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What Fruits Will Reduced R&D Bear For The U.S.?
lucabrasi999 writes "Here's an interesting
commentary from Mike Tarsala at CBS.Marketwatch.com regarding R&D spending by U.S. companies as it compares to overseas firms. It compares today's US tech firms to the Big Three Automakers of the 70's, while saying the overseas tech firms are similar to the Toyotas and Hondas of the 70's. In other words, US Tech firms are about to be taught a lesson in global capitalism. I think Mike is 100% correct. What do you think?"
And it's because the economy is in the crapper, not in spite of it.
If the economy was similar to what it was a few years ago, then sure, R&D dollars would be up a lot.
Am I the only one that sees this correlation?
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Of course they will..
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
Private companies then exploit this and make money.
Also, due to the efficiency of the US capital market and the enormous US home market new technology is rapidly developed in the US but perfected elsewhere. But the same speed to start things also drives an outlook that is only quarterly at most US firms which kills quality after a while.
The perfect example is the car industry. The US just got big and for a long time the only US car innovations are the cupholder and the SUV. ABS, fuel injection, constant 4WD multiple valves and other improvements do not come from Detroit. Another is large jets.
Why should computing be any different ?
He draws some interesting parallels, but it would be nice to have some numbers to back up his statements. It is easy to talk doom and gloom, and everyone is quick to jump on that bandwagon, but lets see some hard data.
He may be right though, but would that be so bad? I am an American, and I love America, but I would like to see a world where there there is a little more balance of economic power. Would that be so bad for the average American?
I have a friend who is my economic guru and we talk about this quite a bit. Yes, because there is an administration that is not focused on the economy, everyone is holding on to their money. Thusly, no R&D. We've actually made the car comparison a quite a few times.
Another thing we talk about though, is the fact that as other countries 'catch up' technologically to us, there will be less and less reason for companies not to outsource all their tech needs. This already happens to a great extent in the manfacturing industry and China. For tech, we see a lot of farming out to India, especially since they're are lot of competent English speakers there.
How can U.S. firms compete with this? I don't think they can and ultimately, another industry will move more and more off shore. This doesn't mean, however, that the U.S. will not find other markets.
I think that if there are more and more highly skilled people in other countries around the world that can do the same tech work our skilled workers do here, then the next place is space. Unfortunately, we're not jumping on that and now we have a European agency headed to the moon and China talking about mining it. Welcome to the future of the transnats. Like hi-tech, the U.S. has the opportunity to drive this one for a while. The question is will they?
It says to me the US has learned nothing from the British. Get too content with being the global big dog and the next thing you know you're not number 1 anymore. Considering how many people india has, and how education is playing a bigger role each year, they could replace the US.
What get's me is US greed is handing them the spot too.
Um, HELLO, if someone is getting a pink slip doesn't that imply some sort of deficiency? This entire article hinges on "Foreign Students == Good"! Why is the author's solution for us to go over to India and China to grab talent when foreign companies are coming to the US? Isn't that playing into their hands? This part makes no sense.
But the improved R&D money thing is fine. Sure. But what has gotten the HPs and IBMs? Answer: undercut by Dell. If that is not a "lesson in global capitalism" I don't know what is. And as far as I know the Big Companies that DO have the money to do R&D... *gasp* do it.
What this author doesn't seem to realize is that many US firms are coming to grips with cost undercutting. Maybe proprietary HW meant something back in 1990 but not any more. So companies cut those groups and buy the same whitebox stock from Taiwan. The author seems to think that this is just some Anti-R&D attitude, when all it is is the proper reaction to a market reality
What is music when you despise all sound?
This same line of discussion has come up here many times before. One comment I have seen frequently runs along the lines of: "Well, buddy, don't be a pussy. It's all competition, and if you're good enough you'll still have a job".
Well, guess what, guys? Unless you're a genius - and I suspect most of us aren't (in fact, I'd suspect most of us are slightly above average to being very good at what we do, but we're not mostly very good) - we're going to lose our jobs. Because a decent Indian programmer making $5K a year looks a hell of a lot better than a great American programmer making $50K a year.
We have a window of less than ten years, I think, in which to react to the possible destruction of American IT. Because humans elsewhere are just as smart. Only thing is, they get paid like shit.
You think you can compete because you're better? Dream away, my son.
