5 ms·

One problem with other countries is there is an industrial oligarchy that can't get shake itself out of the "The Innovator's Dilemma." Disruption is not consid

One problem with other countries is there is an industrial oligarchy that can't get shake itself out of the "The Innovator's Dilemma." Disruption is not considered valuable. The Russians have two aircraft design bureaus Sukhoi and MiG to help somewhat in preventing stagnation, but it would be impossible for a SpaceX to come out of nowhere in Russia like it did in the U.S. Elon even went to Russia in the early SpaceX days to buy an old ICBM and they told him to screw off.[1] One related anecdote. I read somewhere a while ago about how Apple had a lot of internal security, even between teams. They said the reason for that is that if someone in the iPod department found out about the iPhone they'd realize the threat to their career and work to undermine it. [1] https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-tried-to-buy-icbm-rockets-from-russia https://www.inverse.com/article/34976-spacex-ceo-elon-musk-t...

treespace88 5y ago
In almost all other countries the rich use the government to keep competition out. All under the banner of national pride. In Canada we lock out all foreign investment in lots of areas.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  I never understood why Canada would restrict international players from disrupting sectors like telecom (a commodity really) but didn't seem to have any problem with Airbus taking over the CSeries program for almost nothing.
  - throw0101a 5y ago
    > disrupting sectors like telecom Perhaps the government doesn't like foreigns tapping Canadians' communications? The NSA listens in on its own citizens with the coöperation of the US telcos, so what chance would foreigners have? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) As a Canadian I would certainly like more competition, but I can certainly see the reasoning.
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      > Perhaps the government doesn't like foreigns tapping Canadians' communications? As if foreign countries needed to actually own the infrastructure to tap it [0]. All they need is to have employees inside with double allegiances [1] [2] [3] [0] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-now-only-member-of-five-eyes-alliance-to-have-not-banned-huawei/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-now-... [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-01/did-china-steal-canada-s-edge-in-5g-from-nortel https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-01/did-china... [2] https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-csis-right-to-worry-about-chinese-spies https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-csis-right-to-w... [3] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-sentenced-exporting-sensitive-military-related-technology-china https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-sent...
    - jollybean 5y ago
      Telecoms are protected sectors in the same way that Banking and Entertainment are, they are strategic industries, and 'wire tapping' while somewhere on the list of issues, is down the list. Canada's position on foreign ownership and trade is fairly consistent with norms in advanced countries, and fairly liberal, probably more so than most nations. Non-market forces also play a huge role in this, for example, irrespective of what the auto-trade policies actually are between the US and Japan ... the Japanese would simply never allow US firms to compete on equal terms there. Cultural factors, some more systematic and institutionalized than others, provide enough impetus that they represent at least as much of an issue as anything agreed upon formally by trade representatives.
      - 908B64B197 5y ago
        > Entertainment Never understood putting barriers and quota on entertainment (as well as government subsidies). Companies like Disney and Marvel both made billions simply by making content people want to watch. Canada is pretty much free to export its content anywhere and sell it. Why not simply compete?
        jollybean 5y ago
  - project2501a 5y ago
    > (a commodity really) you mean a utility, right?
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      Both really. Once a location is served by more than one provider, it becomes a commodity (who can sell packets the cheapest).
      - bpye 5y ago
        In many locations, essentially once you get outside of major cities, it is not economical to run more than one line to each property - telecoms often ends up a monopoly, similar to power distribution or water supply. You can lessen the effects by having the physical infrastructure owned by a different entity to the service provided - like in the U.K. with BT Openreach for example, and in that case maybe the service is a commodity - but I don’t think the infrastructure ever really is.
        midasuni 5y ago
        Wireless, satelite, cable in own ducts, fibre through sewer. There’s multiple ways to deliver ip packets to a property in the country. A better solution could be to have ducts to run whatever owned by the council and available on a RAND basis - sane way roads are, but it’s not essential for competition.
  - the_duke 5y ago
    OT, but: > but didn't seem to have any problem with Airbus taking over the CSeries program for almost nothing. This is actually a somewhat amusing to bring up in this context, because US protectionism is what made that happen. Boeing tried to kill off the C-Series by getting the US administration to impose 300% (sic!) import duties because ... it threatened US jobs. Airbus was targeting the program aggressively as well with tactics like price matching, so the CSeries was already struggling before that. Bombardies only viable way out was to join a partnership with Airbus (which got 50.1%), so the planes could be manufactured in their Alabama plant and it could be positioned within the Airbus product range instead of competing. The partnership was forced move, and quite a big middle finger to Boeing. The alternative would have probably been just shutting it down.
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      Bombardier already had a huge backlog of orders and the program was getting profitable. Since the tariffs were later ruled illegal, why not simply get the government support to weather the storm? Could you imagine the French letting Dassault, Airbus or the US government letting Boeing fail?
  - jollybean 5y ago
    The comment about 'Canada blocking foreign investment out' is basically not correct. Also, Telecoms, Banking and Communications are protected industries in every country, Canada is not special there. If Canadian Telecoms Bell, Rogers and Telus went up for grabs, and even if Canada realistically had the same access to US markets - do you think Telus would be buying AT&T? Or the other way around? It doesn't matter 'how well run' Canadian telecoms are (I don't think they are, but even if they were) - or how poorly US firms were run. The 'big' would eat the 'little'. All of the 'good jobs' in Telecom like network planning, research, anything related to R&D, executive management - would go to the US. Canada would be left with 'Customer Service' and some local marketing. There wouldn't really be that much gain for anyone, the net 'savings' would be marginal, and then, you'd be left with the Canadian government trying to regulate giant behemoths the size of entire sectors of the Canadian economy without much leverage. That sector is verticalized with Entertainment and so with Bell, would go a whole bunch of TV / Cable stations etc. Then AT&T/NBC would even more effectively be able to push their own programming, guests (who promote films, books, sports) and further push down anything remotely local towards hegemonic products. So aside from the not-so-obvious economic advantages, there are quite a few externalities to worry about as well. America in particular likes to push the concept of 'Free Markets' - because it has tremendous advantage in that context. 