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Where Have You Gone, Bell Labs?
theodp writes "Name an industry that can produce 1 million new, high-paying jobs over the next three years, challenges BusinessWeek. You can't, because there isn't one. And that's the problem. So what's the answer? Basic research can repair the broken US business model, argues BW, saying it's the key to new, high-quality job creation. Scientific research legends like Bell Labs, Sarnoff Corp, and Xerox PARC are essentially gone, or shadows of their former selves. And while IBM, Microsoft, and HP collectively spend $17B a year on R&D, only 3%-5% of that is for basic science. In a post-9/11 world, DARPA's mission has shifted from science to tactical projects with short-term military applications. Cutting back on investment in basic science research may make great sense in the short term, but as corporations and government make the same decision to free-ride off the investments of others, society suffers the 'tragedy of the commons,' wherein multiple actors operating in their self-interest do harm to the overall public good. We've reached that point, says BW, and we're just beginning to see the consequences. The cycle needs to be reversed, and it needs to be done quickly."
It's not the business model that is broken.
It's the capitalist system.
Just a different name, you still need a clearance to work for them even as a custodian. Drive past the place everyday.
The business model that is currently in play expects profit. Short-term profit. Doing research now that pays dividends 10 years from now is simply not OK.
We need dollars to the bottom line. Period. Produce, or be gone.
They're looking for talented engineers and scientists with LOTS of imagination to take important projects from concept to reality!
Check out their website and apply if you want to turn this trend around!
There is a really simple idea on how to get more basic research... PAY MORE!!!
Seriously, in a world where artists, movie actors, athletes get completely outrageous salaries (let alone wall street and executives) the answer can be easily found.
It used to be in the old days that you should learn a profession before becoming a professional athlete, actor, etc. Now the payoff of these fields far outweigh learning a "real" field. Look at MTV and this weird chick who thinks that she has talent. In fact want to see what the youth has become look at MTV reality in general...
What do I do? I work in a hedge fund, even though I am a professional mechanical engineer who used to "build real things". I can actually build robots, and industrial production machinery. Because of my upbringing (German) it was ingrained to me to build "real things". I moved to finance because I am of the motto, "if you can't beat them, join them... Your life is too short..."
Researchers have been sounding this alarm for years, if not decades. But what makes this significant is hearing it from the likes of BusinessWeek. If the Wall Street Journal ever catches on, we might be close to some real change. On the other hand, they are sure to think the solution to tragedy of commons is stronger IP laws rather than more investment in commons.
We've invested in basic research here in Ireland, and the government is being criticised for it (link to Irish Times opinion piece).
Certainly there is a problem here in Ireland that there are a lack of opportunities for those who've acheived a PhD qualification through basic research. Already a lot of even ordinary degree graduates in science and technology have emigrated from Ireland, and the number of entrants into such undergraduate courses is dropping year by year.
However, possibly there's nothing inherently wrong with investing so much in basic research and the issues arise merely from the ineptitude of those running this country and the blind voting that such a section of the populance do for the current ruling party - who've throughout Ireland's history acheived lots of public support but attempted to ruin the country at various stages (starting with the Civil War, continuing with the economic war with the UK in the 1930s, going crazy in the 1970s even abolishing car tax to win votes as the country went bankrupt, deliberately facilitating a property bubble after the dot-com crash, attempting to have the taxpayers continue to pay into the Ponzi scheme with a unique Irish version of the bad bank - i.e. pay speculative amounts to banks for bad loans and attempt to keep prices up until a new bubble is created).
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Government spending on R&D? That's socialism! I thought everyone knew that taxes are bullshit. It's not like government funded basic research ever gave us anything useful like the transistor.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Actually that is cynical and I beg to differ here. Obama is actually right on the mark. The green revolution is important and we need it. Not because of global warming. I really could not give a rats ass about that since it is already too late. Read National Geographic about 4 years ago they had a climate article where they said that they noticed climate change happened like a flick of the switch, but bounced back slowly. They were of the opinion that the switch has probably already been flicked.
So why green revolution? Because the heat waves, droughts, storms, etc will cause upheaval and if we have technology to deal with this new reality we as a human race will survive. The green revolution is about using other forms of energy, and becoming more efficient. Both of these things are great steps forward regardless of climate change...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Seriously, though, the largest public funding for R&D goes to NIH, but the economic benefits from it seem to all flow to medical industry, and I am not certain profit-driven health care industry that we have is the right one, ethically, to drive our economy.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
as corporations and government make the same decision to free-ride off the investments of others, society suffers the 'tragedy of the commons,' wherein multiple actors operating in their self-interest do harm to the overall public good.
That's not the Tragedy of the Commons. Perhaps the writers at BW should look up the definition of it before using it in an article.
All of you Genetisists with your fancy degrees start discovering stuff, but remember if you start playing god again we are going to complain to the governement...
All of you Nuclear Physists start making your reactors and glowey things, but not in my back yard! I don't want that nuclear waste making my McDonalds Double Cheesburger unhealthy!
The same for all of you green energy people with your wind turbines you need to start building this renewable energy! but not in my neighborhood you're destroying the value on my now worthless house!
Clearly this is everyone's fault except for mine, now if you'll excuse me I'm late for second job delivering pizza's I'm glad I never went to college otherwise I might be expected to do something about this! - The American Public
"Name an industry that can produce 1 million new, high-paying jobs over the next three years", challenges BusinessWeek. The obvious answer is Greentech. We need to scale wind and solar power production rapidly, for a whole host of reasons. Currently installed base took decades, and is still only 1% of the electric grid, so clearly there is lots of room to expand... and that's not even counting such opportunities as electric cars.
augment your senses: http://sensebridge.net/
Yea, Koresh forbid we research anything other than cheapening products for bigger profit margins. Certainly there's no future in creating cleaner, more efficient energy solutions...
More like there might be no future (or at least a very ugly one) if we DON'T.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
as corporations and government make the same decision to free-ride off the investments of others, society suffers the 'tragedy of the commons,
How about the individual? You know, the type that parrots around here against the patent system (or at the very least, software patents), and screaming how they use Pirate Bay to protest them? How about the individuals who demand our government buy price-controlled medicine from Canada to deny the organization who discovered it the fruits of their labor, and the ability to recoup their investment?
Creators and inventors see a hostile environment for profiting off their works, so they stop investing in creating and inventing. Film at 11.
I think a lot of the lack of R&D goes back to decisions made many years ago by the government. At one point all employee salaries regardless of how outrageous they were were a deductible expense. Congress decided they wanted to tax high salaried people. Therefore companies found ways around those laws. In comes stock bonuses and stock options. The problem with that is that a highly paid employee (most likely a decision maker) will do what is best for them, which is kick up the stock price so that they get higher effective pay. Easy way to do that, kill long term R&D. In addition with companies hiring people with business BS degrees who then get an MBA to manage, instead of the engineers, everything is looked at on the current P&L statement, not the 10+ year roadmap.
The combination of the higher ups wanting short term profits due to changes in tax law, along with many fewer R&D companies (HP for example) having engineers and technical people making decisions has decimated R&D.
I remember when HP meant test equipment and awesome calculators, not lousy consumer based computers (Thanks Carly). Another example, don't laugh too hard, is Radio Shack. I used to work for Radio Shack in the late 80's and the early 90's. When I started, they actually had R&D (they had a dye based CD-R technology they were working on, but had RIAA type problems with), manufacturing, a lot of electronic components, etc. When the founder of Tandy died, the MBA style management came in. They started off selling manufacturing, as that was not part of the "Core Business", sold off the credit card division, which made a nice one time profit, that then really made customers made because of lack of customer service, and lowered sales because of tighter credit requirements. They stopped carrying a lot of small parts, because of the low dollar value, regardless if they were high profit. In short, Charles Tandy, the leather salesman, ran it better and more profitably than the "business school" people that were bought in because he understood the business. We need to find a way to encourage the people who know the business they are in to get higher up and make decisions, rather than feeding the orgy of MBA's and people with business degrees that now rule most companies. As to how, I have very little in the way of ideas, but I think some tax law encouraging long term and pure science R&D would be helpful, if it could not be bastardized for other purposes (yeah, I know, a pipe dream).
Researchers have been sounding this alarm for years, if not decades. But what makes this significant is hearing it from the likes of BusinessWeek. If the Wall Street Journal ever catches on, we might be close to some real change.
That's a good point. The Wall Street Journal's approach would probably be a bigger R&D tax credit.
It's incredible how successful other companies were at commercializing the amazing basic discoveries or inventions that came out of Bell Labs (transistor, laser, Unix, etc. etc. etc.), and somehow AT&T never was all that successful at commercializing these discoveries, and ended up spinning off Bell Labs and selling out to SBC.
Bell Labs held many, many patents from all this basic research, that ultimately weren't nearly as profitable as the inventions that used them. Lessons for those who insist that IP rights are key to innovation.
Research in the sciences usually requires a Ph.D level education. We (US) don't have nearly enough Ph.Ds to answer that challenge.
Plus, people who hold a Ph.D in the sciences aren't exactly unemployable, even in "this economy..."
NASA used to have research labs, too-- Ames and Lewis and Langley-- but years of cuts to the research budget and redirection has pretty much eliminated most of the work that doesn't have a near-term engineering payoff for a funded project. There's just no real constituancy to funding research.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Sometime in the late 60's/early 70's, economists and politicians began to see honest growth based on adding value and fair trade as something that would slow the growth of the US economy, and leave the country unable to pay for the massive military and social programs that we are committed to. How many trillions of dollars were invested in ICBM silos? Strategic Air Command bombers and tankers that are still flying today by the grandchildren of the original pilots because they were never needed in the first place?