I thought the whole deal about patents was that there were supposed to encourage companies to invest in research because they could expect a payoff. And didn't I read somewhere recently that patent applications are up?
So which is it? Is real innovation down because of a screwed up patent system? Or because of a lack of money? Or just hubris on the part of US companies that think they know the one true way for everything?
Personally I do believe innovation is suffering right now. And I don't think the patent system is helping. Instead companies are pumping out patents on everything old under the sun while few are spending money on something truly new.
Why? The reality of innovation is that new things are almost always built on old foundations. When those foundations might have 2,000 different patents the incentive to try new combinations of things is reduced because you don't want the hassle of infringement. Or at least it seems that way to me. Your mileage may vary...
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Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
I agree with him although I think R&D will be more affected by this country failed education system more than the lower funding. Last night, I spent time with my youngest son who is in 7th grade doing his homework. He has only just now gotten to porportions granted he is not in advanced math but still by the time I was in 7th grade we were doing pre-algebra and that was really review since I had learned a lot of in 5th grade along with others at my grade level (Special elementary school but still).
Even scarier, he is making a C in math and science and he is one of only 4 kids in those classes that is passing. Our education system is very broken in this country and will only get worse if Bush has his way. My son goes to Houston Independent School District home of the finest education system hence why we kicked Rod Paige up to Secretary of Education. After all HISD students pass the state test or conviently transfer to another school or not drop out code even if the principals have to lie.
Rabi Satter
The return on investment for sound R&D has been well established. Of course, there is a world of interpretation in that little qualifier "sound" but the fact remains that R&D investment is critical to continued, sustainable growth - particularly in the tech world. Unfortunately, the narrow-minded focus on the quarters earnings doesn't permit this kind of rationality that could speed economic recovery. It makes about as much sense as refusing to change the oil in your car because you're short on cash, but hey, that's business.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Unfortunately, R&D in the USA isn't about innovation, but more about getting patents on all the up and comming technologies before they happen. That way you can lock out competitors and squeeze a ton of royalities out of industries that will require all the up and comming technologies. However there are some times where good things happened - IBM wrongly assumed that they would be able to controll all the interfaces on the IBM compatable PC. When they were wrong, it created an economic explosion of companies that creating plug-in cards and periphials.
Because of patnets, researchers working for companies are often forced to be greedy and secretive about things they discover. There is little in depth sharing of knowledge and collaberation until the lawyers and bean counters give the ok. One big side effect of this is that a large amount of innovation in US society has been shifted to the University sector, which has made it extremely important in US society. Unfortunately, now even many Universities are getting greedy with patent controlls killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
However, the really good news is free (as in freedom) software. Never in the history of human existence has there been such a sharing of knowledge, spread of basic tallent, application of standardized orgin, economic colaberation, and the likes. It is having a strong effect of shifting R&D from the university sector back to the private sector. If we lift the monopoly on patents, I think the same thing will happen in other technology areas.
Look at the rumors surrounding SCO and the BSD-derived code in Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux that SCO thinks it "owns." A court ordered licensing fee would set back the free and open source software movements, even if replacement code is eventually written. Developing nations do not have these restrictions, and will benefit enormously. Without a change the U.S. will be come less relevant.
How much of current American properity is due to military dominance? If this dominance ceases to matter (or just plain fades) will we continue to be properous?
Consider..
The UK was once the world's economic and military powerhouse.
Its dominance was challenged in the late 19th century by Germany. The practical arts of manufacture and commerce were not valued in British society at the time - not the case in Germany. German advances in chemical engineering and aircraft made it a formidable adversary in WWI.
Growing military importance of aircraft dimished the importance of the British fleet in maintaining world domination - a technical advance passed by this great empire and removed its monopoly on military power.
Despite this, in 1950 UK was still a major exporter of durable goods, a surprising portion of autos and consumer goods were still made there. This soon vanished.
By the 1960's, the premier UK businesses were service oriented - advertising, finance, etc. They had lost all real edge in "goods" manufacture.
Sometime in the 1980's the former world power found its GDP surpassed by former defeated WWII opponent Italy.
Control over an empire may have masked deficiencies in how the UK innovated and marketed innovations. Once the empire dissolved in the 1950's a serious decline began.
Any lessons here?
