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Is American Innovation Losing Its Shine?

Posted by samzenpus on from the everything-used-to-be-better dept.

kenekaplan writes "American ingenuity and innovation, the twin engine of the country's economy since World War II, is in danger of losing steam and job growth potential if federal legislators allow 'automatic' spending cuts to kick in next year rather than earmarking federal funds to advance education, research and manufacturing, according Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Susan Hockfield."

58 of 625 comments (clear)

  1. Do more with less by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    That is the only way to truly innovate and be competitive.

    1. Re:Do more with less by hedwards · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, at the expense of the workers. The reason why we're losing our competitive edge in innovation is primarily the extraordinary costs that it requires these days to take even a simple idea to market. Patenting is expensive enough that individuals can't afford it and yet cheap enough that Amazon can manage to patent all manner of obvious thing hoping that a few will stick.

      If we really want to go back to innovating we need to cut the crap with the bullshit software and biological patents. Not to mention preventing the use of patents as gatekeepers to entire branches of research.

      And, we need to ensure that workers have enough money that they don't need to work two jobs so that they have time to innovate on their own time.

    2. Re:Do more with less by sycodon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Just glancing at the headline I thought this might be an interesting article and discussion. But just the first sentence shows it for what it is, yet another "Sky is Falling if our funding is cut" article.

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    3. Re:Do more with less by deapbluesea · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So you are for cutting regulation then? I'm currently working on an aviation product. The only way for me to get it to market is to go through FAA certification. That certification process is there to make sure the software and hardware are flight worthy given the potential loss of human lift, but if you look at the requirements, it's much more of a "pay us enough money to certify your stuff and we'll let you into the club" type regulation. The requirements do not, in themselves, make better software, I just saw a speech by the COO of iRobot where he listed all the certifications his company has received over the last 10 years so they can be a federal contractor. He calculated the cost to be over $40M and stated quite plainly "not one penny of that went to a better product, a cheaper product, or a more efficient process - it was merely the cost of access to the federal government". You want to help out workers? Cut regulatory requirements. The "CEOs are making too much money" tripe isn't typical of most small businesses. You are complaining about the actions of the fortune 500 companies who have spent a lot of money to create regulatory hurdles for the little guys. Cut regulatory requirements, and the big fish who are misbehaving will suddenly have competition from those who are willing to accept a leaner CEO compensation.

      --
      Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
    4. Re:Do more with less by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The private sector will strive to find new ways to make money.

      That's not the point. The notion that private industry is going to stop making money is a straw man. Nobody thinks that. Money *will* be made, but money doesn't care *where*. As an investor, the next quarter matters far more to you than the state of a company five years in the future. You're almost certain to have adjusted your stock positions by then. You certainly don't care *where* a company you own stock in will be making its widgets, or whether America makes widgets at all.

      But most people aren't planning on changing their national residency every couple of years, if ever. It makes a difference to a citizen whether his country still makes computers or cars, or still has jobs for engineers in ten years' time.

      A rational, self-interested investor just isn't concerned with the future of American competitiveness. He doesn't even care if American society goes to hell in ten or twenty years, so long as he's made enough money to insulate himself from that. Most of the country can become an impoverished, polluted dystopia so far as he's concerned, but if he can afford to move to a clean, orderly, wealthy enclave it's not a problem for him.

      Money not only doesn't care where it's made, it doesn't care *how* it is made. No business innovates if it can make more money by doing the same old thing. It is competition that forces a business to innovate -- albeit only over the short term -- but no company *likes* having competition. So do you think businesses hire lobbyists to *promote* competition? Of course not. Innovation is risky and expensive. Buying politicians to protect you from competition is cheap and predictable. A society organized solely for the good of business interests is one where those interests don't innovate much because they are protected from competition.

      Suppose the country had taken a "private enterprise first and only" course at the end of WW2. There's no question that businesses would have made money, maybe even more money in the short term. They'd certainly keep a lot more of their earnings because tax rates during the economic boom of the 1950s and 60s were high, much higher than today. But without the public investment in research and technology funded by those high taxes we'd still be living in a world of largely 1950 technology. Entire industries would not exist. There would be no computers, no satellite communications or GPS, no Internet, and much less biotechnology. The payback times of these investments are far longer than the planning horizons of any rational private investor. Only someone who is interested in the good of society, and the good of the nation would make those investments.

      A society organized solely for the good of private enterprises would be no different from any other society organized for the benefit of a few. It would be aversive to innovation, focusing most of its energy and resources on the maintenance of the status quo. Unfortunately, most people don't seem to be able to envision any kind of world but one organized solely for the benefit of business, or one that is irrationally and implacably hostile to private enterprise. It's like they've thrown out history, even the living memory of the success of moderate, pragmatic economic policy, because the story that tells isn't tidy and simple. People seem to prefer a simpler, more radical world view, and there are plenty on both ends of the political spectrum who are happy to peddle it to them.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    5. Re:Do more with less by Runaway1956 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Agreed. Ingenuity - American, or any other variety, does NOT depend on huge amounts of cash from the government.

      Fact is, the federal government doesn't belong in education. The more money shoveled into education, the stupider people get. First - all that money is used to make textbooks and curriculum uniform around the nation. So, you get millions of lemmings who have all been taught the same lessons almost verbatim. They get together, and instead of actually churning different - even opposing - views and opinions around, all they can do is recite the same old formula to each other. Innovation? Bullshit.