We made the switch from scientific and industrial powerhouse to empire. Instead of building factories, we build relationships with dictators. Instead of employing citizens in manufacturing, we exploit peasants in East Asia. I live in Albany, NY. Thanks to government, this area is pretty prosperous. But as you drive west through once-thriving cities like Amsterdam, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo, you are a witness to economic devastation as the region declines to a shadow of its former self.
We live in an age of false prosperity, where our chief export is the wealth of the nation.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
...the rise of the MBA, or PHB, or whatever amalgam of the two you see in your work life every day, taken to a high, an extreme, a global pinnacle from which they make their influence felt far and wide.
Geeks? who needs 'em...!
Of course this is right, and we need to re-encourage investment in basic science in all of the goverment, Universities and Industry and it needs to be in Basic Science, _not_ short time applied science, engineering or product development and anyone with an MBA needs to be disqualified from any part of the decision making as do almost all pols, except to do it.
... without a new lot of un-intended consequences. Ethanol and the price of basic foods anyone.
The problems are:
(a) short term-ism on Wall Street,
(b) good and improving engineering education in China and South East Asia
(c) the fallacy that the "great and good" running research councils can usefully direct research, a few can, but most are politicized old farts!
Remember, must of the most vital discoveries were accidental, eg the Transistor at Bell labs and that the only way to ensure that we get that fall out is to undertake serious sustained investment in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry.
Engineering, while important is nothing like such a fundamental innovator, sure let us also invest in Computer Science & Engineering and the Life Sciences, where much profit can be cheaply mined, but it is in the basics where the big new technologies start.
A simple example, all the green-renewable-energy sources, and the mistakes deploying them could be bypassed by a small safe fusion reactor in the 200-10,000 KW range, which would remove dependance on foreign oil and make energy esentialy free. My BM 735i needs about 270KW so it could power cars, planes homes
The first factor that has to be corrected is the entire Education System in the United States because until the many problems (rote memorization favored over critical thinking) is fixed, we simply wont have the bodies needed to do any basic research. The next factor that has to be solved is the Governments continual slide into Mediocracy and illeteracy that's been desired by the Corps and Politico's for the last 30 years. Sorry folks but that's at least 2 generations (not counting the current and future gens) that have been robbed of our Constitutional Requirement for both an educated and armed populace. Instead they've wanted sheep and now they've got them who don't care about anything except where their next fix is coming from (be it telivision, latest hip product, drugs).
Sorry to say but if the founding fathers were to attempt a revolution with our current tranqed populace today, they'd have failed and been executed as terrorists instead of hailed as hero's. In fact, General Orders to HighGaurd. Time to throw a Nova Bomb into Sol's Sun and clear the cockroaches before they spread to the rest of the galaxy.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
If you want the literal answer to this question, they're part of Alcatel-Lucent now, after being part of Lucent Technologies since AT&T spun them off in the 90s.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
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Corporations and Government are not free riding on the investments of others. This is not the tragedy of the commons. Those companies that do not advance will wither over time. Those companies that do advance will prosper. The economic landscape will be different. Different is not doom.
The article speaks fondly of Manhattan, Apollo as if they were altruistic scientific advancements. No, they were direct competitive answers to foreign enemies with military objectives. Then the article criticizes modern DARPA projects as short term tactical efforts. What is the D in DARPA? Let's be realistic. Our current defense objectives are not strategic in scope. They are tactical in scope and DARPA is meeting that need.
Today we actually have private individuals working on credible private space programs. IBM is doing incredible work in nanotech. Genetics holds great hope for medical advancement. We've barely scratched the surface with our new computing abilities. "Something wonderful is going to happen." And what about google. Sun couldn't make the network into the new computer but it looks like Google will succeed where Sun failed.
The common thread running through this article is government. We need more of it to do basic science or we will all lose our jobs. I don't buy it at all.
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Name an industry that can produce 1 million new, high-paying jobs over the next three years
Government!
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
Fortunately, we can count on OPEP countries to
fund Fundamental research.
It's interesting to note that most of the top-tier research facilities of the past were backed by monopoly or near-monopoly corporations. Bell Telephone speaks for itself, IBM Labs was supported by revenue of a dominating computer manufacturer, Sarnoff is the old lab facility of RCA, which for a time had sufficient clout to pretty much set the price of vacuum tubes. Xerox was the dominant photocopier supplier in an era of large growth. In today's world, Microsoft is one of the biggest spenders on research, and they have their own cash cow from a software monopoly.
One wonders if the ability to fund basic research depends on having a nearly monopolistic revenue stream. And if that's the case, are we prepared to suffer monopolies to get the research that comes with them?
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So firms must find the 5%. This happens through efficiencies and prices. A choice must be made between all those wasteful middle managers that do nothing, or research.Everyone has a useless in law that needs a job, so create another wasteful middle manager position. Or perhaps someone needs external validation, so build another wasteful highrise to stroke someone ego.
The there is profit. The pharmaceutical firms are doing research, but then what happens when they try to pay for the research? Everyone screams, like drugs are an entitlement. It is the pursuit of happiness, but the entitle to it. Is everyone going to be able to afford all drugs in the US. Perhaps is universal healthcare is passed, otherwise it will be the free market deciding that those with money will live, and those without will just have to make do.
Then, of course, on has to convince the stockholders that a reduction in per share profit is a good thing. Not an easy sell when many will buy solely on the basis of net profit.
I am not sure if industrial research labs are going to work in the current climate. Research based companies seem to get clobbered by those who merely derive products from the research. The model emerging over the past 20 years of so, private public research partnerships, seem to be a pretty good job. The reason we see so little of it in the US is that owners of firms are primarily concerned abut their 100 million dollar paychecks, not the long term effects they have on the company, the country, and the world. Why else would the auto manufacturers not use their windfall over the past decade to build the next big thing. Why would oil companies use their windfall to create false document, a la big tobacco, against alternative energy sources rather than develop those alternative energy source. Why else would MS buy a virtualization company, way before MS Vista, a not integrate that technology into Vista to form a transitional compatibility layer, as Apple did between OS 9 and OS X.
Really, research labs are not the issue, cowardice is. When we have leaders that are not scared of their own shadows, when we have leaders that will go out a defend us against the real enemy, and not waste a trillion dollars attacking a fake proxy enemy or create FUD to distract us, then we will have progress.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
A real question is whether basic research mines a depleting resource. The issue is not whether more can be discovered. The question is whether basic research is still cost-effective.
The problem is that we've found most of the easy hits in science and technology. Edison's lab, circa 1880, had a goal of one minor invention every three days and one major invention every two months. This was with a rather modest staff, about 40 people. In no area of science is that level of output possible today. Everything that easy has already been done.
One guy built the first IC in two months at Texas Instruments, without much help. Several early microprocessors were designed by teams of about 5 people. It took 3,000 people, in grey cubicles in Santa Clara, to design the Pentium Pro/II/III architecture, the first superscalar IC. (Getting a working design out of 3000 people for something as tightly integrated as a fast superscalar CPU for a complex architecture was an incredible management achievement.)
Xerox PARC, in its heyday, had a nearly open field in which to work. PARC was funded on the concept that if they did things which cost too much now, they'd be affordable later and Xerox would own the technology. So they built things like the Dover (a $100,000 laser printer) and the Alto (a $30,000 single-user computer), and they built enough of them to be useful experimentally. So they were able to make major progress with about 40 people in the computer science section. (PARC seemed bigger, but a big part of PARC was copier technology development. Everybody forgets those people, but they filled much of the building.) Now it takes resources like that to develop a midrange cell phone.
There's a curve here, it gets steeper, and not in a good way. The easy stuff is discovered/invented first, then the harder stuff. Each new bit of progress comes at a higher price. It's like mining lower and lower grade ore as the good stuff runs out.
Those are places I know about and visited at one time or another, all in semiconductors and electronics. I can't speak for biotech, which seems not to be as far up the curve yet. On the other hand, consider aviation and rocketry, where the easy part ended in the 1960s. Look at progress in aviation between 1903 and 1956 (Wright Flyer to Boeing 707), then 1956 to 2009 (Boeing 707 to Boeing 787). Or rocketry between 1929 and 1969 (Goddard rocket to Apollo) and 1969 to 2009 (Apollo to Shuttle).
If you look at the activities M$ has under the category research, it's mostly a lot of marketing. M$ took a lot of heat for having far larger marketing budgets than for anything else, so marketing was split up and called many other things including R&D. M$ execs even went as far as to pay institutions to let their marketers get degrees so they can take out "Linux" and other pesky competitors. One barrier M$ has is college-educated IT people. They know better than to touch M$ products with a barge pole. Solution? Send in lay preachers dressed as PhDs into universities and put a stop to talk of computer science.
The problem with getting funding for long term stuff is that no one wants to pay for things they won't benefit from in this decade let alone their lifetime. Except... we kinda do. What companies are in it for the long haul? I could buy their shares and be glad to improve the world and pass on the ownership to my children who might reap some serious rewards. If there isn't one, and you have some decent capital, why not get some more together and start up a vehicle that for those of us who want to put our money where our mouth is on this to do so. I think there are many on slashdot who'd be able to put $100/mo or more to this.
I bought a more efficient car than almost all other cars avaiable. Indeed, no future at all.
Cheaper products makes life better for poorer people. A great example that all westerners take for granted is the goold old refrigerator. Running water is another one. If we can produce these more cheaply, we can help Africa tremendously. I have people that I have worked with who were working on :gasp: cleaner fossil fuels technology for the epxress purpose of helping produce energy for Africa.
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Economy, business, society is an interconnected entity. Once you introduce and implement the something like wallmart, it does not stop there, it ripples through the entire system. It is effecting views, expectations, etc. What's happening is wallmartification of R&D as well.
Commercial research labs have all lost credibility after this: http://plan9.bell-labs.com/plan9/img/plan9bunnyblack.jpg
Well, two points: Alternate energy and electric vehicles could do it, either create or resurrect jobs. Tons more out there as well, how about really opening up the market for healthcare better instead of keeping it so restricted? Gee, it might actually get cheaper and better without adding in more layers of busywork bureaucracy.
As to basic investment, hell ya! GM and Chrysler shouldn't have been bailed out, they should have had all their factories go on the auction block and got sold for cheap on the dollar like any other bankrupt business, then perhaps some fresh new blood who could think past one quarter's profits could have come in and actually built 21st century autos in the now newly owned factories. Then those stock investors and swaggering union folks and legions of white collar managers would have received a humble pie lesson on keeping things real, as in price, quality and function. They kept kept this fantasy illusion going of trying to maintain like this was still the 60s or something, that was just crazy nuts.
We could also force a lot of manufacturing back into the US if we insisted that all this earth climate changes stuff they are pushing with environmental controls was forced on china and india as well as the US (and europe) through the WTO or something. I mean, WTF? If it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. This atmosphere we all share knows no political boundaries, so it's stupid to pretend it does and let some areas skate on environmental regs while other areas got them up the wazoo with more coming.
Allowing near half the world's populations (just those two nations) to ignore air quality standards and then western businessmen can slide over there, take money they skimmed or got handed by the corrupt Fed and treasury to promote investment in manufacturing there is the main reason the US lost so many jobs in the first place. No safety regs, no pollution regs, no nuthin but cheapest possible labor to the point they don't care how many of their employees over there get wasted on the job or get sick or what happens to the environment. It was not only allowed to happen, it was encouraged with *tax breaks* for the longest time. More crazy crap.
That sort of stuff is what went wrong with jobs in the US, national scale "corporate raiding" and until those issues are addressed by reining in wallstreet and by insisting on a global even level playing field for this so called "free trade" which is anything but and "concern for the environment" which is nonsense lip service, we'll continue to lose jobs.
And speaking of those alleged businessmen, all those big casino banks should have been allowed to go bankrupt as well, it makes NO SENSE whatsoever to bail out convoluted derivatives gambling. Nuts. They should have gone on the bankruptcy auction block as well as the dinosaur car companies and we go back to where investing is really investing, not just playing quant derived paper financial pseudo products bingo. Thenthe "market' would have sorted out what all those stupid contracts are really worth, and here's a hint, they ain't worth no quadrillion dollars like they claim. Force them SOBs to eat their own capitalist dogfood, sort that crap out. There's trillions of taxpayer bucks and counting now that went to those leeches that could have gone to this basic research, instead of trying to keep the ultra stupid and destructive old fatcat dinosaurs alive so they can keep stomping around the planet smashing things and gobbling everything up in sight to get even bigger, fatter and more stupid.
Shoot, that's more than enough, just a fraction of that, to have offered totally free higher edcucation to our young folks, instead of dunning them for tens of thousands of bucks so they enter the workforce already broke and scared to even think about finding a job.
Support the repackaged derviatives gambling "industry", or fund the education for 100,000 new doctors and 500,000
to say that I blame the neo-Republican* mandate of allowing a green light to Big Business no matter what the crime is they're committing. I also blame multi-nationalism for mandating that a company view a $2.00/hour Indian worker to be better for the company, period, than a $12.00 worker, thereby killing onshore research, which then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I also blame the Democrats for being so bloodly socialist in their rhetoric that they've alienated the few Republicans who might have worked with them on compromises in important legislation. As it is they're swept away by the single hot button pseudo-Christian nutcases. I also blame intellectually bankrupt Americans worrying more about the size of their SUVs and cellphones than they do about this country's abandonment of the Constitution.
* GWB once invoked Lincoln in a speech. Were he alive today Lincoln would have soiled himself. I also despise the neo-cons's raping of the Republican cornerstone of fiscal sanity, again, in the name of Big Business. Current Prez is following suite. This country can indeed spend itself out of debt, but only to a limit. I don't think ANYONE knows for sure just which side of that line we're on.
Also from Wikipedia:
During FY 2008, the U.S. government spent nearly $800 billion on defense and homeland security, approximately 32% of tax receipts of $2.5 trillion.
Intellectual Ventures in Bellevue is doing quite a bit of basic research in very broad fields. Mosquito zapping lasers, nuclear breeder reactors, hurricane stopping cylinders... etc. They have big boys coming together to innovate, and plenty of top-notch scientists going along. Sure Bill Gates is involved but no one can argue that his and his wife's foundation has anything but "good for humanity" in its sights.
In reading some of the comments, people don't seem to understand the purpose of patents.
The true purpose of patents are not so much to act as incentives to innovate, that will happen anyway as long as innovation can produce a profit though the innovation becomes a trade secret.
The purpose of patents is information sharing. The patent holder is given a monopoly for a limited time but must reveal the workings of the innovation. By revealing the information others can study it, improve it and use it to advance the state of the art.
I hope this BW article doesn't lead to the same lunacy to extend patents that happened with copy rights to "incetivize" innovation since that would defeat the purpose.
Also, the short term view that the business school developed in business "leaders" is nothing more than self cannibalization. Tech companies have been devouring themselves, riding on technology they developed years ago and not laying ground work for future profitability through solid basic research.
In addition, by outsourcing and offshoring they have been choking off their own sources of future leadership in personnel. The skilled workers they need are developing their skills working for other companies.
Here's my observations. Many of the IT people of my generation began as help desk (some times part-time while in school or summer jobs), the jr. sys-admins or consulting finally working their way up to senior positions or creating their own companies'. They sometimes were hired internally to a company since they knew the company and the company knew them. That path allowed for slow gradual developed of skill sets, maturation and exploration of interests. With offshoring and outsourcing that path is becoming rarer. And so now companies when they do look for IT/programmers bemoan the lack of skilled workers.
This also creates a chilling effect when people look for careers in the Sciences, esp. when it is easier to get an MBA than a Phd.
I tried to make these points to a Phd in Chemistry who had worked his way up into mgt. in a pharmaceutical company which was offshoring research, but he didn't get it. A bright guy, but he didn't get it.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Pirate Bay is more about copyright. Not too many people go to Pirate Bay to find a torrent of the latest metallurgical advancements.
That depends upon what you mean by "recoup". Are you talking 1=1 where they make back the money they spent only on that project? Or 10x the money? or 100x the money? or where they can keep turning a profit on that research forever just because they were the first ones to get it filed?
No. The "hostile environment" for real research is from patent trolls.
The "hostile environment" for copyright is from one company that wants to keep turning a profit off of a cartoon of a mouse.
Just look at the salaries that are paid in those industries. And the multi-million dollar awards given them by the courts.
The Quote "Basic research can repair the broken US business model [...]" is completely wrong.
For example: Astronomy
Astronomy is basic research. There are alot of politicians and institutions that think "why wasting time and money in astronomy? They just watch stars and cost alot of money, while social problems are growing such as poverty or unemployement". So they cut the funds and or may invest it in another projects which seem to be lucrative in a short-term. That is the wrong way!
Basic research IS very important to the mankind. Another example: the experimental proof of the Bose-Einstein-Condensate. It's been postulated by Bose in 1920's and discovered in 1995. What is the practical use of it? Currently, there is none. But it's a proof to our theories which is very valuable.
Basic research is very important but it's not meant to repair an economy or broken business models. The economy can only be repaired by making right decisions in the politics, by investing money in R&D, investing ALOT of money in public and academic education and of course protecting the environment.
The author from BW took some popular examples but also take mine into consideration. What if your company/country/whatever spends billions of dollars to create a B-E-C and in the end there is no monetary profit from it? It's all about short-term profits, isn't it?
According to Apple's 3rd quarter results (that is, for the quarter that ended June 27th), Apple spent $341M out of $1351M total operating expenses on research and development. The subtitle of the report was "Best Non-Holiday Quarter Revenue and Earnings in Apple History". So Apple's business model certainly isn't broken, despite decent-sized expenditures on R&D.
It's not all funny ads. Apple's earning their success.
Today, if a research organization creates something new and exciting, it can generally be duplicated in China in less than a year - often three weeks or so. This eliminates any possibility of the "innovator" reaping any sort of reward for their efforts. What company wants to spend money only to hand a gift over to someone in China?
Today one example is DVD players. We have cheap DVD players because the patent licensing is not being enforced. The license fee per DVD player is $5, which would translate to around $50 at the retail level. There are plenty of $29.99 DVD players being brought into the US for which no license fee was ever paid. And this is just one example I personally know about. There are thousands more.
So while 50 years ago (or even 30) you could create something new and develop a product based on it. This product would be sold and the developer would get paid. Sometimes, for the right product, it might be "knocked off" in China but the cost differentials were not as they are today. So you could still sell the "original" product for a reasonable price.