'Just Open Your Economy!' is the strategy of a 'Giant Economy' telling 'Little Economies' that 'We Will Devour Everything Of Value'. It's essentially a form of economic colonialism. Adam Smith isn't exactly wrong, there can be many benfits to both sides, Canada has this kind of 'Gilded Cage' situation wherein it can maintain a very high standard of living by being next to the US, but it comes at the cost of losing the ability to do almost anything exceptional that in any way competes with the US. The EU is not as unbalanced and they have different national constituents, with longer history and more potent foundational industries. Tiny Sweden makes Jet Fighters (!) which comes out of their cold war Air Force history of independence and a formerly relatively giant Air Force. That America can have guys like 'Elon Musk' + Space X is a function of a few things, but at very least, it's scale. The US is a huge market and only certain things can only be done at that scale. Most small countries do not have competitive automakers. Space X is essentially dependent on US Government contracts, at least indirectly. Second, it's 'much bigger than it's peripherals'. This means that the US sucks all the talent and capital from neighbouring states into it's systems. Think of the 'Silicon Valley' as not an 'American' place - think of it as an 'International Zone' that happens to be in the US. A 'super cluster' with a giant critical mass of talent. Right now, arguably due at least partly to the inherent advantage that the Euro gives to Germany - Spaniards, French, Italians etc. are moving to Germany at considerably greater rates than in the other direction. That's where the industrial base will grow jobs from. Peripheral European states that don't manage to found their own competitive sectors will turn into places like Alabama and Louisiana where the talent vacates before it can establish into critical mass. Third, another major artifact is inequality. Low-end jobs in American don't pay well, and they don't get benefits. The surpluses to the high side of the pyramid are huge. But when you take into consideration the 'off the books' economy, it's massive. California has almost 3 Million undocumented citizens, who are more likely to be young, more likely to be workforce participants, almost entirely working at the lowest end of the labour pool, and definitely earning far sub-minimum wage. Every manual activity from planting, to picking, to trucking, to food preparation and cleaning - everything but the 'front facing stuff' is often fulfilled by people 'off the books' and the consumer and corporate surpluses from that are gigantic. Add to that the downward pressure on wages ... and basically you have a giant wealth transfer machine with enormous surpluses floating into the hands of those with middle to upper class incomes. Just consider what all of the US stats would look like if we accounted for those jobs, at those wages. What would GDP/capita start to look like, GINI coefficient, other measures of inequality and % 'uninsured', voting rights. I'm not making a political comment here, it's a problem and a paradox, but pointing out the material advantages to the non-serfdom population. This excess free cash-flow both on an individual level and corporate level enable so many things to happen, it's hard to fathom. It's so common in America for individuals to have hobbies i.e. drones, cars, travel, tech etc. that are 'really expensive', beyond the reproach of the middle class in other nations. Relatively cheap energy, wide open spaces and relatively cheap land, especially compared to Europe for example, again, this has all sorts of 'unseen surpluses'. So those are just a few of the differentiators and of course, there are so many more, it's complicated.
  - InTheArena 5y ago
    Canada did prop up this program for quite a long time. It never achieved its sales goals. Moreover the money that they dumped into it was ruled illegal by the WTO. In true Trump fashion the White House overreacted and put 300% tariff to kill the program. Airbus rescued the program.
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      > Canada did prop up this program for quite a long time. Like every other aerospace company > It never achieved its sales goals. Looks like they have years of backlog. And the whole program is profitable. They landed Delta as their North American launch customer. > Moreover the money that they dumped into it was ruled illegal by the WTO Wasn't it overturned?
ianai 5y ago
Actually the US declared they were willing to spend money for commercial space flight at the end of the shuttle program. They literally said “I’m a demander for a good/service” and entrepreneurs got to work.
api 5y ago
I've come to believe that the most important quality of capitalism isn't markets or some super-human intelligence that markets somehow possess, but simply the ability to bypass stagnant incumbents, entrenched interests, and bureaucracies. In other words the most critical quality is permission-free innovation. In all other systems from feudalism to socialism to communism there generally is just one department or agency responsible for each thing, and it's usually either the state itself or some state-blessed entity with an enforced monopoly. If that entity does it's job well, that's great. If it doesn't, tough shit. Nobody can go around it. This is also why I disagree with market purists about anti-trust. If a private company gets so huge that it is able to occupy an entire market niche for a prolonged period of time, it's important to do something to either break it up or incentivize other entrants. A private company allowed to remain super-dominant in one sector for too long starts to look and behave like a Soviet bureau.
- mlindner 5y ago
  > This is also why I disagree with market purists about anti-trust. If a private company gets so huge that it is able to occupy an entire market niche for a prolonged period of time, it's important to do something to either break it up or incentivize other entrants. A private company allowed to remain super-dominant in one sector for too long starts to look and behave like a Soviet bureau. I would say that if a private company gets so huge and can control an entire market niche for a prolonged period of time, they will inevitably stagnate which leaves them open to competition. The biggest problem issue for such private companies is not that they can control entire market segments but that they can lobby the government for regulations that permanently entrench themselves by making competition illegal in some way. The regulations are almost always done in the name of safety (if we don't regulate this then new unsafe entrants who don't follow all our internal practices could enter the industry and kill people). So they get government regulations created that exactly follow the company's own internal regulations. That both accelerates the company toward stagnation (they can no longer update the regulations) and also puts up walls for new competition as the new entrants can't innovate if they have to follow all the legacy processes. That further gets trade unions/teamsters involved who learned to follow those regulations in trades schools and further act to restrict any improvement as it would kill their jobs. Them being a monopoly in and of itself is not a problem, as long as we can prevent them from putting up barriers that would protect themselves from competition once they stagnate.