      Second - the people most worried about the lack of funding for education are almost certainly dullards who have never had an original thought of their own. Those individuals know nothing more than what their schools have taught them. And, they can't understand that really bright people have learned a hundred things outside of school, for every thing they ever learned IN school.

      A student never stops learning. At age 55, I'm still learning. I give credit to my elementary and high school teachers who instilled a desire to learn into me. But, the actual lessons? More often than not, the lessons were inane, and boring, and sometimes even wrong.

      If and when Washington and all the various school boards around the nation figure out that schools shouldn't be used for teaching facts and figures, our schools will improve dramatically. Schools SHOULD be used to teach children to enjoy learning. Schools SHOULD be teaching people where, and how, to find facts and figures, and they SHOULD be teaching people to think about those facts and figures.

      NCLB has proven that you can actually teach morons to recite multiplication tables - but you cannot force a moron to manage his finances.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  2. And patents, of course by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Let's not forget that if you come up with a new idea, you'll almost certainly be sued.

    If you really want to make money, you're better off getting into financial arbitrage (like high-frequency trading) then you are innovating or making something of value.

    1. Re:And patents, of course by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Patents have very little to do with America losing its edge. It has partly to do with outsourcing of tech jobs overseas. In essence, American companies have trained foreigners how to build a tech industry in their own country. Now we must compete against them.

      It also has to do with US government policies that end up incentivizing the best and brightest going into finance and law, jobs that advance society very little. It is no coincidence that most politicians are lawyers and financiers.

      The American people can fix it by voting in politicians who have the guts to make the necessary changes. But instead, people are more concerned about sex scandals, abortion, and gay marriage than making the changes needed to make the country great again.

    2. Re:And patents, of course by Sarten-X · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As opposed to a system without patents, where your idea is quickly copied by anyone who already has the production facilities to do so and you have no legal recourse.

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    3. Re:And patents, of course by vadim_t · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I think that's an acceptable tradeoff. I do not think that rewarding the very few people that indeed deserve it outweighs the problems patents currently cause.

      Also, it seems we have reached the point where lone inventors are unlikely to make much advancement, without running into a patent issue themselves. Once the modern era of patent wars and "defensive patents" started, every company started acquiring more and more of them and trying to make them as broad as possible.

    4. Re:And patents, of course by JonySuede · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ask yourself what is more productive for the economy:
      Case1: The inventor is sued out of existence and the invention never see the light of the day since it is disruptive to the current economic actors revenue steams.
      Case2: The invention gets copied, however, if the inventor and his investors use reasonable marketing, they still have the first mover advantage.

      --
      Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
    5. Re:And patents, of course by CodeBuster · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But instead, people are more concerned about sex scandals, abortion, and gay marriage than making the changes needed to make the country great again

      Indeed. The Chinese and Indians laugh at us for spending so much time on such frivolous things and for even discussing these things in politics. Your abortion and gay marriage "rights" won't mean jack squat if in the meantime we stand by and watch as this once great nation circles the toilet bowl on its way down the tubes. In fact, I wish that people would just STFU about such things when discussing what sort of policies are best for the long term survival of our nation. People who make these things into voting issues are pissing away their futures while Rome burns.

    6. Re:And patents, of course by del_diablo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      >Ask yourself what is more productive for the economy:
      >Case1: The inventor is sued out of existence and the invention never see the light of the day since it is disruptive to the current economic actors revenue steams.
      >Case2: The invention gets copied, however, if the inventor and his investors use reasonable marketing, they still have the first mover advantage.
      You forget case 3:
      The investors keep their work a tradesecret, and takes it with them to the grave
      Case 3 is the entire reason the patent system exists. Suddenly your "work" could be exteneded by others instead of everybody having to reinvent the exact same thing. For example how to make proper steel.

    7. Re:And patents, of course by Alan+Shutko · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Right now, we've got the worst of both worlds.

      If you come up with a good idea, it will be immediately copied by a number of large companies that figure they've got deeper pockets than you. They will complain you are trying to use patents instead of competition to win in the marketplace. And odds are, anything you make will infringe on one or more of THEIR patents, which they will use as a defense to stop you from using your patent against them.

      At the same time, you will be sued by a non-practicing entity with no assets except the patent they're suing you with, and you can't even try to use other patents against them since they're not making anything.

    8. Re:And patents, of course by Electricity+Likes+Me · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But instead, people are more concerned about sex scandals, abortion, and gay marriage than making the changes needed to make the country great again

      Indeed. The Chinese and Indians laugh at us for spending so much time on such frivolous things and for even discussing these things in politics. Your abortion and gay marriage "rights" won't mean jack squat if in the meantime we stand by and watch as this once great nation circles the toilet bowl on its way down the tubes. In fact, I wish that people would just STFU about such things when discussing what sort of policies are best for the long term survival of our nation. People who make these things into voting issues are pissing away their futures while Rome burns.

      Did you know one of the single biggest development indicators is women's rights?

      For whatever reason, if you enforce gender equality and women's education, your country will be dramatically better then it's neighbors in the long term. Standards of living go up, crime goes, productivity booms.

      Now, this doesn't really make immediate sense: without women's rights you've got an entire labor force who you don't have to pay. Surely, with all that free labor or low-cost labor, you'd expect an easy win over people who actually have to pay fair wages.

      The reasons are complex, but the big one is this: cultural discrimination doesn't just effect the discriminated against group. It narrows the mindset and "acceptable" standard of behavior of the favored group as well. It leaks into science, business and the arts and closes up avenues of exploration because it effectively bans "types" of thinking. If you're a man, you're only favored provided you stay away from "feminine" things - which are implicitly not worthy of consideration. Your behavior must conform to whatever the expected norm is, lest you become a de facto member of the oppressed group.

      Abortion is very much a women's rights issue in most respects, but it also has follow on consequences: if access to abortion services is easy for the poor (it's never a problem for the rich) then crime rates drop about 18 years after that happens. Gay marriage means you're not only removing yet another disenfranchised class (and thus promoting tolerance and general consideration and empathy within your population - you know, attacking a whole bunch of harmful social issues at once) but you're also ultimately addressing wider issues such as the social acceptance of people in unusual living situations (i.e. those with divorced parents, unmarried parents, single-parents etc.).

      I assume you don't actually oppose either of these measures, but it's straight up non-sensical to think social policy has nothing to do with economic policy. There's a reason socioeconomic status is how we judge an area and not just "economic" status.

    9. Re:And patents, of course by jcoy42 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bullshit. Let's place blame where blame is due. What screwed America is the unions. It quickly became cheaper to order from Canada than buy local, and that just opened the gateways. It became obvious it was non-profitable to work with Americans, because we're greedy and vindictive.

      And don't even get me started on the BS they pulled w.r.t. time spent on the job vs. actual contribution. They advanced people for time served, and punished up and comers.

      Not this isn't to say there aren't other issues involved, but the core problem is we let a mafia-like set of players step in and control our strongest companies, and the folks with the money got sick of it. The unions trained businesses to avoid local production by pricing our workforce right out of the market.

      You can sit and bitch all you want, but that is what killed it for American jobs. Everyone wanted the best health care, they wanted automatic advancement, and just made themselves unappealing to the businessmen. There is a breaking point. And one look over the history of Detroit (which is just a more obvious example than most) shows exactly what happens when you let the unions take over. If that doesn't explain it, look at GE.

      Once you stop building the stuff, you stifle engineering and improvement, and at this point, I don't see America pulling it out of their ass for anything. We were on top, and we blew it. Case closed.

      --
      Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
    10. Re:And patents, of course by Sleepy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yes and no. Patents are a problem -- you can NOT launch a small technology firm and make anything useful without violating patents. This is a barrier to US businesses and Europe, but not China as they will simply ignore patents (for their domestic market).

      I'd say America lost because Wall Street *wanted* America to lose. Maybe not explicitly, but as a result of all those outsourcing tax credits Wall Street wanted.
      Talk to a US based electronics manufacturer... all of them had NO CHOICE but to move their R&D to China, because that's where all the manufacturing is.
      Often times, the latest and greatest micro chip thingy will be documented by a Data Sheet which is written in Chinese. Eventually it will be translated to English, but the part might be depricated by then if it is a short lived market item.

      Linksys, D-Link, Buffalo etc. all of these router manufacturers have almost NO knowledge what is in "their" products. They simply say "I'll take one of those" from the ODM and slap their web GUI on the firmware.

      Apple is the last remaining US manufacturer who -designs- in the US. They pay a high price in terms of cost of operating. And even then, all their manufacturing is outsourced, and they don't really R&D any of the low level stuff.

      Back to my original point... even if you reformed patents, and even un-did the Bush era outsourcing credit, NONE of those R&D jobs would come back. You'd have to convince China and Japan to subsidize their businesses to move operations back to the USA. No other country is dumb enough to kill their manufacturing, deliberately.

        But hey, Wall Street knows what it's doing... killing US manufacturing kills unions, and higher unemployment means workers will accept forced overtime and less safe working conditions. It's all pretty basic stuff, really.

    11. Re:And patents, of course by quenda · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It also has to do with US government policies that end up incentivizing

      How much US creativity is squandered on making up new jargon words like that, when perfectly cromulent words (e.g. motivate) exist already?

    12. Re:And patents, of course by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bullshit. Let's place blame where blame is due. What screwed America is the unions.

      Oh please. If you want to build stuff in America without paying union wages, it's easy: you build your factory in Alabama or Mississippi or Tennessee. That's exactly what a bunch of foreign automakers have done, while American automakers have been building factories in Mexico. There's nothing forcing you to use union labor; this has only been a major factor in northeast states. There's a LOT more to the country than just the northeast.

    13. Re:And patents, of course by syousef · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well I didn't say we were done with that area, and we aren't by a long shot.

      That's what the issue with paid-parental leave is

      Have you ever looked after very young children? I love my kids, but I would not call looking after them leave. We've got the language all wrong. It's work, and a small mistake can have deadly consequences. It's worthwhile and important work that must be done. As they get older and more self sufficient that aspect fades but you still have to supplement their education if you want to be a good parent. You still have to cook and clean for them at least until they are teenagers (though they can progressively help with that).

      But recognizing women as fully equal persons is a very important step to recognizing parenting as (1) something both sexes should be sharing in equally in a relationship and (2) as an important and worthy task.

      This pretence that we have to be the same to be equal is a big part of the problem.

      Have you ever spent 5 hours with a child under 2 years of age screaming for their mummy? Mum and dad can't always be equal. Not possible. You can change all the nappies you like. You can be the one who stays home and feeds and sings and plays with them. Society will for the most part shun you for it, but it can be done if the male really does want to be the stay at home parent. What can't be done is that you can never give birth or breast feed your child (yes you can feed breast milk but that's not exactly the same). You can't bond with a child as it's mother. Part of recognising women as equals has to include recognising their differences. Trying to force fathers into "equal" parenting when it's not supported by society or nature is ridiculous. It leads to severely depressed fathers that are more likely to disengage.

      Nor is it always possible to be raising an infant while working a full time job. I don't want any airline pilot flying an aircraft I'm on half asleep at the controls because he was up all night tending to his infant so his wife could get sleep. Nor do I want a woman doing that job for equal pay. I want someone staying at home with the child who recognises their partner is doing a dangerous job that requires full concentration at work, who then gets up during the night and feeds the child instead of worrying about equality.

      We get no where if it's "women's labor" since the entire issue was that "women's labor" wasn't recognized as important.

      In other words we have not addressed the problem at all. All the work traditionally done by a woman is expected to be done in your "spare" time now. It is still unpaid and still devalued. No amount of pressing for equality while this is the case is going to work because all it does is work both parents into the grave early as they try to keep a paid full time job and a 24/7 childrearing one too.

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    14. Re:And patents, of course by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bullshit. Let's place blame where blame is due. What screwed America is the unions.

      Low wages and fewer benefits are not the only way to make manufacturing work. Look at Germany and Japan - much stronger labour laws, more welfare and higher pensions, yet they are still able to manufacture and compete with the likes of China and India. In fact Germany exports more than China does.

      All you have to do is stop participating in the race to the bottom. It turns out people will pay for quality and innovation, so even if your production costs are higher your good still sell. Germany in particular has performed an economic miracle - they just gave everyone a tax break worth â5 million because they are on target to take â14m more in tax revenue this year, and unemployment is at the lowest level for 20 years. In other words since the West and East merged they have brought half their country up to the level of the other and become the world's biggest exporters, and the global downturn that has decimated manufacturing in some countries hasn't affected them nearly as badly.

      Making everyone suffer low pay and poor conditions is not necessary for an economy to prosper, and if you have good employment laws unions don't need to force the issues so much. Everybody wins, except perhaps for the executives who lose a million or two off their bonus to cover the higher costs.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. Robots will replace blue collar labor by meow27 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/11/mobile-farm-robots/

    this is not even the first step

    blue collar labor in america by and large has no future. The government needs to change the economic model to start developing our children's mind from a young age. and i mean, like making educational material -- like chemistry sets, cheap enough so that it's almost free

    1. Re:Robots will replace blue collar labor by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So, buy giving every little kid a chemistry set (and thereby sending them to Harvard) we will think ourselves out of this mess?

      No. Realize that very, very few people are ever going to be 'innovators' no matter how much government money we toss at the problem. It's not in their DNA, not in the upbringing, not in their heads. We have to come up with society that lets middle of the road people live a reasonable life, not expect everyone on the block to go off to work in a lab.

      Not sure how to do that, but giving more money to the Education Industrial Complex in this country so far has yielded little fruit.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    2. Re:Robots will replace blue collar labor by ATMAvatar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      A mass of educated voters would be a huge threat to the existing power base. Good luck with that.

      --
      "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
    3. Re:Robots will replace blue collar labor by flaming+error · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The government needs to change the economic model

      You've got it backwards, friend. The People need to change their government.

    4. Re:Robots will replace blue collar labor by Sarten-X · · Score: 5, Insightful

      To what?

      A direct democracy, swayed easily by the latest celebrity gossip and completely ignoring the general consensus of the relevant scientific communities?

      An oligarchy, where only well-respected scholars are granted the privilege of participating in government?

      A dictatorship, where one person's guidance would lead the nation to either greatness or despair?

      Or how about a representative democracy, where the decisions are made by people who can judge whether their constituents' recommendations are being made from reason or reaction, and can choose to follow or reject those recommendations appropriately?

      Every form of government is broken by the simple fact that there are humans involved. Humans are easily-corrupted creatures, and the system can only work around our failures.

      Maybe a theocracy would work, where the guidance comes from a particular chosen deity, through the interpretation of its priests...

      --
      You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
    5. Re:Robots will replace blue collar labor by ChatHuant · · Score: 3, Insightful

      blue collar labor in america by and large has no future. The government needs to change the economic model to start developing our children's mind from a young age

      The problem goes deeper than that: it's not only blue collar workers that have no future (and not only in America). White collar workers are also being replaced by machines; the process has just started, but I believe will accelerate. Assuming scientific progress continues at more or less the current pace, I can't think of any existing job humans do now that couldn't in the future be done cheaper by a machine (at least theoretically).

      There are two typical answers: one is that new technologies will replace some jobs, but create enough other jobs to compensate. However, that is not proven, and may not be the case; when a factory is automated, thousands of workers are replaced with a few dozen highly qualified engineers that command and maintain the machines. And when the machine maintenance is itself automated, the few dozen may be replaced by just a few people that can manage the whole thing. What happens to the thousands of workers that got replaced?

      The second usual answer is that people can study and qualify for more technical jobs, which can not be automated. This is the solution governments usually try to push, by creating job training programs, providing student loans, and so on. While this works on the short term, I don't think it will forever: first, some people simply don't have the time/resources/innate capability to qualify for too complex jobs; as technology and science advances, more and more people will not be able to keep pace. The other issue is that even highly technical jobs will probably be automated sooner or later, as technology advances. Where then will everybody work? I think this process will sooner or later clash with the current basic society structure (in particular with the ownership and property rules), and cause radical changes. Should be interesting!

    6. Re:Robots will replace blue collar labor by IANAAC · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or how about a representative democracy, where the decisions are made by people who can judge whether their constituents' recommendations are being made from reason or reaction, and can choose to follow or reject those recommendations appropriately?

      A representative democracy is something I really believe would work, if that is what we had. But we don't. We have representatives on both sides of the isle that take their orders from lobbying groups and turn deaf and dumb to their constituents. Corporate puppets, all of them.

      Get rid of special interests and maybe we can get to what this country was supposed to be. Notice I didn't say "get back to...". I have no idea what the beginnings of this country were like, but in my50 years, it's always been about the special interests.

    7. Re:Robots will replace blue collar labor by atriusofbricia · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Do they have a word for "government by lobbyists?"

      We have a representative democracy on paper, but when the rubber hits the road, how does congress vote on the really important matters? Most of the country wants better healthcare but congress won't vote on it. We need better gun laws but congress won't vote on it. Wall Street needs more oversight but... you get the idea.

      There are two possibilities... one is that we have government by lobbyists.. or two.. what you say the majority of the country wants isn't what it wants. You say most of the country wants better healthcare, but what you seem to really mean is you think most of the country wants government run health care and I'm nearly certain that isn't true. You say we need better gun laws, but who is this we you're speaking of? Anti-rights people, that would be you it seems, have been losing that battle for a long time now with no end in sight. Apparently the majority of people don't want that either.

      So, is the Congress merely acting at the behest of corporations, or maybe in some cases they really are voting what their constituents want. Since they vote, and corporations don't, who would you listen to?

      --
      I was raised on the command line, bitch

      "Nemo me impune lacesset"

  4. Has Slashdot ... by BlindRobin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    started asking rhetorical questions just to start a discussion ?

  5. American Ingenuity ? You mean immigrant ingenuity. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nothing is very ingenious about US itself - other than that the brightest come here. Most Americans are basically the 99.9% - the non-innovators. The 1% comes from all over the world.

    For the past 50 yrs, US had the money - and the know how to cultivate innovation. Now both of these are well known to a lot of countries - and the US now has less money to spend on Defence & Space (the primary source of innovation).

    Time we got used to making $30K for web development jobs, and time the anthropology, english & history majors.. end up flipping burgers.

  6. You're blaming government spending cuts? by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Look, we've spent the last 30 years sending all as many science, technical and engineering jobs overseas that we can and shutting down commercial research labs. Now you're going to argue we're going to lose our science and technology advantage because government is cutting spending? If science and technology suffer in America's future it's because bean counters gave our edge to the rest of the world in exchange for 2% profits and million dollar bonuses.

    This is just MIT selfishly bitching about losing funding. If you really care about barriers to education, how about you lower your goddamn tuition, assholes?

    --
    The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
  7. Patents, lawsuits, and healthcare by Manip · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Want to know why small business is impossible in the US, three simple reasons: Patents, lawsuits, healthcare.

    Patents are granted too easily, cover too much, and cover it for far too long. What's worse is that the damages are absolutely insane and companies can literally have your product banned from the entire country simply because you for example used a "menu" to "navigate a complex system" or some nonsense.

    Lawsuits are too easy to bring in the US, too costly to defend, and there is no punishments for bringing frivolous suits. For small businesses one or two of these suits no matter how much merit they have can sink the company. So big businesses just sue for nothing and bankrupt small businesses.

    Healthcare, too expensive, significantly more expensive for small businesses than big, and it discourages the best employees from working at smaller firms because they literally will have to pay 100% more per year for basic healthcare.

    And while I have the soup box let's talk about political corruption allowing monopolies or duopolies to control the market and make it literally impossible via regulation or market manipulation for competitors to form (e.g. Cable, Internet, 3G, Cellular Services, Health Insurance, Health Providers, Drugs Producers, Children Toy Manufacturing, etc).

    1. Re:Patents, lawsuits, and healthcare by Kupfernigk · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Actually, I think that "IP" is now the number one problem. What's more, as the USA tries to expand its IP empire abroad, a backlash is inevitable.

      The present system means that corporations can attempt to prevent innovation in others while not having to do anything about it themselves. It is, in effect, like the medieval guild system that is hitting the economy of Italy, or indeed like the theocratic regimes in Iran or Sa'udi Arabia. It all went wrong when the USPTO ceased to be a cost center and become a profit center, and a whole new class of "IP lawyer" saw the opportunity. Not to mention the entire economy of parts of Texas.