Today, between the Internet making it all about lowest price, customs officials looking the other way as far as patent licensing is concerned and labor costs skyrocketing developing a product in the US or Western Europe is pointless - as is the R&D behind it. Why would anyone spend the money on R&D when the fruits of their labor is going to be taken by a foreign operator?
Short answer is, this isn't going to get fixed anytime soon. R&D is dead and buried. We will eventually have some R&D again, but not until the current globalization situation sorts itself out.
An industry which could create a few hundred thousand jobs, transmute existing long-lived nuclear waste to short-lived stuff, generate power with minimum CO2, etc. Total R&D cost, including prototype at full commercial scale, under $10B. A proton accelerator with ten times the power and same energy as the Spallation Neutron Source in Oak Ridge can be used to drive a sub-critical nuclear power system or to transmute existing nuclear waste or both. There is basic R&D and a lot of engineering needed. R&D and prototype cost would be less than ITER, the International Tokamak Experimental Reactor (fusion). Lots of messy politics because of concern about nuclear weapons proliferation, however. And NIMBY. No chance of an uncontrolled reaction, since turning off the proton beam stops the reaction in under a microsecond (speed of light from source to target).
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=rubbia+accelerator+transmutation+nuclear+waste&btnG=Search/
Carlo Rubbia proposed this around 1990, six years after his Nobel prize. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Rubbia/
https://accelconf.web.cern.ch/accelconf/e94/PDF/EPAC1994_0270.PDF/
A High Intensity Accelerator for driving the energy applifier for nuclear energy production. C. Rubbia et al.
Another citation: http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146%2Fannurev.nucl.48.1.505/
ACCELERATOR-DRIVEN SYSTEMS FOR NUCLEAR WASTE TRANSMUTATION (1998 review)
Charles D. Bowman
The ADNA Corporation, Accelerator-Driven Neutron Applications, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87544; e-mail: cbowman@roadrunner.com
Abstract The renewed interest since 1990 in accelerator-driven subcritical systems for transmutation of commercial nuclear waste has evolved to focus on the issue of whether fast- or thermal-spectrum systems offer greater promise. This review addresses the issue by comparing the performance of the more completely developed thermal- and fast-spectrum designs. Substantial design information is included to allow an assessment of the viability of the systems compared. The performance criteria considered most important are (a) the rapidity of reduction of the current inventory of plutonium and minor actinide from commercial spent fuel, (b) the cost, and (c) the complexity. The liquid-fueled thermal spectrum appears to offer major advantages over the solid-fueled fast-spectrum system, making waste reduction possible with about half the capital requirement on a substantially shorter time scale and with smaller separations requirements.
Nobody wants to invent or invest because the looters will take it all.
"Cutting back on investment in basic science research may make great sense in the short term, but as corporations and government make the same decision to free-ride off the investments of others, society suffers the 'tragedy of the commons,' wherein multiple actors operating in their self-interest do harm to the overall public good. "
Thankfully the Open Source actor is doing good.
Yup, once BusinessWeek gets the memo, it's far toooo late, as even the most moronic have finally figured out the obvious.....except!!!!!....BusinessWeek has long been touting the joys of offshoring...and their corporation buds have long been offshoring research to foreign countries.....so what's the f**king point to another useless, insufferably stupid and pointless article from.....BusinessWeek?????
I think you're on the right track with connection between the IP laws and basic research. We have what is essentially a giant patent thicket here. I think that either a serious weakening of or elimination of patents altogether would encourage innovation here.
Consider that most inventors really have little interest in IP and that what they love to do is tinker. I think that forcing them to consider the possibility that their research could infringe someone else's patents is huge deterrent to applying inventive talent to research. It's sort of like a survey I read about here on Slashdot regarding doctors. The survey found that 2/3's of all doctors would quit their job if they could line up something better to just because of the paperwork.
Take away the patents and people would be more free to innovate, more willing to invest in basic research.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
"Congress decided they wanted to tax high salaried people. Therefore companies found ways around those laws."
is completely incorrect. Beginning in the Carter Administration, and carrying on through the Reagan Administration, tax laws were substantially restructured to favor the offshoring of American jobs (giving tax breaks to corporations which laid off American workers and offshored their jobs), the destruction of American companies (buy designing laws giving primary tax advantages to leveraged buyouts by private equity firms - which further increased unemployment) and deregulating industries and monetary controls. But we appreciate your repeating of urban legends, nonetheless.
Since companies don't carry out much basic R&D anymore, we must rely on Federal support. However that is broken too, the grant system has huge problems which is now very short term and extremely competitive. NSF and NIH now fund 1 in 10 (the last NIH challenge round funded 200 projects out of 20,000 applications, 1%). This means that in order to get even one grant (pay one or two graduates, 37K a year each direct cost) you need to apply for at least 5 to 10 UNIQUE ideas every year. Each idea takes at least 3 weeks of research to put down on paper if you want to do it properly. Not only that you must have preliminary results (often all the results) before they will even look at the application to show that the project is credible, no high risk projects. Each grant lasts 1 to 5 years, usually 3, since a graduate needs 5 years to complete his/her work, there is 2 years missing. This together with teaching and service obligations makes high quality and inventive basic research in Universities very difficult to achieve, especially in the long term. Part of the problem is a policy shift by government from long term to short term funding and strategically 'important' projects as determined by politicians. The days when you thought you had a good idea and then develop it is are almost gone. Unless your project fits into a particular niche it is unlikely to get funded, except by chance.
Go here and here for more info. I'm particularly interested in this survey commissioned by the Fed which shows that software patents showed a clear and strong tendency to substitute for R&D over the last 20 years.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
Look at the link on my signature for more info.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
Basic research has gone the way of the Dodo, just like the dividend and investors happy with stable growth.
Allow people to easily bypass mutual funds in their 401(k) plans and we'll see a return to stable companies with long term growth prospects. It may help get a CEO who thinks down the road more than 5 years too.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Yes, so many in business and politics don't see their role as American citizens as more important than their making money for personal gain. The accumulation of wealth has become perceived as valuable than personal sacrifice for the common good. To many, the entire concept of collective government is viewed as the problem not the solution.
Driven by self-serving market forces, its an attitude that has permeated nearly every aspect of our culture. Americans today by and large do not see the government budget as their money, rather they see it as someone else's money. This arises in large part because they continue to elect representatives, who represent corporate interests rather than their own. The decline of our political culture (the decline of our economy and scientific infrastructure are merely byproducts) has reached the point that corporations, most obviously in the area of health care, now actually buy politicians and market their own political agendas to keep the gravy flowing and the current system in place, craftily selling them to the foolish, who then proceed to attack their own self-interest. Corporations and corporate media in our "free" markets tout the evils of socialism and brand any collective action for the common good that may affect their self-interest "socialism". The short-sighted and the ideological rigid (conservative) are more than eager to follow their lead.
Sure, the lip service of cheap patriotism is easily paid, but you can count the number who are ultimately willing to pay either higher prices or more taxes for the "greater good" in single digits. The willingness of many to see any kind of collective activity as a sign of "socialism" only emphasizes that the kind of initiative the writer is talking about will more likely take place elsewhere, China, India, Europe, Japan, Korea, Canada, where they more readily accept and recognize that economic and social realities do not come in easily pigeonholed extremes that can be painted black or white. The transition and acceleration of societies more adept at handling and developing collective action other than our own has been picking up steam over the past few decades, particularly in the biosciences where much of the future lies. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing as the collective effort becomes globally rather than nationally oriented.
Realize that the bean-counters (those strange denizens of the dark side of the farce) already see "Customer Service" as a COST against quarterly performance rather than the investment it is to keep customers.
Basic research is unlikely to pay off THIS QUARTER or even NEXT QUARTER and, I suspect, under Sarbanes-Oxley, is not encouraged since only THIS QUARTER is important.
Unfortunately, financial conservatives will SELDOM encourage Basic Research (the kind that finds more questions than answers or leads to "interesting" emergent technology) because any discoveries may be "disruptive" to their financial condition (look what digital CCD technology did to Kodak, for instance).
Regime uncertainty is not conducive to investment. When the civil sector is in fear of vastly increased levels of governmental predation, resistance and survival are primary concerns, not expansion. One million high paying jobs and more could easily be created, if the monetary supply was frozen, corporate income taxes reduced to zero, personal income taxes cut to 10% or less, and the onerous regulatory regimes that have led to such disasters as the savings and loans crisis of the 1980's and the housing bubble of the 2000's was thrown into the ash heap of history, were it belongs. The managed market has been a spectacular failure, with each cascade being worse than the last. Only a return to free-market principles will create an environment for positive economic growth and stability, instead of the current chaotic nightmare of boom and bust, courtesy of the power seeking irrationality of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Government.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
No, we'll just be in for more bullshit articles about how government regulations are stifling innovation.
What we really need is some basic R&D into why conservatives hold on to the mantra that the free market cures all ills when it's been shown time and again to fail completely in so many areas.
No one ever said the free market cures all ills. There's no utopia. Nothing cures all ills.
Why is it that socialists promise that government will solve every problem? And then they get power and use it to build up themselves at the expense of average people -- oh, that's why.
Why should I believe that some academics or policy wonks can make my choices better than I can make them myself? Are they here in my house observing my life? Where do they get the information to use to make these decisions about my life?
Conservatives believe that the free market delivers one thing that socialism can never deliver: freedom.
It also happens to efficiently deploy economic resources for production of the most goods, creating the most wealth for the most people. Unlike socialism, freedom delivers for average people, not just for the politically-connected ruling class.