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
Yo! Bright boy. It isn't even close to what he wants to pay to oust Sadam, let alone the military budget. Remember he wants Congress to allocate $68B for his little Iraqian adventure, and still needs $32B to bribe Turkey, after that. $1.2B may sound like a lot to you, but compared with most Federal expendatures, it's lost in the noise. So, trust me, Bush is (yet again) no hero in this area.
That is all.
The RIAA is going crazy over MP3 sharers instead of understanding that digital encoding and mp3s are the wave of the future, not to mention the internet is a highly more effective distribution center than anything else out there.
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Why do you suppose they are fighting the internet as a distribution method? Because it is more efficient than current methods. They don't want better efficiency, because profit is made in the friction of distribution.
Think about the areas of greatest profitability in the market today, and tell me where they are made. Meanwhile, let me say where I think it lies: with distribution. The Wal*Marts, the Amazons, the Sam Goodies of the world make a lot of money through distribution.
Microsoft still refuses to believe in any uses towards Open-source programming . .
The problem with Free/Open Source software is that it removes the friction of distribution. Microsoft has dominated the market by controlling the distribution chain from day one. At every point where another competitor has threatened to enter the distribution chain (say, DR-DOS), they have choked the distribution points (in the case of DR-DOS, by making per-processor licensing deals with each distributor).
The more friction you can create and maintain, the more money you can make. The advantage of a monopoly is that you are the only controller of the distribution chain.
For all information, the internet approaches frictionless distribution. This is what scares the MPAA, and Microsoft, and the broadcast television companies: in the future, they will be unable to extract Ceasar's share from the distribution chain. That is why they are fighting so hard to introduce friction in the form of legislation.
This is also why capitalism is butt-useless for information, as artificial friction must be introduced into the system (in the form of copyright and patent law). These laws worked when capitalism was based more on physical objects (books, records, films), but now that the information has become more important than the distribution method, capitalism in its current form fails miserably.
The technological push you mention as necessary for the American economy is much deeper than simply increasing innovation or R&D. We must embrace the social aspects of this technology as well, and not introduce unnecessary friction into the system resisting the technology.
I don't mean we must accept all new technology as good. But "Hurts Profits" != "Bad."
For an interesting take (and a surprising relevence) check out "The Third Wave," by Alvin Toffler. It's an older book, but his predictions have been frustratingly accurate.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I believe murder is wrong because I deem "human rights" to be something inherent in "human beings". I'm not going to go into cogito ergo sum and all that; I'm going to assert that sentience is the defining property of a human; it's what differentiates us greatly from the cow, and somewhat less-greatly from the octopus, whale, or chimpanzee.
Adult humans are clearly sentient. Infant humans are probably sentient, or have a very high probability of attaining sentience within a year or two. The (clinically, as opposed to the sense of having an MBA) brain-dead human is not sentient. Agglomerations of developing human cells are not sentient, and only have any potential for sentience with a large investment on the part of the host organism. Spammers are neither human nor sentient.
All cultures have strong taboos governing murder, and most cultures have equally strong taboos governing infanticide. The taboo against "pulling the plug" on the comatose is not universal, nor is the taboo against abortion. (In fact, both of those "taboos" are so non-universal that they are better considered social conventions.) And most of us would be ineligible to serve on a jury in the homicide trial of a man charged with the slaughter of a spammer; how could any user of email bring back a guilty verdict when no crime had been committed?
As to the "humanness" of 8-year-olds, I think we're all in agreement. However, I do question your "humanness", when you suggest that some of the said 8-year-olds should be made to suffer from debilitating diseases because the research that could provide a cure has been outlawed, due the moral discomfort of an overzealous minority of people. The only immorality I see is that living, breathing, sentient human beings are made to suffer for the non-existent rights of a collection of cells.
This is not to say I believe a child in the womb does not deserve protection. But we are not talking about a child or even a fetus. We're talking about a collection of cells. Perhaps, if the "people" you are talking about had names, or thoughts, or hell, even heartbeats, I would be more receptive to the question of who and not what we're doing research on. Until then, the only arguments against stem cell research are theological, stemming from the notion that cells supposedly have a soul.
It is my belief that our future generations will look upon our refusal to wield the benefits of stem cell research with the same disdain we hold for our ancestors who believed the way to rid the body of disease was to bleed the evil "spirits" out.
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry