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Having written a book and created a YouTube channel isn't any sort of evidence for the validity of much more than the creators ability to create a book and YouT

by ada1981 13y ago

Having written a book and created a YouTube channel isn't any sort of evidence for the validity of much more than the creators ability to create a book and YouTube channel. Because a government offers funding at a low rate and an entrepreneur takes advantage of such a rate doesn't mean the government "innovated". I think NASA and the moon are a good example of innovation in the relm of war. The space race was about international posturing and displays of technological capability as a deterrent to engaging in nuclear war. Of course we lost most of the "events" of the space race save putting someone on the Moon. It seems plausible governments could be innovative as they are comprise of humans and humans can create things regardless of context. Long scale planning certainly is a strength of a government, because in theory in means funding can be coerced from citizens and invested into projects that they wouldn't normally choose of their free will via the marketplace -- but they often simply don't invest in good long term projects. Perhaps I'm wrong.. the promise of wealth seems to be a primary motivator, and since governments amass large sums of money through coercive taxation, I suppose they can be a motivational source for inventors and entrepreneurs, but I'm just not comfortable with saying governments are more innovative than individuals.

jmduke 13y ago
Having written a book and created a YouTube channel isn't any sort of evidence for the validity of much more than the creators ability to create a book and YouTube channel. The ability to make a book in service of own's argument is evidence of a great deal many things: at the very least, dedication and conviction to one's argument. The space race was about international posturing and displays of technological capability as a deterrent to engaging in nuclear war. This is 100% valid, and yet it resulted in us putting a man on the moon, so you haven't really detracted from the argument.
- OvidNaso 13y ago
  >The ability to make a book in service of own's argument is evidence of a great deal many things: at the very least, dedication and conviction to one's argument. Or confidence in one's ability to fool the market.
moocowduckquack 13y ago
The space race was about international posturing and displays of technological capability as a deterrent to engaging in nuclear war. As a side effect we got positioning, communications and earth observing satellites, all the sciences have had massive benefits and the extra research into stuff like photovoltaics hasn't hurt either.
LiweiZ 13y ago
"Long scale planning certainly is a strength of a government, because in theory in means funding can be coerced from citizens and invested into projects that they wouldn't normally choose of their free will via the marketplace -- but they often simply don't invest in good long term projects." As we human beings live in a complex system such as country. The old fashioned "long term planning and executing accordingly" in the long run actually does way more harm. Misallocating resources, killing the possibilities each individual could bring to the system, killing the necessary environment for more diversified individuals to grow up from infants... If taking the similarity to animals' as a spectrum (no offense). A low level trait means things like food needs, shelter to live. A high level trait means the things people created such as art, tech... What I believe may be wrong, but I think as humans, the high level traits are the ultimate things we are looking for. Bringing in more possibilities and catalyze some of them might be a good way.
calibraxis 13y ago
It's not about "governments are more innovative than individuals." False dichotomy on many levels: * More accurate to say "governments are more innovative than corporations." * Governments employ workers for wages, like corporations. For example, innovative mathematician Terence Tao is employed at UCLA, a public university. (Which paid him $433,599.99 in 2012. http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/ http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/) * Corporations are artificial creations of the state. Feel free to look at their history. Government and corporate interests are the same, to a first approximation. They're both part of the same (state-capitalist) system. BTW, the point is obviously her book contains relevant evidence.
- SiVal 13y ago
  More accurate to say "governments are more innovative than corporations." Nonsense. If that were true, then government wouldn't contract so much of their "innovation" out to corporations. I used to work for a corporation that did a lot of this "government innovation", and the primary role of government was to figure out which corporation would do the innovating, make sure it got done, and then to pay them. Our biggest competitors were other corporations. Yes, we had some competition from government labs, but not much. We and our corporate competitors could create whole new staffed divisions in a half-dozen promising areas in the time it took a government lab to argue over whether to use this year's budget on a new framatron or a pizza oven. We also had some competition from research universities, but even there, the public universities were hardly more "innovative" than MIT, Caltech, Stanford...the private corporations. Some of the things we came up with at taxpayer expense were worthless. What could taxpayers have come up with if their money hadn't been confiscated and given to us? Some of the things were valuable (I think), but nothing that we couldn't have produced if paid by companies (as we often were) instead of a government agency. And all this stuff about how we owe the Internet to government is hooey. It's as if packet switching could only have been invented by someone paid with confiscated tax dollars. People who were paid by non-coerced customer revenues could never have thought of it, and if the government hadn't invented it, it wouldn't exist today. Just because the government had its fingers in something doesn't mean it played a necessary role. It tends to stick its fingers into nearly everything, but that doesn't mean it plays a useful role in more than a few of them. Most of those innovations where the government was first to do something would have been done just as well not long after by someone else if the demand for it were real (people voluntarily spending their own money) and not just political.
jes 13y ago
"Long scale planning certainly is a strength of a government, because in theory in means funding can be coerced from citizens and invested into projects that they wouldn't normally choose of their free will via the marketplace -- but they often simply don't invest in good long term projects." You're right about funding being coerced from citizens. There is also nothing theoretical about it, as anyone who has dealt with the IRS can probably tell you. As to long scale planning certainly being a strength of a government, I offer you the national debt of the United States of America as evidence. The long scale planning done by politicians has the national debt, including unfunded liabilities, at something like 80 trillion dollars or more.

by ada1981 13y ago

jmduke 13y ago

Having written a book and created a YouTube channel isn't any sort of evidence for the validity of much more than the creators ability to create a book and YouTube channel. The ability to make a book in service of own's argument is evidence of a great deal many things: at the very least, dedication and conviction to one's argument. The space race was about international posturing and displays of technological capability as a deterrent to engaging in nuclear war. This is 100% valid, and yet it resulted in us putting a man on the moon, so you haven't really detracted from the argument.

OvidNaso 13y ago
>The ability to make a book in service of own's argument is evidence of a great deal many things: at the very least, dedication and conviction to one's argument. Or confidence in one's ability to fool the market.

moocowduckquack 13y ago

The space race was about international posturing and displays of technological capability as a deterrent to engaging in nuclear war. As a side effect we got positioning, communications and earth observing satellites, all the sciences have had massive benefits and the extra research into stuff like photovoltaics hasn't hurt either.

LiweiZ 13y ago

"Long scale planning certainly is a strength of a government, because in theory in means funding can be coerced from citizens and invested into projects that they wouldn't normally choose of their free will via the marketplace -- but they often simply don't invest in good long term projects." As we human beings live in a complex system such as country. The old fashioned "long term planning and executing accordingly" in the long run actually does way more harm. Misallocating resources, killing the possibilities each individual could bring to the system, killing the necessary environment for more diversified individuals to grow up from infants... If taking the similarity to animals' as a spectrum (no offense). A low level trait means things like food needs, shelter to live. A high level trait means the things people created such as art, tech... What I believe may be wrong, but I think as humans, the high level traits are the ultimate things we are looking for. Bringing in more possibilities and catalyze some of them might be a good way.

calibraxis 13y ago

It's not about "governments are more innovative than individuals." False dichotomy on many levels: * More accurate to say "governments are more innovative than corporations." * Governments employ workers for wages, like corporations. For example, innovative mathematician Terence Tao is employed at UCLA, a public university. (Which paid him $433,599.99 in 2012. http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/ http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/) * Corporations are artificial creations of the state. Feel free to look at their history. Government and corporate interests are the same, to a first approximation. They're both part of the same (state-capitalist) system. BTW, the point is obviously her book contains relevant evidence.

SiVal 13y ago
More accurate to say "governments are more innovative than corporations." Nonsense. If that were true, then government wouldn't contract so much of their "innovation" out to corporations. I used to work for a corporation that did a lot of this "government innovation", and the primary role of government was to figure out which corporation would do the innovating, make sure it got done, and then to pay them. Our biggest competitors were other corporations. Yes, we had some competition from government labs, but not much. We and our corporate competitors could create whole new staffed divisions in a half-dozen promising areas in the time it took a government lab to argue over whether to use this year's budget on a new framatron or a pizza oven. We also had some competition from research universities, but even there, the public universities were hardly more "innovative" than MIT, Caltech, Stanford...the private corporations. Some of the things we came up with at taxpayer expense were worthless. What could taxpayers have come up with if their money hadn't been confiscated and given to us? Some of the things were valuable (I think), but nothing that we couldn't have produced if paid by companies (as we often were) instead of a government agency. And all this stuff about how we owe the Internet to government is hooey. It's as if packet switching could only have been invented by someone paid with confiscated tax dollars. People who were paid by non-coerced customer revenues could never have thought of it, and if the government hadn't invented it, it wouldn't exist today. Just because the government had its fingers in something doesn't mean it played a necessary role. It tends to stick its fingers into nearly everything, but that doesn't mean it plays a useful role in more than a few of them. Most of those innovations where the government was first to do something would have been done just as well not long after by someone else if the demand for it were real (people voluntarily spending their own money) and not just political.

jes 13y ago

"Long scale planning certainly is a strength of a government, because in theory in means funding can be coerced from citizens and invested into projects that they wouldn't normally choose of their free will via the marketplace -- but they often simply don't invest in good long term projects." You're right about funding being coerced from citizens. There is also nothing theoretical about it, as anyone who has dealt with the IRS can probably tell you. As to long scale planning certainly being a strength of a government, I offer you the national debt of the United States of America as evidence. The long scale planning done by politicians has the national debt, including unfunded liabilities, at something like 80 trillion dollars or more.