I think the problem is the proliferation of well funded conservative think tanks (CTTs), with no other agenda than shaping the public discourse, and project their own intellectual dishonesty onto their political opponents. So it makes perfect sense that some people think that there's some sort of liberal conspiracy to bring back socialism, when in fact, most liberals couldn't care less about socialism.
There are liberal think tank, however, they are mostly concerned with environmentalism and social justice. As such, they don't get a pinch of the funding as CTTs.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
It's interesting there where you try to claim that inferior, higher priced forms of energy are more efficient. If they were more efficient, why wouldn't they be less expensive than fossil fuels? Then we'd just switch to them because they're cheaper -- rather than being forced against our will to pay extra for them and to subsidize them.
Or did you mean "more efficient" at delivering subsidies and windfall profits into the hands of the politically-connected ruling class at the expense of the average American?
The US is __not__ overegulated, it is just poorly regulated, and has far too much politically and socially motivated regulation eg Bush, stem cell lines, [security] Id cards.
Much regulation is either WRONG, or INADAQUATELY ENFORCED, particularly in the finance sector, eg:
(a) Naked Shorts
(b) Incorrect MARK TO MARKET
(c) Capital Adaquacy
(d) Insure un-owned asset
(e) Late transaction settlement
you need the above list fixed before the next implosion or down turn.
But the "R&D" Apple is talking about is the Silicon Valley jargon for "Product Development." This is not even close to the Basic Research of the OP.
The current prices of fossil fuels fail to include all of the associated externalities.
Green tech loses two jobs for every one job gained.
But who cares? At least politically-connected green tech companies will get rich at the expense of average people. That's what matters, right?
If they were more efficient, why wouldn't they be less expensive than fossil fuels? Then we'd just switch to them because they're cheaper -- rather than being forced against our will to pay extra for them and to subsidize them.
Because the price doesn't reflect the costs. If you were actually paying with your dollars for the externalities, things would be very different. But the only way to do that is by some non-market entity forcing against someone's will.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
It doesn't need to be in just one industry.
As to GM and the UAW, been there, done that, quit, couldn't stand either side of that work equation and predicted they would eventually fail, and have been proven correct, and I saw it coming clearly years in advance. They technically did fail and by all that is capitalist holy they should have just gone to a sheriff's auction. I had just any number of arrogant 'brothers' tell me back in the day that "no one would ever buy those little japanese cars" when I said it would be soon and they would take the lunch money because of better mileage and better quality, and was forced to read bigshot pundit after expert in the wallstreet shilled "news" claim that GM was the heart and soul of the US and so on, here for eternity, "bluechip" etc. Utter pie in the sky rubbish and showed a severe lack of long term critical thinking skills and a complete absence of business analysis.
Just watching them create then destroy the EV1 when the folks leasing them BEGGED to be allowed to buy them outright, and have the suits override the engineers and fixate on short term goals instead of thinking decades in the future...meh...unuins going on strike for anything at all EXCEPT a demand to make the best quality and least expensive autos possible, to stay competititve...double meh..dinosaurs, arrogant dinosaurs, and "volt" isn't going to "save" GM.
Geez, they are taking bailout loaned money and "investing" in china, headlines today, screw the tax payers even more.
The current price of anything fails to include all of the associated externalities.
To some people, that means "we'll just use the numbers we have". To others, it means "therefore, we can make up any economic argument we want and use externalities as FUD when someone points out how the numbers don't add up".
While I agree with you on the obscene profiteering, I still think that the medical industry is a major part of the solution for the future.
We have a critical shortage of healthcare providers (like nurses and nursing assistants) and 10% unemployment. Could these two puzzle pieces be made to fit together somehow? I'd rather the economy be driven by healthcare service than defense spending and pointless consumerism the way it is now.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
Because the price doesn't reflect the costs. If you were actually paying with your dollars for the externalities, things would be very different. But the only way to do that is by some non-market entity forcing against someone's will.
This seems to be a talking point you guys have memorized pretty well. The AC got there before you.
By using "externalities" as FUD, you can justify anything just by pretending they're high on the competitive product.
I actually worked for a government laboratory, and I saw this very clearly. I think the problem is that the powers that be in the government just do not understand basic research at all. The only way we could get money was to continually promise that "such and such technology" was going to be available in the next three to five years. Funding was just not available for things twenty years down the road. When I left last year we had developed a neat technology model that brought in a ton of money to our lab, but had NOTHING to do with basic research, in fact it was the exact opposite. It turned out the most effective way for us to get funding was to actually have a commercialized product that looked really cool and "Wow'd" the generals and could be used today, not at some generic point in the future. Because of this we've almost completely abandoned any pretense of doing any real research at all.
We just discussed it this weekend: http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/08/28/1119203/IBM-Images-a-Single-Molecule
If that's not great science, I don't know what is. Admittedly, it's in Switzerland, but I've never heard of the Great and Wonderful Microsoft, supposedly this generation's IBM, doing anything whatsoever to add to mankind's knowledge.
Well I'll be damned if it isn't Ayn Rand. Didn't anyone ever tell you that sex and capitalism don't mix?
First mover advantage? Not a chance. Read about it here.
Patent thickets? Just innovate around it. And read about it here.
Socialized medicine? A phrase coined by a PR group working for the AMA. Hear the full story. Health care is every man for himself here in the US. And don't forget the cost of patents in all health care innovations, including the time spent searching for patent databases, litigation and patent prosecution. I guess patenting genes is okay if you own the patent.
Oh, wait. You mean to say that patent monopolies have a place in a free market? Funny how conservatives love monopolies if they are the beneficiaries.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
Part of the reason companies like Bell and Xerox were able to invest in 'basic research' was that back in the the day they had monopoly positions (Bell's through legislation, Xerox's via patents), which meant they had huge profits and in turn meant they had spare money for "basic R&D."
It might have cost $2 per minute to call France but a portion of that $2 per minute went to R&D.
The loss of the monopoly positions (justified in many cases) meant by extension the loss of the profits that are required to support R&D.
This is a silly notion. It reminds me of the diary entry by a leading scientist in the mid-1800's, who on the day Darwin presented his seminal research findings to the British Philosophical Society, noted that "nothing much happened today [in science]".
Basic science is not "like mining lower and lower grade ores" but rather it is more like discovering and mining entirely new elements and understanding the fundamental realities of what makes elements different in the first place.
This isn't really a question of economics or social organization, but rather a question of how humans determine what is valuable (willing to spend money, the common denominator of values, on). Seemingly overlooked and under-appreciated observations often prove that the relative value of ideas depends largely on what insights and imagination those who have them possess and not what they may be worth to others. It is for this reason that broad advances in molecular biology are likely to hold the key to emerging job creating technologies. The socially, politically, economically and ecological necessities of advances in the biosciences in particular will bring humans kicking and screaming into a brave new world, whether they like it or not.
Judging from the current level of political, cultural, and intellectual discourse, I would suggest that a crash government program in understanding the molecular basis of cognition would provide the greatest revolution needed to solve human problems.
As much as we might hate too admit, humans are not nearly as intelligent as we need to be in order to address and solve the myriad of problems we readily create for ourselves. Richard Feynman ["Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong."] and Oliver Cromwell ["Think what if you might be wrong"] before him basically got it right. To think otherwise is to live in the delusion of wishful thinking.
Keep in mind that the problem of how we create the R&D to create new jobs can be solved in many very different ways. The two easiest and historically most probable scenarios are: 1) we turn every one into soldiers and start a war, no doubt need to protect the "homeland", that will then produce a great demand for nurses and skilled surgeons, not to mention jobs for those who develop new and imaginative ways for us to kill each other (remember that Al Qeida and other fanatics too are busy developing their own capacity for R&D) or 2) trash the planet and turn everyone into scavengers, who scour what is left of the landscape to survive (remember that no matter how careful or thoughtful you are, you still leave an ecological footprint that together with those of your fellow humans the effects of which are cumulative and sometimes multiplicative in nature). One can only hope that in either case, the rich, the powerful and the clever recognize that they or their offspring may someday soon become either casualties of war or the scavengers only food source and consequently are motivated to act to minimize the loss of the "commons" that will surely lead to either outcome. Let us hope they instead strive to reach alternative outcomes.
The big question is will they have enough time to do so without your help?
If you get the third world using fossil fuels, fossil fuel prices will exceed the affordability threshold for everybody.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Most futurists agree than the period of US hegemony is fading and china will emerge as the next great superpower. Think about it...china has a smaller step to freedom and democracy than the USA had in breaking from England. While the US is frozen fighting political wars between the two parties and the media on how to best to lower and manage the citizenry's expectations, China is doing a lot of basic research.
What is the government but a monopoly? And nowadays it seems that rather than being funded by a pseudo-monopoly's strong revenue stream, scientific research is instead funded by the government's force-backed revenue stream.
why wouldn't they be less expensive than fossil fuels?
Renewability. Fossil fuels are a finite resource, they are only cheap as long as you have plenty of them left, once you run out of them, you have a big problem at hand. So it might be a good idea to switch to a renewable energie source before that happens.
"There's no utopia."
Perhaps that true because there are so many who, though standing knee deep in sludge, keep insisting that its not possible. It would seem they must be selling paddles and don't want anything to change their business model.
