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The takeaway from Thiel's fairly accurate assessment of broad technological progress is the following: You get what you incentivize. Winner-take-all free mark

by FD3SA 12y ago

The takeaway from Thiel's fairly accurate assessment of broad technological progress is the following: You get what you incentivize. Winner-take-all free market capitalism is not synonymous with advanced, century-long research and development projects at the national scale. Our current socioeconomic system rewards convincing others to depart with their money in the quickest way possible. Ponzi-schemes, marketing, financial trickery, etc. are the preferred methods. Why do we see so many get rich quick startups (to the dismay of Sam Altman and YC) instead of fusion startups? Because that's the most rational way to succeed in today's economy. You'd have to be an idiot to waste your time trying to build a working fusion reactor in your basement when you could just code up a photo sharing app and get acquired for billions. That's why we all idolize Elon Musk; he's only ever tackled difficult industries. How much easier would it have been for him to have made a Facebook, Instagram, etc. clone and become an investor just like the rest of his cohort of successful entrepreneurs? Look gang, we have to stop lying to ourselves. YC and VCs are great for startups that require a few laptops and a bunch of determined programmers. They really are not suited to decade long research projects which have produced such things as: Multi-stage rockets, genetic sequencing, computers, the Internet, fission reactors, etc. I love the startup culture, hacker culture and the sheer spirit of creativity and determination it espouses. But serious science and technology research is very expensive, very long term, and financially extremely risky. That's why in the last century, it has almost exclusively been financed by governments under threat of war (WWI, WWII, Cold War). Thiel prescribes deregulation and Libertarian governments as a solution to the failure of Big R&D. I think he is wrong, precisely because of the last hundred years. Big R&D is expensive and risky, and requires a very long commitment timeline for results. Corporations cannot and will not bear the financial risk of long term research. Neither will individuals or investors. Thus, I propose the only solution that has any precedence: Big R&D as a government mandate. Much like education, healthcare, and social benefits, Big R&D must become a central pillar of a modern society. I envision a Cold War era science race between nations, research labs, and individuals, but in the spirit of science, not war. Research would be a continuous national challenge, much like the Apollo project under Kennedy, but encompassing all of the sciences and continuing past a single administration. There would be work at every level for citizens in the nation's research industry to slowly offset the losses incurred by automation. When all basic needs are met by a very efficient, very high tech and mostly automated free market system, research would become our generator of economic activity. It would provide a consistent safety net for citizens exiting the free market, and prepare them for an eventual return if the opportunity arises (e.g. a new technological breakthrough is ready for the market). Think of research labs like Bell Labs or Xerox PARC, but government funded, intertwined with a cutting edge educational platform (e.g. edX), and in every municipality. In conclusion, I think the free market has done all it can for research. Capitalism is great at providing needs and wants very efficiently in the short term and making incremental technological progress, but is terrible for making big leaps by solving very hard problems that have substantial capital requirements. For that, we have to look back to our previous successes in Big R&D.

_broody 12y ago
Sadly, you're right. For all the talk of their impact, start-ups can't disrupt society worth a damn, except possibly to create more and more conduits for the vapidity of bored consumers.
ahomescu1 12y ago
> Thus, I propose the only solution that has any precedence: Big R&D as a government mandate. Much like education, healthcare, and social benefits, Big R&D must become a central pillar of a modern society. Health care and social benefits get politicians a lot of votes. Heavy government-sponsored research wouldn't, I imagine. To get this kind of support for research, you'd have to sell it to the voters (it was easier to sell during the Cold War, I think it's harder now, especially during a recession).
FiatLuxDave 12y ago
As someone who was working at a fusion startup when Musk was doing PayPal, your post hit a bit close to home for this particular idiot. Had I known back then that I would have been better off doing an internet startup and then later do a fusion startup with the petty cash fund, I would obviously have chosen that route. But like most founders, I thought I could actually succeed, or why else try? The real issue with incentivizing long-term investment is one of distributing risk and reward over both participants and time. The great advantage of the web startup space is the quick time to expand the market - even if working fusion were here today, it would not have the growth curve typical of successful web companies. Add this to the long and risky development time for things like fusion (or AI, or space launchers, etc.), and what you say seems obvious. So, why did I choose to follow the risky route rather than the more assured Big R&D route? Well, competition is the main answer. Big R&D projects often start with the idea that developing something is expensive, and since you can't afford to build more than one, this idea morphs into the One True Design (e.g. ITER/Tokomak in fusion). Then big R&D turns its back on other, possibly cheaper development paths. Taking the VC route may put the risk on to the participants, but at least it is open to new, cheap ideas which may be able to bypass the big R&D route.
- FD3SA 12y ago

by FD3SA 12y ago

_broody 12y ago

Sadly, you're right. For all the talk of their impact, start-ups can't disrupt society worth a damn, except possibly to create more and more conduits for the vapidity of bored consumers.

ahomescu1 12y ago

> Thus, I propose the only solution that has any precedence: Big R&D as a government mandate. Much like education, healthcare, and social benefits, Big R&D must become a central pillar of a modern society. Health care and social benefits get politicians a lot of votes. Heavy government-sponsored research wouldn't, I imagine. To get this kind of support for research, you'd have to sell it to the voters (it was easier to sell during the Cold War, I think it's harder now, especially during a recession).

FiatLuxDave 12y ago

As someone who was working at a fusion startup when Musk was doing PayPal, your post hit a bit close to home for this particular idiot. Had I known back then that I would have been better off doing an internet startup and then later do a fusion startup with the petty cash fund, I would obviously have chosen that route. But like most founders, I thought I could actually succeed, or why else try? The real issue with incentivizing long-term investment is one of distributing risk and reward over both participants and time. The great advantage of the web startup space is the quick time to expand the market - even if working fusion were here today, it would not have the growth curve typical of successful web companies. Add this to the long and risky development time for things like fusion (or AI, or space launchers, etc.), and what you say seems obvious. So, why did I choose to follow the risky route rather than the more assured Big R&D route? Well, competition is the main answer. Big R&D projects often start with the idea that developing something is expensive, and since you can't afford to build more than one, this idea morphs into the One True Design (e.g. ITER/Tokomak in fusion). Then big R&D turns its back on other, possibly cheaper development paths. Taking the VC route may put the risk on to the participants, but at least it is open to new, cheap ideas which may be able to bypass the big R&D route.

FD3SA 12y ago