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What I mean is that the industries which prevail in a country are there because of a combination of many reasons. Most of them are historical and many/most of t
by netcan 12y ago
What I mean is that the industries which prevail in a country are there because of a combination of many reasons. Most of them are historical and many/most of them unknown or at least poorly understood. Industries are ecosystems and they are culture. Policies play a role, but its a complicated role, interacting with all these things.
I'm objecting to this article on two levels. One, that it is at all possible to pick a result (even if it was defined) like innovation in manufacturing and relate it back to policies which can be then implemented somewhere else to achieve the same result. Policy isn't the only thing at play and
IE, if the US would understand like Germany understands that "innovation must result in productivity gains that are widespread, rather than concentrated in the high-tech sector of the moment." then GM would have good software like BMW does.
Second, I don't think the author even tries. WTF is he even saying. Who is Germany? What exactly does she understand? Does "understand" mean implement a policy? What policy? Are we talking about changing high school curriculum or tax codes? He's basically isn't saying anything while trying to give his audience the impression that some very obvious mistakes are being made needlessly.
The conclusions are populist and political, nearly implying a belligerent conspiracy.
"Germany’s innovations create and sustain good jobs across the spectrum of workers’ educational attainment; American innovation, at best, creates jobs at Amazon’s fulfillment centers and in Apple stores."
And it's mostly untrue, to the extent that weasely implications and unspecific statements can be true or untrue. The bones of his non-argument seems to be that German innovation creates good middle class manufacturing jobs while US innovation eliminates them. That's not true.
Amazon & Apple do not employ only low wage staff. They have nothing to do with displacing auto workers. They employ mostly people in "middle class" jobs. The German manufacturing sector isn't increasing employment in good old 1950s style manufacturing jobs either. They sector is employing engineers, accountants and such, just like Apple and Amazon.
I don't literally mean magic.
- pessimizer 12y ago>One, that it is at all possible to pick a result (even if it was defined) like innovation in manufacturing and relate it back to policies which can be then implemented somewhere else to achieve the same result. I must be reading this wrong, but it seems like you're denying the effects of policy on outcomes, and denying that similar policies tend to result in similar outcomes. That would be an argument against having policies altogether.
- Tuna-Fish 12y agoThe way I'm reading it, he's denying that policies are the only determining factor in outcomes. By his words, it's possible that they contribute to outcomes, but as they are not the sole determining factor, it's impossible to look at outcomes and assign them to the corresponding policies.
- afarrell 12y agoThat is also the way I'm reading it, with a dash more "these things are terrifyingly complex, so unless your article shows some real thoughtful work, it isn't worth much."
- jboy55 12y agoCan you find specific policies that produced a specific result, like innovation? Then, are those policies transferable to different cultural/political climates to produce the same result? If you stick to results like innovation, I think you'll be hard pressed to find the former, and its pretty much the latter. Look at hack days at companies. A really innovative company holds a really successful hack day. Are innovative companies doing hack days to drive their innovation? Or are hack days the result of other factors that drove innovation? Should leadership of a company with innovation stagnation hold hack days? Or, is that just following the cargo-cult antipattern?
- netcan 12y agoNo. I am not denying (or if we can cool back down to a friendlier tone^, disputing) the effect of policies on outcomes. But, they are one factor which can be substantial or not. I am disputing that (apart from some relatively uncommon cases) they are predictive or determining, especially if the thing we are trying to determine is what kind of effects on employment future innovations will have. The implication that one could take the best of an economy and expecting that this is achievable elsewhere by copying policies or a policy approach is nonsensical. Germany's industrial engineering is superb (as is California's software) and that is the result of a lot of history and organic development. Policy played a role, but probably a small one. Even if the role is bigger than I think, it is still a complicated role that was played by interacting with time and place sensitive uncopiable factors. California's software is part of an ecology (Universities, VCs, Angels) and it is part of a culture. You can't copy RMS & a history of hippies in Berkley. The extent to which 'innovation' they can be encouraged at all and how is fairly disputed. It's certainly harder than encouraging (for example) investment. Innovation is inherently unpredictable. Trying to direct the eventual impact of innovation "innovates in order to empower workers" is snake oil. And, I don't think it's even true that Germany's innovation has these characteristics. The whole article is layered nonsense from a Professor. grrrr ^My apologies. Reading back, I don't like the tone I wrote in.