Apple's R&D is 99% D and 1% R. Look at peer reviewed conferences for papers from Apple. You won't find many. Look for ideas from peer reviewed papers by people outside of Apple in Apple products and you'll find a lot (Snow Leopard contains two from my research, which I'm quite pleased to see appearing the real world, and the iPhone is absolutely full of ideas that have been presented in HCI journals and conferences over the past decade or so).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If the competitive produce it coal, then they are.
There's a perfect xkcd for my sig but I'm too lazy to look it up. sudo someone go find it.
Here's the reason. Think like a corporate exec!
Everything known has been discovered. Therefore we don't need to look for anything else. I think I've heard this before.
Everybody knows that Google is today's Bell Labs.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
That doesn't mean that the opposite position---externalities can be ignored---is somehow correct, either. If your product is cheap because you're throwing a bunch of waste product over the fence into your neighbor's yard, it's worth considering whether you ought to have to pay for the waste disposal.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"Name an industry that can produce 1 million new, high-paying jobs over the next three years, challenges BusinessWeek. You can't, because there isn't one."
Bullshit. If the government would destroy the monopoly that power companies and telecoms have, I could start about four or five new businesses within said industries that could produce a million jobs within the first three WEEKS, assuming the USA actually had the equipment and hardware.
Plain and simple it's corporate greed killing our economy. Kill the corporations or we're going to be doomed, it's that simple.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
In the world of creating new software, development is the only research there is. You don't know at the time you start coding whether or not you can do what you're setting out to do. It's an experiment. It may fail. Until you succeed, it's research.
Apple does numerous "resets" of its product development. That's jargon for starting over. All those failed attempts are research into what's the right way to do it. Edison did the same thing with the light bulb. Try 30 new filament materials; they all fail; so try 30 more. It was product development, but because it was hardware, you call it research. Most of software product development is research too. You just don't get to see all the burned-out filaments.
Ideas in journals and conferences are inspiration. What Apple's doing is perspiration. And they're not getting enough credit for turning ideas into realities.
Blame Wall Street and the idiots who decided that anything beyond the next set of financial numbers was a complete waste of money and not worth investing in.
Randomly invoking "externality" is a bad policy. But when you look at oil, unless you are willing to be totally ignorant of modern history, you can see the cost of externalities are extraordinarily high.
How many governments have been overthrown? How much money has been spent in the middle east to secure access to oil or to prevent someone else from getting it? (Don't feed me any lines about freedom or security. I'm not as credulous as as that, thank you.) What has the environmental cost been? And all of this to go into a transportation system in the US that is the most inefficient user of energy probably in world history. (3% of the population using 25% of the world supply). To a consumer system that can't even be bothered to recycle what it's already dug out of the earth.
Now, to the second and more important point, you cannot show me a single study published in the last thirty years that demonstrates that any part of our ecosystem is healthier than it was the year before. Maybe in some extremely local cases there has been progress, but on the whole, every year the earth becomes less capable of supporting life.
If we were all on a spaceship, and every year our oxygen recycling system became less able to do it's job, you'd start to panic once it got below 90% of capacity. If we had 1% less food, and became less able to replenish our supply each year, you'd start to really think hard about that problem once we get to 70% of our original stock. At least I would hope.
Well here's the newsflash. This Earth is the only known spaceship in the universe that can support human life. Every year, it becomes less capable of doing so. Every year, it comes closer to switching it's equilibrium to a state that may or may not kill us off, as it has done for 98% of all the species that have come before us. And though our production is extraordinary right now, our entire way of life is based on the artificially low cost of energy in the form of oil. It's in our pesticides, we use it to produce electricity, transport all food, and the man hours required for agriculture without it is unimaginable. Imagine construction without hydraulic equipment powered by diesel. Imagine creating medical devices without plastic. It's even in every single device we manufacture, and it's not easy to replace. We're going to use the oil produced over 200 million years in 150. That's like saving money for 100 years and spending it in 40 minutes. So the real answer is that oil is very, very valuable, and shouldn't be wasted to make our generation the most comfortable in history, and the next generation the last to have electricity 24 hours a day.
What is the value of having a biosphere that supports human life? What sort of premium would you place on the price of oil to account for that external cost to the people who consume it and the people who drag it out of the earth? Even the staunchest and dumbest libertarian would have trouble answering "zero." At least I would hope so.
By using "externalities" as FUD, you can justify anything just by pretending they're high on the competitive product.
Why are externalities necessarily FUD? The point of calling something FUD is because it isn't true, or at least creates artificial controversy: Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt where there needs be none. Do you mean to say that all the effects of power generation are currently accounted for in the monetary cost of electricity?
This isn't just some bash on pollution, no power-generating method's hands are clean. We subsidized nuclear research, and continue to alternate incentive and sabotage for nuclear power plants. Hydro is often controversial in its changing the environment and habitat around it. We have the massive boondoggle of corn-based ethanol, thanks to the agricultural lobby. Around the world, political suasion is used all the time to keep the gas flowing. Now we're talking about ramping up incentives for solar and other green tech, and suddenly it's too much?
It's incredibly naive to argue that there is anything resembling a free market to promote the best option with respect to power generation. We've been kingmakers ever since there was an option. It's time to recognize this and act accordingly.
Not one mention of the National Science Foundation which pumps billions of dollars into basic science research per year......
It would indeed have been difficult for anyone to screw things up as badly as Fiorina; that does take real talent. When Fiorina came on board, she made it clear that she did not like the company of which she had just taken control. So she methodically set about destroying the "old" HP. The first thing she did was a masterful piece of irony: she ordered that the word "Invent" would become part of the HP logo. Evidently, she thought that "branding" is all that matters; hype can be substituted for the real thing, and nobody will notice. I guess she was right.
This is not just about one bad person; it is a pattern. I think that what has happened is that the corporate managerial and financial class (and it is a sort of ruling class, in the old sense of class struggle) have become destructive parasites that suck the wealth out of our common economy, and transfer it to their own wallets. They destroy things that have value—like a creative engineering corporation—and leave behind an empty husk that only pretends to do what the old corporation actually did: invent.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
They're not researching the next Nylon or ductile tungsten (the real development that allowed for cheap and reliable light bulbs). Apple is finding out how to more cheaply produce iPods that will last through a product refresh or two.
Lots of their products are really slick, but none of it is fundamentally different from any other piece of consumer electronics. When they came out with "unibody" MacBooks I was thoroughly confused as to what was actually new. CNC machining has been done in various forms since the Apollo program. The machine shop in the basement of my building machines all manner of things out of plastic and aluminum plate stock, and while cool, is nothing extraordinary.
I hate to rant, but Business week can go push off! They mostly cater to business people, who pay themselves very handsomely, and pay everyone else squat. Even working in the sciences pays pennies on the dollar that being in business pays. Its been going on for a long time now. Belll labs shut because of a business decision, same with Xerox PARC, and all of the other places. Funding for big science has been declining for decades. NASA has openly talked about de-orbiting the ISS and letting it burn up in the atmosphere within 2 years because there is no money to keep any projects for it going. It all gets a price tag. Even universities have funding cuts to any project that doesn't have some direct financial gain in the short term. Let someone else pay for it is the motto of all business. Its worse than that though. Science isn't taught in US schools anymore either, because at an early age students know that it doesn't pay anything. SCIENCE=JANITOR/Blue Collar. They find out early that it pays badly, working conditions are crap (no golf course lunches, instead, staying up late in a lab somewhere), and so learn business strategy instead. Contemplative thought needed for Calculus and research gets screamed at "hurry up" from the manic, calculus-failing mavens of wall street. Businesses in the US are playing with their collective violins while science in the US burns. There will be no attempt to stop it. Having a BSc. degree, having seen people with basic (non-university) business training go much further, faster up the corporate ladder because of their background, I say to Business week, FUCK IT! America lost its blue-collar industry 20 years ago. Its loosing its white collar industry now (some of it anyway). It can lose accountants, engineers, lawyers next, and the Chinese can take over the whole damn place. They have a clue.
Better yet start at the bottom of a large company, take the college money they offer to all employees to go to school part-time and graduate with no debt after a decade in the same industry. Work experience, corporate cultural exposure and a degree for close enough to free.
It still amuses me when the techs I used to work with wonder why I finished school when I could just have taken the overtime and made the same money I make now by working at least a few 50 hour weeks every month.
bob@Osprey:~>
The current price of anything fails to include all of the associated externalities.
To some people, that means "we'll just use the numbers we have". To others, it means "therefore, we can make up any economic argument we want and use externalities as FUD when someone points out how the numbers don't add up".
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you managed to attack a slight miswording. You're glossing over the fact that the externalities are a huge portion of the costs of fossil fuels, and the externalities are a much smaller portion of the cost of renewable energy. You may not be able to ever know, calculate, or include all externalities, but you can surely include all known external costs to the best of your ability.
If we attempt to factor in all of the externalities we know about, fossil fuels end up being pretty damned expensive. Further, they become obviously unsustainable as long-term solutions. The only remaining question, then, is how much more money can be squeezed out of a fossil fuel-based energy economy before we screw ourselves over.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
The entire western society is sick. Governments are corrupt. The economy is headed for an epic fail. Culture is doomed. Food is practically poisoned.
And there aint shit you can do about it...
So imma go grab my coffee and prepare myself for the nine to five -_-'
Here be signatures
Off the top of my head, these are three fields where small smart teams can still do research and produce game-changing ideas.
Game-changers are sometimes only visible after they've changed the game. I bet we'll look back at this time in 30 years and the early signs of the next "big thing" will be obvious. The hard part is spotting them now.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I think the problem is the proliferation of well funded conservative think tanks (CTTs), with no other agenda than shaping the public discourse, and project their own intellectual dishonesty onto their political opponents.