      --
      From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
  8. No, it's losing its money. by gestalt_n_pepper · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Innovation needs to be rewarded. How many of you have signed contracts that give *any* invention you create to your employer as a condition of having a job? How may of you have the means to quit to pursue making a business out of your invention? (Hint: You ALL signed one, and you can't if you have a family). And if you did manage to start a business, would you have a legal fund to defend yourself from getting "wallet-whipped" form the inevitable lawsuits?

    Patent law, labor law and contract law have all skewed the results of innovation so that corporations profit, while individuals make a few thousand dollars bonus and get a pat on the head from management. This soft corruption is ever so slowly strangling the geese that lay the golden eggs. There are a few Apples and Microsofts and a Facebook. And what would have become of these ideas had Jobs, Gates or Zuckerman been working for IBM at the time they had them?

    If I had a million dollar idea tomorrow (and they're not that tough), I can't think of a reason in the world to bother with it while working for a company in the USA. You'd have to be in college, having never worked for a corporation, or offshore in a country that protects you from patent disputes or confiscatory contract provisions.

    --
    Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
  9. Re:She's got it backwards. by Jawnn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, right. There's lots of "money floating around" in the U.S. right now. In other words, your argument is bullshit. Oh, to be sure, there's money out there, but the people (corporations) who have it are NOT spending it on anything, certainly not on innovation. And this despite government welfare programs aimed at the wealthy to "stimulate jobs and innovation". Try again.

  10. No by xstonedogx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    A few points in no particular order:

    1. Those automatic cuts are hardly automatic. They'll be repealed if legislators can't come up with a plan. These guys would rather preside over the disintegration of the union than cut their constituents' favorite federal programs.

    2. Government does not create innovation. Examples like NASA are always trotted out, but I think if you total those successes with the failures, pork, and corruption, you'll find we could have gotten much more for less. Maybe not NASA and it's indirect benefits specifically, but something else.

    3. What has the federal government ever done for education other than turn principals into truancy officers? Don't get me started on tuition cost increases due to the ease of getting federally backed student loans.

    4. If you want to increase manufacturing: drop the minimum wage.

    1. Re:No by nickmalthus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Last week on HDNet Dan Rather Reports did a special on Singapore schools, some of the best in the world. One thing that stuck out in my mind is that culturally the teaching profession is held in the highest esteem there. Here in America teaching has become a job of last resort where only the desperate or truely dedicated put up with the abuse and meager wages. There was a time in America where learning was cherished as a virtuous means of self improvement for both private and public good as the ancient greek philosophers promoted. Now with avarice instead of virtue motivating our country teachers are restricted to simply programming automatons for a standardized test and are held in contempt for being in any way associated with the government. Respect and upraise our teachers; they are directly involved in defining our country's future.

      --
      If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
    2. Re:No by Beelzebud · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, don't insist on minimum wage laws in our trading partners, just lower the price of labor here, while the CEO's keep raking in huge obscene bonuses. Your solution is just cuts, cuts, cuts, and kiss the middle class goodbye.

  11. Re:American Ingenuity ? You mean immigrant ingenui by kwark · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Most Americans are basically the 99.9% - the non-innovators. The 1% comes from all over the world."

    Does not compute.

  12. Done on purpose by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We've done everything possible to stifle innovation over the past 20 years.

    Innovation: Patent trolls, nuclear patent portfolios, submarine patents, generic and inscrutable patents, court district shopping, DMCA, ACTA, losing tech to other countries, H1B visas.

    Infrastructure: Rationed internet(data caps), net neutrality, spotty cell coverage, polluted water supply, inscrutable laws, discretionary enforcement, tax complexity, offshoring

    Growth: Tax breaks to rich companies (if GE pays no taxes, it's hard to make a competing product), regulatory failure (example: deepwater horizon), tax incentives for companies to move from state-to-state, profligate wasteful spending.

    Is it any wonder that American innovation has lost its shine?

  13. Learn to play guitar by qualityassurancedept · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The idea that you would pay an american to do what lots of people all over the world can do for a fraction of the cost is ludicrous, and that goes for "research" at universities as well... unless of course you are talking about stealth bombers or nuclear weapons research, which it is illegal to export. Now that they have the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, american research in physics, for example, is on its way to becoming second rate and other than Women's Studies and Business School, American universities have less and less to offer. The american university system is more about generating revenue through student loans than it is about actually producing first rate scholars. The student loan debt bubble, that has lasted for 30 years, is probably ending and with it you will see a dramatic decline in the international prestige of american universities. It was always about the money... and it was the money that attracted the foreign nationals to the united states to teach... and the foreign nationals who moved to america are the only reason american universities were ever all that good.

    --
    if your life is such a big joke then why should I care?
  14. A long time ago.... by girlintraining · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Bill Gates was once quoted as saying he doesn't fear other companies; He fears the guy working out of his garage who's busy producing the next big thing. Naturally, legislation has since been passed so Bill and the other billionaires of the tech world can sleep easy knowing he'll never get through the red tape to bring his product to market. There's patent law, copyright law, tort law, contract law, EULAs, and a plethora of other things making damn sure he'll get bought out or buried in debt and legal proceedings.

