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The reason why governments don't innovate faster or disrupt more is because they are responsible for the disrupted. A startup is not. When a startup succeeds i

The reason why governments don't innovate faster or disrupt more is because they are responsible for the disrupted. A startup is not. When a startup succeeds in disrupting an industry, they gain the benefits, and grow as a consequence. The businesses and individuals they disrupt do not have power over the startup. When a government succeeds in 'disrupting' (perhaps 'innovating' is a better word) then they gain benefits from votes they win. Unlike the startup, they also have to deal with cost of votes they lose from the disrupted. TL;DR: Startups take the spoils of innovation. Governments get spoils and the pain. Governments therefore appear more risk-averse.

rorykoehler 9y ago
As it stands western democratic governance exists in no-mans-land where everything is too little too late. This was always the case however as the pace of change has accelerated the old institutions and structures of governance are now totally unfit for their purpose. This is perhaps why the Chinese autocratic model will succeed in the 21st century and traditional western democracies will fail (NB: not a value judgement on my part, just an observation).
- librexpr 9y ago
  I don't know about that. China is just as bad as the west when it comes to privacy, and they use it to help crush dissent in their citizens. As for the environment, while they've been taking steps to remedy that, they're still behind the West on this. I also don't think I agree that democracies are slow to adapt. When there's the political will, democracies can get new laws passed quite quickly. The problem is when people don't care or disagree about what to do. An "autocracy" like China avoids the problem of disagreement, but only by ignoring all disagreements and following the rulers, whether their decisions are good or bad. Usually bad, judging by the censorship, forced organ harvesting, disappearings of dissidents, etc. It's easy to try extrapolating China's current growth and think that China will become the world superpower. Except they're still the underdogs, and a lot can still go wrong. They could plateau, like Japan did. Xi Jinping will eventually be too old to rule, and it'll be a coin toss as to whether or not his replacement will be competent. As wages in China rise, companies that outsourced to them could move to cheaper countries. If they suffer a recession, I don't know what will happen, but with a government that loves cracking down on disagreement I don't expect it to be pretty. China's on a good trajectory, economically speaking. But it's too early to say who will win out in the 21st century.
  - rorykoehler 9y ago
    I'm not sure what privacy has to do with any of this? You're right that nothing is a given and the tide could turn against China however there is a given precedence for stagnation due to inability to make decisions quickly or at all (as is happening in the US with the hyper-polarization of politics). This was one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire.
- matt4077 9y ago
  Western democracies are "slow" because the low-hanging fruits of problems that can be solved fast has long been taken care of. What remains are never problems with an easy fix. Almost by definition, governments are fine-tuning a system that, by and large, is already the best the world has ever seen. Any change involves trade-offs that need to be taken into account. To use an analogy: after 20 epochs, you need to be using a drastically lower learning rate for your ML model than when you first started training, or it will fail to converge. Progress in China isn't so much the effect of autocratic structures, but of starting from a lower baseline. It's really easy to grow the economy when you're dropped into a scenario of almost medieval infrastructure, but a working administration and enough capital. First, you build a road. Then, a school... As the Chinese economy closes the gap to the west, it will start mirroring their problems more and more, as well.
humanrebar 9y ago
> The reason why governments don't innovate faster or disrupt more is because they are responsible for the disrupted. There's some truth to what you're saying, but we're all talking as if an enormous government (the national U.S. government) is the only way to attack issues. For reference, the U.S. populace is the third largest one in the world, and it's certainly a very diverse one. Being all things to all those people is a very tall order. Keeping more issues at the state and local level allows for faster innovation, faster turnover of elected officials, smaller feedback loops, less expensive communication with elected officials, etc. It might not be appropriate to regulate the internet at the local level, but if more were decided that way (i.e., most social issues), there would be fewer national issues left to keep track of and debate. Issues like data privacy would therefore be more prominent in national elections. I frankly don't see how we can have such a large and detail-oriented national government long term. If China and India "crush" the U.S., it will at least partly due to the unforced error of the ever-growing scope of national U.S. politics.

rorykoehler 9y ago

As it stands western democratic governance exists in no-mans-land where everything is too little too late. This was always the case however as the pace of change has accelerated the old institutions and structures of governance are now totally unfit for their purpose. This is perhaps why the Chinese autocratic model will succeed in the 21st century and traditional western democracies will fail (NB: not a value judgement on my part, just an observation).

librexpr 9y ago
I don't know about that. China is just as bad as the west when it comes to privacy, and they use it to help crush dissent in their citizens. As for the environment, while they've been taking steps to remedy that, they're still behind the West on this. I also don't think I agree that democracies are slow to adapt. When there's the political will, democracies can get new laws passed quite quickly. The problem is when people don't care or disagree about what to do. An "autocracy" like China avoids the problem of disagreement, but only by ignoring all disagreements and following the rulers, whether their decisions are good or bad. Usually bad, judging by the censorship, forced organ harvesting, disappearings of dissidents, etc. It's easy to try extrapolating China's current growth and think that China will become the world superpower. Except they're still the underdogs, and a lot can still go wrong. They could plateau, like Japan did. Xi Jinping will eventually be too old to rule, and it'll be a coin toss as to whether or not his replacement will be competent. As wages in China rise, companies that outsourced to them could move to cheaper countries. If they suffer a recession, I don't know what will happen, but with a government that loves cracking down on disagreement I don't expect it to be pretty. China's on a good trajectory, economically speaking. But it's too early to say who will win out in the 21st century.
- rorykoehler 9y ago
  I'm not sure what privacy has to do with any of this? You're right that nothing is a given and the tide could turn against China however there is a given precedence for stagnation due to inability to make decisions quickly or at all (as is happening in the US with the hyper-polarization of politics). This was one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire.
matt4077 9y ago
Western democracies are "slow" because the low-hanging fruits of problems that can be solved fast has long been taken care of. What remains are never problems with an easy fix. Almost by definition, governments are fine-tuning a system that, by and large, is already the best the world has ever seen. Any change involves trade-offs that need to be taken into account. To use an analogy: after 20 epochs, you need to be using a drastically lower learning rate for your ML model than when you first started training, or it will fail to converge. Progress in China isn't so much the effect of autocratic structures, but of starting from a lower baseline. It's really easy to grow the economy when you're dropped into a scenario of almost medieval infrastructure, but a working administration and enough capital. First, you build a road. Then, a school... As the Chinese economy closes the gap to the west, it will start mirroring their problems more and more, as well.

humanrebar 9y ago

> The reason why governments don't innovate faster or disrupt more is because they are responsible for the disrupted. There's some truth to what you're saying, but we're all talking as if an enormous government (the national U.S. government) is the only way to attack issues. For reference, the U.S. populace is the third largest one in the world, and it's certainly a very diverse one. Being all things to all those people is a very tall order. Keeping more issues at the state and local level allows for faster innovation, faster turnover of elected officials, smaller feedback loops, less expensive communication with elected officials, etc. It might not be appropriate to regulate the internet at the local level, but if more were decided that way (i.e., most social issues), there would be fewer national issues left to keep track of and debate. Issues like data privacy would therefore be more prominent in national elections. I frankly don't see how we can have such a large and detail-oriented national government long term. If China and India "crush" the U.S., it will at least partly due to the unforced error of the ever-growing scope of national U.S. politics.