There are liberal think tank, however, they are mostly concerned with environmentalism and social justice. As such, they don't get a pinch of the funding as CTTs.
Good grief, you really need a reality check on this one. Environmental and left-leaning social think tanks get a ton of money, and making a lot more political impact than the conservative think tanks (in large part because they have an easier time getting favorable press).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There is no surprise at all that the numbers of workers needed by society is in decline. Computers and robotics have from the outset been promoted as replacements for human labor. One social solution that has been offered is for the government to send each of us a check and require some sort of gambling or investments such that some people would always "earn" more than others to preserve a social pecking order.
Right now the rich see no reason for most of the lesser classes to exist. From their point of view the masses tie up traffic and are no longer needed to supply them with labor. Now we are seeing high end professions starting to quake and break at the seams. CPAs no longer have a lock on accounting as software has eliminated many potential accounts. Doctors are at risk of losses due to computers and robots treating patients. Lawyers will take a hit soon enough as para legals with good software take care of legal issues. Fast food workers will soon be replaced with robotic devices. Cell phones have eliminated the need for an office girl in many small businesses and bank tellers are being usurped by machines. And you can bet your last penny that school teachers are about to bite the dust. Watch as eighth grade English is taught by one teacher covering the entire nation with only assistants in the nations classrooms.
This effect will snowball. Meanwhile our super dumb population splits between the rich who pretend that taxes will hurt them and the poor who notice less and less opportunities to get by. If you want the short course there is a real reason that we have people sleeping in the streets and bushes.
Basic Research is normally extremely profitable. But what it will discover and how this will pay off isn't known in advance. So corporate management usually doesn't have the long-range vision to conduct it, sticking to applied research where the expected payoff is more predictable. The major exceptions seem to result from special circumstances.
Bell labs did basic research because the legislation that created the Bell System allowed them to adjust rates to make a specified profit (6% back then) on any money spent on the telephone system. This included telephone-system related R&D. So Bell Labs was set up to spend as much money as possible - on any research that could have some plausible connection to telephony. The more they spent, the more AT&T earned.
From the first year Bell Labs was a "failure": They made more money licensing technology they invented to outsiders than they spent. B-) And this continued through the spinout as Lucent - until eventually management pulled a standard "Harvard Business School" stunt: Stop investing in future inventions and maximize revenue from current IP inventory. This makes the bottom line look great for a few years. (Then deposit your bonuses and move on, letting your successors take the blame when the house of cards collapses.)
Xerox PARC's long foray into basic research seems to be the result of an odd accounting artifact. Early Xerox copiers were controlled with electromechanical devices - switches, relays, etc. In the very early days of microprocessors, the new research center designed a microprocessor-operated control panel for copiers. This drastically reduced the cost of manufacturing the machines. PARC was credited with this savings - for many years. So it could spend a lot of money on basic research and still be profitable on paper even if the research never saved Xerox another dime. This gave its management a very free hand. (Of course it DID invent a lot of stuff, some of which brought in more bux for Xerox. But not having to meet specific performance goals on a quarterly basis allowed them to chase bigger game.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
But the parent post didn't say that, you did. Here's what the parent said:
To quote your own words back at you:
There is still plenty of Fundamental work going on at Bell Labs (Actually, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs). It's just that in this day and age, Alcatel has made the decision, rightly so, that the research the labs do should focus around core business - so you'll find a lot of work on optical switching, chip fabrication and network theory. They are also doing a lot in holographics and 3dtv.
Bell labs still employs some of the biggest names in the business. and it pays to consider that as we learn more the idea that 'fundamental' research just involves physics. There is much intellectial work to be done in fundamentals - computer science is a good example.
Don't expect any business to plow money into research that doesn't have a filter-up benefit to their core businesses any time soon - it doesn't make sence for them, and I can see their point of view.
That's why there is no Bell Labs or Xerox these days. 30 years ago, we did not have all the goodies we have now. The computer market was non-existent. There were no cellular phones (for the Average Joe, at least). The fields were open for exploration back then...
This just in: Short term thinking leads to long term problems.
Nuclear power.
Biotech.
Of course, this assumes that governments stop being irrationally scared of both.
Sure, we'll spout R&D...and then we'll pump a bunch of kids into the educational system by somehow making education affordable again, and we'll begin to see initial results...
And right about then "corporate America" will again start using phrases like "Oh, they're just technical!" to justify ignoring those whose sense of logic cannot countenance the bogus corporate plan...
Even as Hollywood (or, more likely, Bollywood by then) is unleashing another wave of movies that belittles "nerds" and "geeks" and shows 'em getting pushed around by the "cool" clique in a totally fictitious high school...
And "corporate America" will offshore the first wave of new engineers' jobs - primarily because personal spacecraft have become the hot thing for CEOs and they need to cut costs to boost their own compensation...
And our kids will add the stigma of being a "nerd"/"geek" to the lack of job security, and see that the MBAs are diverting all of America's money flow to themselves, and the flow of new talent into the hard sciences educational system disappears 'cuz everybody wants to be an MBA and get rich (and the classes are easier, too!), and we will end up...
Right back here. Again.
Not going to be able to move America forward again until leadership returns to its old definition, and "success" is not defined by who gets the most money. The latter is particularly dangerous, because you end up with the "leadership" that we have now: People whose senses of morality, ethics, honor, and patriotism comes to a screeching halt right at the edge of their wallets.
Corporate America doesn't care if America dies - as long as they accumulate more wealth.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Right, because anyone that defends someone making money off their own work is an Ayn Rand loving nutcase.
And, of course, the concept of patents are ordained in our Constitution.
Why should it necessarily be that more efficient == less expensive, especially in the short term? Fossil fuels means taking advance of a resource that has taken literally millions of years to accumulate.
I think renewable implies efficient, at least enough for you to let the grandparent comment slide.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Then you forget where your inspiration comes from as an individualist.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
And this is the problem. Our current business model is wrapped up in the next quarterly report:
Suppose we changed the playing field:
1. No official in a company could get more than 3 times the salary of the lowest salaried employee.
2. In addition to his basic salary, a top official received the dividends off a block of stock for the next 20 years for this year's work. He cannot sell the stock until the end of the 20 year period.
3. Each year he gets his salary and another block of stock.
So if a person visualizes a future working for a company for 20 years, and he can't sell his last block of stock until 20 years after he quits, then he has strong incentive to plan long term for the company.
Distribute this system down the ranks, even into the bottom tier. If anyone who has been working for the company for 5 years is now getting 25% of their income in the form of company dividends, now the employees have an incentive to see that the company does well. Of course at this level, it is best to try to split the system so that employee dividends depend on the success of their particualr plant, department, or section.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
Being a part of university/public research institute, I claim that they are pretty screwed up as well. I have my PhD in physics and honestly kind of regret it. Aside from the social stigma associated with it(every seen a girl's reaction when you say you have a degree in physics? they usually run for the hills. I've gotten better reactions when I claim I'm a trashman), it has held me back. I can't teach at the high school level (where the USA needs good teachers) because I cost too much and don't a degree in education. I actually have a better chance working in finance then getting an engineering job. I'm a pretty good programer but can't compete with those who have basically only been studding it. Just stop and think, what do physicists do outside academia? (Honest answer, anything they can.)
Now lets look at academia: Usually piss poor salary compared to industry for the level of education and training. And once you have proven yourself to do good research you basically become a manager and spend all your time writing grants and other none science stuff. And God help you if you end up married to another scientist as well. The chances of the two of you ending up in the same area are small and commonly referred to as the two body problem. (I know of a proff at Carnegie Mellon University who's husband is at Georgia Tech!) You're also not going to have a stable job until you are at least in your 30's. Ever seen someone trying to get tenure and raise a newborn? It an't pretty.
So to sum up this rant, it isn't just funding it is also cultural. We have to make it worth while and convenient for people to get these advanced degrees, to go into basic R&D. We have to give it the prestige and respect that it had during the cold war and before. Right now in the US, you're either naive or an idiot if you try and follow a path of basic research at universities. I haven't decided which one I am yet.
Many things need to be bootstrapped if they are going to be successful:
* Look at the subsidy system used to get railroads across the country.
* Air line companies don't pay for airports, nor for the ATC system to keep them from bumping into each other.
* Trucking companies didn't pay for the interstate system.
Engineers know that everytime you double the number of units produced the cost per unit goes down by N%. This is well enough known, that Boeing uses it in their order book. E.g. The first ten 747s off the line cost, say, 100 million each. The next ten 90 million each, the next twenty 81 million each. The next forty 72.9 million each.
Windmills show the same sort of cost breakdown.
If you don't do this, you have to wait for the price of alternatives to get higher that the price of the first windmill.
Yes you can create FUD with talk of externalities. What we really need is a way of Generally Accepted Accounting Practices that take externalities into account. This isn't easy.
Meanwhile, we can see the bad effects of certain actions. I have no problems with government tweeking the system to favour alternatives.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
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In my few years in a Gov. lab I have witnessed a shift in focus from outcomes to process. The major priorities have (internally speaking) shifted to safety, computer security, and accounting rules. Science is the mission but that mission will be conducted in the most safe/secure/accountable box. I attribute this shift to the lack of a few singular important goals (say hydrogen fuel - or fusion energy. a la Manhattan project style) to hundreds of minutely focused activities. DC is also trying to manage ALL of projects from DC - THEY SHOULD BE MANAGING GOALS and leave the details to the local talent.