    Has America lost it's luster? Yes. Quite awhile ago. You don't have to spend anything on education or science anymore... it's really quite pointless... nobody can benefit from it in this country anymore.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
  15. It lost its shine long ago! by bogaboga · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here's why:

    Take a look around your house and count the items that were manufactured in the USA. In mine, it's the toilet! Imagine, the toilet bowl. Everything else was manufactured in Mexico, Taiwan, Canada or China.

    Now, there will be those who say: "Well, but that stuff was designed in the USA." To them I say, "nonsense."

    Being designed in the USA is almost irrelevant if we spend all our cash abroad, servicing our debt. Banks are able to make profits because they 'enslave" us in debts and fees. That's how they make money. With our spending getting out of hand, foreign powers will only have to sit back and live on the interest we as a nation pay them while servicing our debt. It's insane.

    That's how American academics dismissed the Japanese in the 70s and guess what, in a few years, you could not find an American (100%) made product.

    We were a once proud nation with corporations like Zenith. It was the inventor of subscription TV and the remote control in addition to being one of the first to develop HDTV in USA. Where is it now? History.

    Our car brands are non sellers abroad. Talk of GM and Asians will laugh at you. That's where the market is at the moment.

    The latest frontier in electronics in the OLED with the AMOLED variation. No American patent is relied on in OLED technology. It's all Korean. How did it start? Yes, factories moved abroad...then the cash followed.

    It's bad folks. When it comes to airplanes, an increasing percentage of these are foreign made. The new Boeing 787 Dream-liner has at least 30% foreign components. These will increase and when they get to more than 48% all manufacturing followed by research will be abroad.

    I am waiting to see where America still shines. Worst of all, we're broke!

  16. Awww by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Diminishing returns on stolen German WW2 era technology, have to make your own now :(

  17. Well, what do you expect? by p51d007 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    We have a "leader" bashing the United States 24/7 We have kids brought up in a world surrounded by helicopter parents, giving them everything they want, trying to buy them anything they want. We teach "conflict resolution" and other political correctness crap in schools. We never let kids fall down and get hurt, never let them play around with boxes, tape, scissors to "make stuff". Then if they make it out of high school with the ability to walk and chew gum without falling down, they go to college, get a degree in underwater basketweaving, rack up 200,000 in debt, THEN complain they didn't get a 100k a year job with 2 weeks vacation with no experience, hang out for a month on "wall street" complaining. You want to know why we are losing out in inventing things? We have no one to blame, but ourselves!

  18. Re:not in the upbringing by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Find a way to make Nerds/Geeks Cool.

    Being facetious, pay a kid for every A and B he gets in class (and make it go to the kid, like lunch money, not the parents!).

    Sure then the jocks will be envious, but ... oh wait, I'm sorry, what was that?

    I know, we'll raise a bunch of little tyrants, but wasn't the question on how to make our country really value education?

    The other half is we need some kind of Angel Investor to slow down the corruption circle at the top levels. One of the mega billionaires who is fed up with it all, and just buys entire industries and voting blocs. Like the RIAA.

    Just imagine - 1,000 top properties get an exemption, so Disney gets to keep their Mouse, the Beatles maybe, etc. But then that thundering second pantheon gets released as Creative Commons - Attribution - Share Alike. ("Just don't claim it is yours").

    I hear the voices of 400 lobbyists crying out in anguish!

    --
    My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
  19. Re:Ingenuity != Jobs by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The richest nations on the planet will always find it cheaper to outsource and offshore, because they're also the most expensive labour markets.

    False. The richest nations on the planet will *sometimes* find it cheaper to outsource and offshore, because they're also the most expensive labour markets. Lack of capital, lack of accessibility, lack of training, combined with the fact that often the labor costs are not a big chunk of the unit cost, can still make the rich nation the cheapest place.

  20. Re:How much more proof is needed ? by Beelzebud · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The sad thing is seeing people, even here in this thread, arguing in favor of reducing the middle class down to third world levels. No talk of fair trade, just that everyone should take a pay cut to compete with slave labor.

  21. Catch 22. by HornWumpus · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If we had been paying and respecting our teachers we would have good ones.

    But we haven't and we don't. So raising their pay has to come second. First is merit pay, reform multiple new teachers unions and abolish tenure for professional teachers. (ed majors, leave it for college profs where they actually should be independent researchers.)

    The problem is the teachers we have today aren't even worth what they are making. Paying them lawyer's salaries won't help in the short term.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    1. Re:Catch 22. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You are never going to get people who are worth a damn to become teachers without providing them with benefits and job security. Your ideas fail to fix anything and will only drive good teachers into other fields. You have to start young, and that means creating incentives for people to become grade school teachers, not taking them away.

      Teachers are more important than Lawyers, start paying them like it.

    2. Re:Catch 22. by cptdondo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The problem is that every time a teacher teaches sex-ed, or gay-lesbian stuff, or tells his / her class to read something through-provoking, the luddites and idiots on the school boards would fire them. So you would have teachers who are afraid to teach.

      Tenure is important to shield teachers from the stupidity of the masses. It also has the unfortunate side effect of shielding bad teachers. If you get rid of it, you'll lose the good teachers.

  22. Stop outsourcing production, first by Krachmanikov · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Cry me a river! America's innovation lost its shine, because of outsourcing every single production bit overseas. Most innovation steps are incremental improvements, not radical. Therefore, feedback from the market (customers) and from the production line is absolutely necessary. By outsourcing production to an external contractor, companies will first loose the feedback from production. Once the outsourcing contractors know the products, they will get to know the sales channels, too. In time companies loose their market, their ability to produce products and finally the ability to improve their products. What we see today is the result of a short-sighted service-oriented economic principle. Wake up! Start "doing" things, again.

  23. Re:Ingenuity != Jobs by vadim_t · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You first.

    Also, just what kind of low cost labor are you thinking of, anyway? There's a constant push to eliminate as much of the lowest cost labor as possible. Where does your hypothetical uneducated worker go?

    Well, they could go work at a warehouse. Except not for long. Now there is warehouse automation. Yes, people are still needed there, but they need much fewer people, and the people needed are completely disposable. There's zero chances for advancement. If you don't go nuts from years of picking up a package from one robot, passing it through a scanner, and placing it in another, you'll probably be out of a job in 10 years anyway, as they'll figure out how to eliminate the remaining human labor eventually.

    Or they could go work at a supermarket. Which also keep reducing worker count through tech like RFID and attempts at automatic checkout systems. They'll get there eventually.

    Maybe they could go work in construction. Except the tech will get there as well. You can bet that the construction companies are salivating at the prospect of having machines that print walls, and they'll get made at some point.

    My point is, what you're advocating is increasing the amount of people in a segment of the population that's quickly becoming obsolete. A lot of those people will find out that they can't get a job because nobody needs a brainless drone anymore. That's not good for the economy (because unemployed people don't buy much), and not good for political stability either.

  24. Re:Ingenuity != Jobs by Gorobei · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Don't just create ideas, also make products here," she [Hockfield] said. "Buying back technologies that we invented changed our surplus into deficit. We need to have a substantial fraction of technologies that are made in America."

    Right now the US and Canadian economies are not focused on producing anything with the new ideas that come out. The startups get bought out by the existing big companies if they have any hope of success, who immediately commoditize technology and ship it overseas for manufacturing.

    The US & Canadian economies are intensely focused on producing based on new ideas: 1980 onwards was all about tech innovation. Sleepy companies got killed, we got a new tech startup culture, big companies bought little innovators (and made the little guys rich in a way only dreamed off in 1970.) AT&T would never have produced Google or Facebook.

    In some ways, the massive tax changes of the 1980s were responsible for this (as well as general improvements in tech & manufacturing, of course.) Cutting top tax rates from 70%+ to 40% or so made the startup bet much more attractive. Of course, the downside of giving people a chance to be a billionaire by age 30 is that it makes the career engineer/scientist role (IBM research, AT&T labs, Xerox Parc) rather obsolete and a waste of money. So lots of innovation, but goodbye middle class.

    What's sad is that by 1980 white collar folk realized blue collar jobs could be outsourced. Most of them didn't realize they were next on the chopping block. The early 1990s saw the big research career dead along with the useless middle manager role and the standard secretary role.

    Goodbye middle class, at least you have an iPhone.

  25. Why? by khasim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So you are for cutting regulation then?

    That doesn't even make sense. Patents are one, very specific, form of "regulation". And software patents in particular are a very, very, very specific form of "regulation".

    Yet you immediately went with the general category of "regulation".

    Why?

    The only way for me to get it to market is to go through FAA certification.

    Certification is NOT the same as patents.

    Why are you trying to associate the two different concepts?

    The requirements do not, in themselves, make better software, I just saw a speech ...

    First, make that a period rather than a comma.

    Second, again, you're trying to associate two different concepts.

    Requirements are not patents.
    Certifications are not patents.
    Regulations (in general) are not patents.

    You want to help out workers? Cut regulatory requirements.

    I'd disagree with that. The "regulatory requirements" (in what appears to the case you're describing) are there to check that the systems meet the safety requirements of the FAA.

    I'm okay with the FAA having requirements on software/hardware when the risk is something falling out of the sky.

    You are complaining about the actions of the fortune 500 companies who have spent a lot of money to create regulatory hurdles for the little guys.

    I don't see that.

    I do see the Fortune 500 abusing the patent system to create hurdles for the small businesses.

    But getting FAA approval ... no, I don't see that as a hurdle from the Fortune 500 put up that needs to be reduced.

    Particularly when you confuse regulations, requirements and certifications with patents.

  26. Re:How much more proof is needed ? by shking · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The sad thing is seeing people, even here in this thread, arguing in favor of reducing the middle class down to third world levels.

    Well of course they will argue that! Everyone assumes that they will be personally spared when "necessary" changes are made. It's human nature. It's both sad and funny

    --
    -- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
  27. Re:not in the upbringing by RubberChainsaw · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "pay a kid for every A and B he gets in class" No, not this. Don't pay for results, pay for the behaviour that brings the results.

    I recall a study a few year back where schools in several areas did pay students for achievements. One school paid 3rd graders money if they got A's and B's on their tests. Another school paid their 1st graders for every book that they read. The result: The 3rd graders showed no improvement in their scores, but the 1st graders did. Why? Because the 3rd graders didn't know how to get the A's and B's. However, the 1st graders had their education improved by reading the extra books, so they got better grades.

    So the key is to reward the behavior that leads to success, not merely the success itself.

    --
    I welcome our new 99% overlords.