a subsidized monopoly no longer smothers innovation.
The White House followed with its June 6 Executive Orders, Unleashing American Drone Dominance. The FAA is accelerating beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) approvals and removing the waiver bureaucracy.
By August, the FAA had proposed performance-based rules for drones below the 400-foot ceiling, which is in the property rights envelope. In July, it published a certification blueprint for advanced air mobility manufacturers. In September, it opened a request for integration pilots for air taxi corridors. The federal center now defines the collision logic and sets the security perimeter. This is the correct distribution of power. Washington sets safety and security, and states run the rest.
The New Revenue Engine
States now see air mobility as a path to reducing or replacing many taxes. In an age where homeowners revolt at every rate increase, the idea that public services can be funded by air taxi permits, drone transit fees, and low-altitude easements is no longer fringe. It’s inevitable.
Forty-four states already have statutes or frameworks for drones and emerging air mobility. Texas is sketching cargo corridors at a continental scale. California is designing premium vertiport networks. Both are treating air rights as an infrastructural asset class.
Imagine a state legislature deciding to sunset property taxes and replace them with revenues generated from commuter air lanes. A city funding its school system with overflight permits instead of squeezing homeowners. A rural county building its entire budget around drone logistics revenues and attracting domestic manufacturers displaced by the FCC bans. The Tenth Amendment becomes a revenue engine rather than a relic, a union strong because it’s limited.
Competition between states sharpens the models. Nevada uses its open ranges for propulsion tests. Virginia embeds privacy corridors into its zoning to attract participants. Florida builds seamless handoff rules so disaster response drones can cross into Georgia without bureaucratic turbulence.
Citizens Become Builders Rather Than Observers
A homeowner in Phoenix lists their air rights and offsets her property tax bill. A family in Cincinnati finances a local business using revenue from weekend flight windows over their lakeside farm. A drone specialist in Wisconsin builds a navigation stack that becomes the industry standard for post-China supply chains. Local initiative becomes national capability.
Wind data from neighborhood mounted nodes tunes routing algorithms. Smart contracts enforce anti-collision protocols and automatically route payments. Safety improves faster than any regulatory body could have mandated. Emissions fall. Vertiports appear in commercial zones.
The public stops waiting for flying cars and starts participating in the infrastructure that makes them possible.
Prosperity’s Updraft
The macro effects are immediate. Cities see logistics efficiency gains. Manufacturing returns as domestic producers fill the vacuum created by the FCC bans. States reduce their reliance on property taxes. Low altitude air mobility will reach trillions of dollars in global activity by 2030. And the United States leads because the system is built on competitive federalism rather than ideological central planning.
The trajectory is clear. The first credible pathway to scale low altitude air mobility that respects property rights.
Citizens are participants, contributors, and beneficiaries. Innovation moves from the margins to the center. The flying car nation takes shape as the rational outcome of a system designed in freedom, experimentation, and progress. The sky is no longer the limit. It is the next great domain, and it’s now within reach.
