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America's Tech Decline: a Reading Guide
ErichTheRed writes "Computerworld has put together an interesting collection of links to various sources detailing the decline of US R&D/innovation in technology. The cross section of sources is interesting — everything from government to private industry. It's interesting to see that some people are actually concerned about this...even though all the US does is argue internally while rewarding the behaviour that hastens the decline."
I think it also comes from the rest of the world simply achieving many of the same gains we already did. When the rest of the world has the same tools and conditions, invariably they will start to come to par with us. From our perspective maybe it looks like we're losing our ability, but perhaps its just that other nations are just catching up rather than completely overtaking us.
And unlike many other historical world power, we actively encourage people to come here, learn, and go back home and create. There are those that argue that's bad for us. In the short term, perhaps it is, but as more of the world achieves our standard of living, there are more consumers for our goods as well. Long term, raising up your neighbors only helps you.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Why not just buy off the World Economic Forum and force them to publish more favorable results? That's right...we're America! That's how we roll!
You seem to be forgetting that the USSR bore the brunt of Germany's aggression and still managed to rebuild, just as it had rebuilt in the wake of its civil war. The USSR (and the Warsaw Pact, and Yugoslavia, and Albania) rebuilt with a command economy and Europe (and Japan) rebuilt with heavy state investment and trade protectionism (and the USA continued to build with state investment without worrying about destruction back home).
The real lesson here is that a modern industrial state with some reasonable quality of life doesn't come about by the invisible hand; it takes focused, directed work at the goal to get anything done.
Tyler Cowan wrote an interesting hyopthesis called "The Great Stagnation" (available only as an e-book on Amazon). Basically, there were easy pickings for growth: revolutionary technologies like electricity, lots of land, lots of opportunity. Now, there are no low-hanging fruit to get high growth again. Everyone else is simply playing catch-up.
For America, the problem is that for the last 20 years, being a lawyer or Wall Street-type manager or financial manager was where the money was. Unfortunately, those types don't actually create anything. They are, at best, enablers of the people who do and make things. In most cases, though, they are simply fat parasites on the free market draining our best & brightest into pointless careers making derivatives, etc.
America's decline isn't from government, or even necessarily the Rich and Powerful, but from her people. They've turned their back on getting rich by working hard (understandable because of above) or inventing & discovering things. They've turned their back on learning and education (See for example, TLC's transformation from a science/learning channel to reality TV channel). They've also begun turning their back on science and logic in favor of "gut feelings" (Thanks, Glen Beck and Fox News!).
Unless America opens up its borders again, I'd say: get used to it.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Are you reffering to the middle class or the wealthy. This opinion exists on both(as if there were only two) sides, but widely strongly disagree about the basis of American strength. The reality is that the U.S. is already in second(or lower) place for every major assessment of power, except military strength.
"Wrote Grove: "You could say, as many do, that shipping jobs overseas is no big deal because the high-value work -- and much of the profits -- remain in the U.S. That may well be so. But what kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work -- and masses of unemployed?""
Nailed it. Offshoring makes companies and their management richer. It saves a little for consumers of the relevant product, if the savings are passed on to them rather than simply taken as profits ... but those consumers have fewer and fewer jobs from which to get income to buy the products.
The endgame here is for the local market for consumer goods to dwindle, and then for the company to move it's main office to a tax haven and/or somewhere with a population that still has money to spend. They've basically mined the consumer market until it's depleted, and then they move on. This is what happens when you consistently underpay your regular workers and/or ship their jobs elsewhere: you undermine the entire economy. Apparently modern industries have forgotten basic lessons from way back in the days of Henry Ford: pay your workers reasonably well, and they will ultimately help your community and business thrive.
1960's: "Little Johnny, what do you want to be when you grow up?" "An engineer for NASA, helping build the craft that will take us to Mars!"
2010's: "Little Johnny, what do you want to be when you grow up?" "A rapper who brags about his bling and his bitches!"
The wealthy have killed off the middle class. A strong middle class is what made America great.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If you want to help it return, kill all patent trolls.
Maybe. The space program might be a counter-example. When the USSR was in the lead, America pushed hard to keep up and "win the race". These are two very different strategies. The USSR was much more into conquering and exploiting the new frontier and had developed technology with that in mind. Arguably it's a damn good thing they didn't win (from any kind of ethical standpoint) for that very reason. The US got bored silly after "winning" and essentially dismantled all of NASA's projects on getting people to Mars (which they actually could have done by the mid 80s). They won the race, they got the prize, contest over. And when a contest is over, the normal thing is to go home and that is exactly what happened.
It has been argued that had Russia actually got men on the moon first, both Russia and the US would have active space colonies by now, not just a crudely-assembled and much-reduced space station that's too damn small for the kind of science needed to continue justifying it.
I would alter the argument a little, as I don't think the Cold War in Space would have been pretty: I think the US is fundamentally incapable of generating momentum in and of itself but is extremely capable of very efficiently tapping into the momentum of others and developing it in new and highly creative ways. In other words, the highly compete-till-you-die aggression of the US is only good if there's a competitor to compete against, that the US has less of a "work ethic" and more of a "win ethic". That other nations have a responsibility, particularly supernations like the EU, to be that competition and not defer a damn thing.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Sorry, you misunderstood. Your product is technically a hard product, but you started with a refined product, added what your customers perceive as value, and sold a more refined product. If buy a threaded rod from you, does the removal of metal to form the threads add value? You started with 2 lbs of metal and give me 1.8. Now say I'm making a jet, I need a threaded rod. You sell it to a company that then sells it to me with the addition that it insures it to a certain strength. If it fails then they take some of my risk. The value you added is no different than the value they added. Your product is a phsical change, but other than that a process that makes something more useful to me is worth extra cost and the form of that value does not make either job less important.
I'd probably pin the decline of the US on a number of factors:
1: The view that engineers, mathematicians, and computer scientists are "nerds" and deserve contempt, while someone who might kick around a ball for 5-10 minutes is considered a superhero. China and Russia value their scientists, like how we in the US did in the 1950s-1960s. Now since science is considered "beneath" most Americans, compared to business or law, not sowing out seeds in the field means a crappy harvest. You are right, we had a long while where attorney was the meal ticket. Now, there isn't much they can parasite off of, so those fields are drying up. Until people in the US as a whole start valuing the people that innovate, as opposed to a sports hero, or Justin Beiber, the economy will remain stagnant, and the jobs that don't move overseas will be taken by H-1Bs.
2: Lack of interest in R&D. Companies here either license new stuff, buy the company that has it, or litigate the company that has something they want out of existence. Actual old school R&D like PARC or Bell Labs isn't done anymore, and it is blamed on "product liability". Even the government isn't that interested in keeping innovation. So, obviously (OB car example), when the gas is turned off to the engine, it stops moving. No seed funding == no cool new things coming from labs.
3: Espionage. To a PHB, security has no ROI. They really don't give a shit if their corporate trade secrets mysteriously appear in Beijing or Tehran as long as they have good sales numbers for this quarter. So, even with innovation, it is stolen by other nations that actually value security. Until companies actually give a shit about keeping their stuff secure, any research done in the US is a freebie given to BRIC.
4: Lack of education in the US. Other countries value education, and help fund it for their citizens. For an American to get to a similar education level as an average French or German adult at the age of 25-30, it will take $20,000 to $50,000 worth of tuition. For an average American to get to the level of education of a German cop (not a lawyer, a street policeman) it would take over six digits of tuition spent.
Until these are addressed, the slide will continue.
Interesting thing about that that refutes your point
And the even more interesting thing about that chart is they choose when the Great Society programs started to hit full stride as when to notice low income earners stopped improving. No longer do the poor in America see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires but instead as deserving something for nothing. Thanks Kennedy/LBJ/Nixon/Ford!
That went away with the middle class too. Two sides of the same coin. The rich want control and the poor want big brother to tend to them (generally speaking). A strong middle class is necessary for a free society.
if you can't compete then the free market is working.
you can't be capitalistic and complain about cheap foriegn labor. that's is being a hypocrite
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.