treespace88 5y ago

In almost all other countries the rich use the government to keep competition out. All under the banner of national pride. In Canada we lock out all foreign investment in lots of areas.

908B64B197 5y ago
I never understood why Canada would restrict international players from disrupting sectors like telecom (a commodity really) but didn't seem to have any problem with Airbus taking over the CSeries program for almost nothing.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > disrupting sectors like telecom Perhaps the government doesn't like foreigns tapping Canadians' communications? The NSA listens in on its own citizens with the coöperation of the US telcos, so what chance would foreigners have? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) As a Canadian I would certainly like more competition, but I can certainly see the reasoning.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    > Perhaps the government doesn't like foreigns tapping Canadians' communications? As if foreign countries needed to actually own the infrastructure to tap it [0]. All they need is to have employees inside with double allegiances [1] [2] [3] [0] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-now-only-member-of-five-eyes-alliance-to-have-not-banned-huawei/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canada-now-... [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-01/did-china-steal-canada-s-edge-in-5g-from-nortel https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-01/did-china... [2] https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-csis-right-to-worry-about-chinese-spies https://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-csis-right-to-w... [3] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-sentenced-exporting-sensitive-military-related-technology-china https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-sent...
  - jollybean 5y ago
    Telecoms are protected sectors in the same way that Banking and Entertainment are, they are strategic industries, and 'wire tapping' while somewhere on the list of issues, is down the list. Canada's position on foreign ownership and trade is fairly consistent with norms in advanced countries, and fairly liberal, probably more so than most nations. Non-market forces also play a huge role in this, for example, irrespective of what the auto-trade policies actually are between the US and Japan ... the Japanese would simply never allow US firms to compete on equal terms there. Cultural factors, some more systematic and institutionalized than others, provide enough impetus that they represent at least as much of an issue as anything agreed upon formally by trade representatives.
    - 908B64B197 5y ago
      > Entertainment Never understood putting barriers and quota on entertainment (as well as government subsidies). Companies like Disney and Marvel both made billions simply by making content people want to watch. Canada is pretty much free to export its content anywhere and sell it. Why not simply compete?
      - jollybean 5y ago
- project2501a 5y ago
  > (a commodity really) you mean a utility, right?
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    Both really. Once a location is served by more than one provider, it becomes a commodity (who can sell packets the cheapest).
    - bpye 5y ago
      In many locations, essentially once you get outside of major cities, it is not economical to run more than one line to each property - telecoms often ends up a monopoly, similar to power distribution or water supply. You can lessen the effects by having the physical infrastructure owned by a different entity to the service provided - like in the U.K. with BT Openreach for example, and in that case maybe the service is a commodity - but I don’t think the infrastructure ever really is.
      - midasuni 5y ago
        Wireless, satelite, cable in own ducts, fibre through sewer. There’s multiple ways to deliver ip packets to a property in the country. A better solution could be to have ducts to run whatever owned by the council and available on a RAND basis - sane way roads are, but it’s not essential for competition.
- the_duke 5y ago
  OT, but: > but didn't seem to have any problem with Airbus taking over the CSeries program for almost nothing. This is actually a somewhat amusing to bring up in this context, because US protectionism is what made that happen. Boeing tried to kill off the C-Series by getting the US administration to impose 300% (sic!) import duties because ... it threatened US jobs. Airbus was targeting the program aggressively as well with tactics like price matching, so the CSeries was already struggling before that. Bombardies only viable way out was to join a partnership with Airbus (which got 50.1%), so the planes could be manufactured in their Alabama plant and it could be positioned within the Airbus product range instead of competing. The partnership was forced move, and quite a big middle finger to Boeing. The alternative would have probably been just shutting it down.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    Bombardier already had a huge backlog of orders and the program was getting profitable. Since the tariffs were later ruled illegal, why not simply get the government support to weather the storm? Could you imagine the French letting Dassault, Airbus or the US government letting Boeing fail?
- jollybean 5y ago