Who was it that said..."If government labs had existed in the Stone Age we never would have mad it to the Iron Age; but we would have very fine stone axes."
"Name an industry that can produce 1 million new, high-paying jobs over the next three years..." I'll tell you what it is. Read H.R.3200 on opencongress.org and you'll quickly discover that the government will need a China-sized army of people to administer it. Can't say if those will qualify as "high-paying" though. Then again, some gumint workers get paid a crapload of money for doing nothing.
Why not leave possible future problems for the future? Why should people today be forced to subsidize the people of the future? Why are the people of the future more worthy of living free prosperous lives than the people of today?
Also, why wouldn't we expect the people of the future to have more resources available and better means to exploit them than we have today?
It seems like they should be able to take care of themselves when the time comes.
No, that's not why. There's no utopia because human imagination is unlimited. We can always imagine something better than we have.
Perfection is elusive.
They're FUD when they're used as FUD. They're not FUD when they're carefully analyzed and quantified. Here, they're used as FUD.
I'm not sure where parent got x10 figure, but as a rough rule of thumb for commodity manufactured goods, you figure the manufactured cost is half the sales price to the distributor, the distributor marks up as much as 50%, and the retailer marks up as much as 50%. That leaves the markup from cost to consumer of about 4 times, or $20 in this case. Granted modern distribution channels have reduced the markup for many products these days.
"Today one example is DVD players. We have cheap DVD players because the patent licensing is not being enforced."
I think these guys would have something to say about that. A few well placed calls could probably get the units impounded. The US has pretty robust IP protection laws. These aren't ripped DVDs being smuggled in and sold on the black market. You can go into any Best Buy and purchase a house brand DVD player for around that cost. I'm rather surprised the licensing fee is still that high anyway.
"customs officials looking the other way as far as patent licensing is concerned"
I really don't think this happens frequently in the US. Our government corruption tends not to be of the small time player government bureaucrat. What corruption we do have tends to be big business buying off elected officials using methods at the margin of legality.
NOTE: This post is NOT about socializing health care.
However... I live in Europe. (Finland to be exact). I'm not sure if I have ever seen prescription drug advertised in TV. I actually have no idea if that is even legal or not. It probably is.
It is not because of public health care. It is because... Wait for it...
They are prescription drugs. You don't NEED to know about them. The doctors - people who actually have medical degrees, unlike me - are supposed to prescribe them to me when they believe it to be the best option. I don't have the expertise required to make an educated decision "I need that prescription drug". Hell, if I had that expertise, it wouldn't be a prescription drug.
So, there are some commercials for common painkillers in case of a headache, some commercials for allergy related medicines in the worst seasons for that... But no prescription drugs.
Of course, drug companies then lobby their medicine to doctors "You should prescribe our medicine" but even after that, the doctor can most likely make a better decision than I could even after seeing a few commercials. I would guess that this kind of advertising costs a lot less than advertising to us ignorant masses.
In addition, here is a law that requires apothecary workers (who also always have a very respected medical degree, unlike I do) to offer the cheaper version of a prescribed medicine if that is available and doctor hasn't specifically disallowed that (due to some medical allergy or something).
I think that cheaper version means "Other drug company has a competing product with same main indegredients for lower price" but I don't know what all factors are involved. I leave that to those who have studied the field.
He said "becoming more efficient", but besides that, of course fossil fuels and coal will have a tremendous cost advantage over newer 'green' tech: oil/coal already has its infrastructure built.
Pretend we have no electricity, and have to build everything from scratch. Factor in costs of going to war, pollution, pipelines, refineries, coal plants, gas pumps on every corner... that would be a far comparison to 'green' energy.
And yet you don't include any estimates of the externalities. But "trust us, they're huge".
"And so, therefore, we'll be forcing you to buy higher-priced, inferior energy from politically-connected rent seeking alternative energy companies. Our self-serving estimates for externalities of our favored energy companies are low."
It's pretty easy to decide these things when you get to use unlimited, unsupported, variable fudge factors. It's amazing how the answers always turn out beneficial to you and your point of view.
This story is less concerning when you read this two week old story from the NY Times (which I blogged about here) that talks about this trend where the R&D centers for major companies federate their pure research efforts amongst each other in order to increase efficiency and save money. Even though they are spending less, it doesn't mean that they are doing less.
Excellent points. I'm not sure why you got modded down. I did, however, want to point out that when I said 'cheapening', I meant less value for the same amount of money. I think you took it to mean inexpensive, as in costing less money for the same amount of value.
See http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cheap
I meant definition 3a, not 1a.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
Actually, we (mostly Americans and Europeans) hooked the third world countries on fossil fuels long ago. With the exception of some Asian countries where motorcycles are popular, many third world countries' cars are old and inefficient, kind of like you'd see in the poorer areas of the American South, except probably more big cars and vans and lass pickup trucks.
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces. - PF
But the license fee is not the manufactured cost. It cost x dollars to manufacture, and now it is being sold for 4x dollars. If it costs x + 5 dollars (the 5 being an arbitrary license fee) then why does it not cost 4x + 5 dollars to the consumer? Again, I am not an economist.
When talking about retail markup, it doesn't matter whether it is licensing cost, or parts cost, or R&D. In general you can expect the all in cost to produce one unit legally will be passed on x4 to the customer.
For some very basic commodity products, you may find the markup is allocated to the variable cost to produce, and the fixed costs aren't marked up. But in such a case, even the licensing cost is a variable cost. There is no logic to it, it is merely a practical industry observation, and an average of the markup necessary for most companies to operate marginally profitably.
And yet you don't include any estimates of the externalities. But "trust us, they're huge".
Because they're a pain in the ass to find and they're still not entirely complete to my satisfaction. ExternE did a good study of external costs and I would also recommend Internalization of the external costs of global environmental damage in an integrated assessment model. The glaring omissions that I see with these studies benefit fossil fuels by being omitted. Costs such as security of energy supply still have not been properly quantified or internalized, and these costs are inarguably huge. Studies that attempt to include climate change costs are remarkably conservative to avoid criticism. If the moderate concerns about climate change turn out to be well-founded, we'll be facing astronomical costs associated with that problem. And that's ignoring the suffering of over a billion people.
"And so, therefore, we'll be forcing you to buy higher-priced, inferior energy from politically-connected rent seeking alternative energy companies. Our self-serving estimates for externalities of our favored energy companies are low."
Or, if you bothered to read the studies, lower-priced energy. Where in the world did you get "inferior energy" from? I must have missed that in my high school physics class. Was it right between chemical and kinetic? Or were you trying to argue a straw man and claim that my argument is that we don't need base load power? That's utter bollocks. I'm a big fan of nuclear power, as well as ongoing research into energy storage. In the end, we desperately need better storage mechanisms, and it'd be awesome to see things like Power Tower able to provide base load power from solar alone.
I also find it pretty amusing that you're trying to accuse the environmental movement of favoring big, evil corporations. Seriously? Who's rent-seeking? The companies that manufacture windmills, all the companies manufacturing and researching solar tech? Are it those evil people who make double-paned windows? Maybe it's the evil bastards who retrofit homes with better insulation. Yeah, must be them. Gold-digging bastards will stop at nothing to conserve energy and make a profit!
It's pretty easy to decide these things when you get to use unlimited, unsupported, variable fudge factors. It's amazing how the answers always turn out beneficial to you and your point of view.
It's pretty easy to decide these things when you get to ignore all external costs simply because they're difficult to quantify. It's amazing how the answers always turn out beneficial to you and your point of view.
Now we've gotten the mudslinging out of the way, perhaps we can get back to having an intellectually honest discussion.
---
Do you at least acknowledge that we don't have an infinite supply of fossil fuels? If so, then surely we agree that at some point in the future we will have to switch to a renewable/sustainable model. The only serious disagreement we should be having, then, is over when that point is, and whether we should try to make the switch before we get there.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Any supposed "negative" externality is easily dealt with under a proper system of property rights.
If someone causes damage to you or your property - they are liable. Period.
Mine is Good
Any supposed "negative" externality is easily dealt with under a proper system of property rights.
If someone causes damage to you or your property - they are liable. Period.
How would that work with common property, such as the air, rivers, lakes, oceans, etc.?
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
How would that work with common property, such as the air, rivers, lakes, oceans, etc.?
The same way land is dealt with - as private property. Property law is complex - if you are unfamiliar with it then I would expect you to raise all kinds of "what ifs" and "what abouts", but nevertheless that's the way it ought to be.
You could kick the whole thing off with some sort of Homestead Act
Mine is Good
I've read up on property law, but I don't understand how air could be treated as private property under property law, at least in the US. By definition of it being fluid and subject to such atmospheric forces, you're unlikely to have the exact same air in one place a second time. You can't specifically mark any air as belonging to any one entity. Of course there is no existing method for someone to acquire the property rights for it to begin with, so there is no way for somebody to actually own it as of yet.
If you burn something into very fine particulate smoke, and the smoke spreads out so that it covers the entire globe, but only with a concentration of 1 part per quadrillion, who do you pay for polluting their property? What if 1/4 of the population of the planet is burning the same stuff, and the increased concentration is strong enough to trigger asthma attacks in 10% of the population?
I think I somewhat see your angle at this, but I can't see anything that would resemble a sane implementation of it. Can you be more specific or direct me to any legal articles on the subject?
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling