5 ms·

The state doesn't actually spend that much on R&D, most of it goes to various welfare programs and the military. Getting into the whole internet, GPS stuff, we

by fleitz 13y ago

The state doesn't actually spend that much on R&D, most of it goes to various welfare programs and the military. Getting into the whole internet, GPS stuff, we should just spend lots of money on the military because they fund a whole tonne of innovation, oddly enough because they receive a whole tonne of money. R&D is a byproduct of massively wasteful state spending, putting more money into government will not result in more R&D spending... I'd hope that an entity that spends 20 to 30 percent of a nations GDP was responsible for at least a little bit of innovation.

seanmcdirmid 13y ago
Governments are most effective when they are competing, just like private companies; e.g. USA vs. Germany/Japan in WII, USA vs. Soviet Union during the cold war. These days, we are kind of at peace with countries...even China is just a big finicky panda bear right now. We've replaced are bogey men from a well-defined Soviet Union to a bunch of people in caves who blow things up randomly with IEDs. Well, this war has given us great drone technology at least, but competing with people in caves doesn't give us as much. It would be nice if we could replace our obsession with competing with each other to achieving hugely ambitious goals like colonizing the moon or Mars. I'm doubtful this is part of our collective nature, though.
- Sven7 13y ago
  This is the Neil Degrasse Tyson argument. Though I like it, I kind of really prefer the Bill Gates argument on healthcare and education, and think its the more important one, that everyone can come together on...not just the nerds. And I am not as doubtful. Our collective nature resulted in the internet. It is only as imperfect as we are. But it also represents collaboration between people on a scale never see before. And that is a cause for hope. Virality on our social networks can be used, and I am sure it will be used, for more than just getting Psy to the top of the charts or Obama elected. Its just a matter of time.
  - seanmcdirmid 13y ago
    >Virality on our social networks can be used, and I am sure it will be used, for more than just getting Psy to the top of the charts or Obama elected. Its just a matter of time. Greater errors have been made in the understanding of human nature; think communism and libertarianism. The technocracy is a bit more reasonable, but we are still far away from it. We need some crisis to drive radical social change, and for all the crying right now, we are pretty comfortable.
chris_wot 13y ago
Whilst I agree that the state is often wasteful of resources, it is often more efficient and able to fund riskier ventures that result in longer term results. As for a "little bit of innovation": the Internet alone is not what I consider to be a small innovation.
- fleitz 13y ago
  "The internet" was hardly created by government funding, yes, DARPA funded TCP/IP and CERN funded Tim Berners Lee, but if you're going to ascribe the entire internet to the government because they funded the initial R&D that led to fundamental pieces of it being developed then you might as well ascribe the internet to Bell Labs because they invented the transistor. Why not say that ordinary people are the funders of all this tech because if they didn't pay taxes, the state would not exist... As with all things all these achievements were possible because of the giants who came before. That's what's so stupid about the entire article. You could just as easily make a case that everything we have today is the result of gentlemen scientists from the renaissance. Or that Alexander the Great is the inventor of all of western civilization.
  - mjn 13y ago
    The government role in the internet was considerably deeper than just funding the early protocol work, though it was definitely not the only player. It's a fairly good example of the public/private innovation networks thesis the book being reviewed here is arguing for. Abbate's book Inventing the Internet (MIT Press, 1999) has a pretty good account of all the various players and how they related.
    - chris_wot 13y ago
      Not to mention, it's trying to put paid to all those who think that th government shouldn't be involved in research. There are a hell of a lot of those sorts out there.
  - hxa7241 13y ago
    > That's what's so stupid about the entire article. You could just as easily make a case that everything we have today is the result of gentlemen scientists from the renaissance Or that Alexander the Great is the inventor of all of western civilization.. No, the article does not overgeneralise, your comment does. The proposition is that a substantial proportion of particular quite well-defined 'innovation' was created through state systems as opposed to private commerce. If, in order to argue against that, you have to generalise so much that one can almost no longer say anything causes anything, because everything causes everything, you end up saying nothing. You have not refuted something, you have just made up a more meaningless way of measuring anything.
rwallace 13y ago
Be careful of reading claims into the article that it doesn't actually make. You don't have to believe 'all government spending is productive' or 'government should spend more money across the board' - claims the article does not make, and with which I, like you, would disagree - to agree with the claim 'government R&D spending is productive and we should be doing more of that', for which there is strong evidence.

by fleitz 13y ago

seanmcdirmid 13y ago

Governments are most effective when they are competing, just like private companies; e.g. USA vs. Germany/Japan in WII, USA vs. Soviet Union during the cold war. These days, we are kind of at peace with countries...even China is just a big finicky panda bear right now. We've replaced are bogey men from a well-defined Soviet Union to a bunch of people in caves who blow things up randomly with IEDs. Well, this war has given us great drone technology at least, but competing with people in caves doesn't give us as much. It would be nice if we could replace our obsession with competing with each other to achieving hugely ambitious goals like colonizing the moon or Mars. I'm doubtful this is part of our collective nature, though.

Sven7 13y ago
This is the Neil Degrasse Tyson argument. Though I like it, I kind of really prefer the Bill Gates argument on healthcare and education, and think its the more important one, that everyone can come together on...not just the nerds. And I am not as doubtful. Our collective nature resulted in the internet. It is only as imperfect as we are. But it also represents collaboration between people on a scale never see before. And that is a cause for hope. Virality on our social networks can be used, and I am sure it will be used, for more than just getting Psy to the top of the charts or Obama elected. Its just a matter of time.
- seanmcdirmid 13y ago
  >Virality on our social networks can be used, and I am sure it will be used, for more than just getting Psy to the top of the charts or Obama elected. Its just a matter of time. Greater errors have been made in the understanding of human nature; think communism and libertarianism. The technocracy is a bit more reasonable, but we are still far away from it. We need some crisis to drive radical social change, and for all the crying right now, we are pretty comfortable.

chris_wot 13y ago

Whilst I agree that the state is often wasteful of resources, it is often more efficient and able to fund riskier ventures that result in longer term results. As for a "little bit of innovation": the Internet alone is not what I consider to be a small innovation.

fleitz 13y ago
"The internet" was hardly created by government funding, yes, DARPA funded TCP/IP and CERN funded Tim Berners Lee, but if you're going to ascribe the entire internet to the government because they funded the initial R&D that led to fundamental pieces of it being developed then you might as well ascribe the internet to Bell Labs because they invented the transistor. Why not say that ordinary people are the funders of all this tech because if they didn't pay taxes, the state would not exist... As with all things all these achievements were possible because of the giants who came before. That's what's so stupid about the entire article. You could just as easily make a case that everything we have today is the result of gentlemen scientists from the renaissance. Or that Alexander the Great is the inventor of all of western civilization.
- mjn 13y ago
  The government role in the internet was considerably deeper than just funding the early protocol work, though it was definitely not the only player. It's a fairly good example of the public/private innovation networks thesis the book being reviewed here is arguing for. Abbate's book Inventing the Internet (MIT Press, 1999) has a pretty good account of all the various players and how they related.
  - chris_wot 13y ago
    Not to mention, it's trying to put paid to all those who think that th government shouldn't be involved in research. There are a hell of a lot of those sorts out there.
- hxa7241 13y ago
  > That's what's so stupid about the entire article. You could just as easily make a case that everything we have today is the result of gentlemen scientists from the renaissance Or that Alexander the Great is the inventor of all of western civilization.. No, the article does not overgeneralise, your comment does. The proposition is that a substantial proportion of particular quite well-defined 'innovation' was created through state systems as opposed to private commerce. If, in order to argue against that, you have to generalise so much that one can almost no longer say anything causes anything, because everything causes everything, you end up saying nothing. You have not refuted something, you have just made up a more meaningless way of measuring anything.

rwallace 13y ago

Be careful of reading claims into the article that it doesn't actually make. You don't have to believe 'all government spending is productive' or 'government should spend more money across the board' - claims the article does not make, and with which I, like you, would disagree - to agree with the claim 'government R&D spending is productive and we should be doing more of that', for which there is strong evidence.