  The comment about 'Canada blocking foreign investment out' is basically not correct. Also, Telecoms, Banking and Communications are protected industries in every country, Canada is not special there. If Canadian Telecoms Bell, Rogers and Telus went up for grabs, and even if Canada realistically had the same access to US markets - do you think Telus would be buying AT&T? Or the other way around? It doesn't matter 'how well run' Canadian telecoms are (I don't think they are, but even if they were) - or how poorly US firms were run. The 'big' would eat the 'little'. All of the 'good jobs' in Telecom like network planning, research, anything related to R&D, executive management - would go to the US. Canada would be left with 'Customer Service' and some local marketing. There wouldn't really be that much gain for anyone, the net 'savings' would be marginal, and then, you'd be left with the Canadian government trying to regulate giant behemoths the size of entire sectors of the Canadian economy without much leverage. That sector is verticalized with Entertainment and so with Bell, would go a whole bunch of TV / Cable stations etc. Then AT&T/NBC would even more effectively be able to push their own programming, guests (who promote films, books, sports) and further push down anything remotely local towards hegemonic products. So aside from the not-so-obvious economic advantages, there are quite a few externalities to worry about as well. America in particular likes to push the concept of 'Free Markets' - because it has tremendous advantage in that context. 'Just Open Your Economy!' is the strategy of a 'Giant Economy' telling 'Little Economies' that 'We Will Devour Everything Of Value'. It's essentially a form of economic colonialism. Adam Smith isn't exactly wrong, there can be many benfits to both sides, Canada has this kind of 'Gilded Cage' situation wherein it can maintain a very high standard of living by being next to the US, but it comes at the cost of losing the ability to do almost anything exceptional that in any way competes with the US. The EU is not as unbalanced and they have different national constituents, with longer history and more potent foundational industries. Tiny Sweden makes Jet Fighters (!) which comes out of their cold war Air Force history of independence and a formerly relatively giant Air Force. That America can have guys like 'Elon Musk' + Space X is a function of a few things, but at very least, it's scale. The US is a huge market and only certain things can only be done at that scale. Most small countries do not have competitive automakers. Space X is essentially dependent on US Government contracts, at least indirectly. Second, it's 'much bigger than it's peripherals'. This means that the US sucks all the talent and capital from neighbouring states into it's systems. Think of the 'Silicon Valley' as not an 'American' place - think of it as an 'International Zone' that happens to be in the US. A 'super cluster' with a giant critical mass of talent. Right now, arguably due at least partly to the inherent advantage that the Euro gives to Germany - Spaniards, French, Italians etc. are moving to Germany at considerably greater rates than in the other direction. That's where the industrial base will grow jobs from. Peripheral European states that don't manage to found their own competitive sectors will turn into places like Alabama and Louisiana where the talent vacates before it can establish into critical mass. Third, another major artifact is inequality. Low-end jobs in American don't pay well, and they don't get benefits. The surpluses to the high side of the pyramid are huge. But when you take into consideration the 'off the books' economy, it's massive. California has almost 3 Million undocumented citizens, who are more likely to be young, more likely to be workforce participants, almost entirely working at the lowest end of the labour pool, and definitely earning far sub-minimum wage. Every manual activity from planting, to picking, to trucking, to food preparation and cleaning - everything but the 'front facing stuff' is often fulfilled by people 'off the books' and the consumer and corporate surpluses from that are gigantic. Add to that the downward pressure on wages ... and basically you have a giant wealth transfer machine with enormous surpluses floating into the hands of those with middle to upper class incomes. Just consider what all of the US stats would look like if we accounted for those jobs, at those wages. What would GDP/capita start to look like, GINI coefficient, other measures of inequality and % 'uninsured', voting rights. I'm not making a political comment here, it's a problem and a paradox, but pointing out the material advantages to the non-serfdom population. This excess free cash-flow both on an individual level and corporate level enable so many things to happen, it's hard to fathom. It's so common in America for individuals to have hobbies i.e. drones, cars, travel, tech etc. that are 'really expensive', beyond the reproach of the middle class in other nations. Relatively cheap energy, wide open spaces and relatively cheap land, especially compared to Europe for example, again, this has all sorts of 'unseen surpluses'. So those are just a few of the differentiators and of course, there are so many more, it's complicated.
- InTheArena 5y ago
  Canada did prop up this program for quite a long time. It never achieved its sales goals. Moreover the money that they dumped into it was ruled illegal by the WTO. In true Trump fashion the White House overreacted and put 300% tariff to kill the program. Airbus rescued the program.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    > Canada did prop up this program for quite a long time. Like every other aerospace company > It never achieved its sales goals. Looks like they have years of backlog. And the whole program is profitable. They landed Delta as their North American launch customer. > Moreover the money that they dumped into it was ruled illegal by the WTO Wasn't it overturned?

ianai 5y ago

Actually the US declared they were willing to spend money for commercial space flight at the end of the shuttle program. They literally said “I’m a demander for a good/service” and entrepreneurs got to work.

api 5y ago

I've come to believe that the most important quality of capitalism isn't markets or some super-human intelligence that markets somehow possess, but simply the ability to bypass stagnant incumbents, entrenched interests, and bureaucracies. In other words the most critical quality is permission-free innovation. In all other systems from feudalism to socialism to communism there generally is just one department or agency responsible for each thing, and it's usually either the state itself or some state-blessed entity with an enforced monopoly. If that entity does it's job well, that's great. If it doesn't, tough shit. Nobody can go around it. This is also why I disagree with market purists about anti-trust. If a private company gets so huge that it is able to occupy an entire market niche for a prolonged period of time, it's important to do something to either break it up or incentivize other entrants. A private company allowed to remain super-dominant in one sector for too long starts to look and behave like a Soviet bureau.

mlindner 5y ago
> This is also why I disagree with market purists about anti-trust. If a private company gets so huge that it is able to occupy an entire market niche for a prolonged period of time, it's important to do something to either break it up or incentivize other entrants. A private company allowed to remain super-dominant in one sector for too long starts to look and behave like a Soviet bureau. I would say that if a private company gets so huge and can control an entire market niche for a prolonged period of time, they will inevitably stagnate which leaves them open to competition. The biggest problem issue for such private companies is not that they can control entire market segments but that they can lobby the government for regulations that permanently entrench themselves by making competition illegal in some way. The regulations are almost always done in the name of safety (if we don't regulate this then new unsafe entrants who don't follow all our internal practices could enter the industry and kill people). So they get government regulations created that exactly follow the company's own internal regulations. That both accelerates the company toward stagnation (they can no longer update the regulations) and also puts up walls for new competition as the new entrants can't innovate if they have to follow all the legacy processes. That further gets trade unions/teamsters involved who learned to follow those regulations in trades schools and further act to restrict any improvement as it would kill their jobs. Them being a monopoly in and of itself is not a problem, as long as we can prevent them from putting up barriers that would protect themselves from competition once they stagnate.