This was government funding of private companies by and large not actual government employees doing the development and manufacture. Not to denigrate the input and regulation/oversight provided by government employees BTW. Been there done that. Contractor tech to gummint inspector (me): "Don't waste your time looking for a leaking transformer at the bottom of the transmitter cabinet".
In case you didn't know, government researched and developed concentration camp ovens, financed slavery, hung children for stealing a loaf of bread and deported them to molesters, enacted tax benefits for satanic mills and slaves, pursued stupid wars killing millions. Religious governments tortured, enslaved and murdered millions and still discriminate against non-believers and encourages their murder. Government isn't always the good guys (seldom in fact), and neither are the church or industry.
False equivalence - a favorite tactic of the right.
Democrats are not as bad as Republicans on the warmongering front. That's not to say they're great. But Republicans never met a war or a weapons system they didn't like. Democrats as often as not would rather reduce the defense budget, rather than inflate it.
Republicans invented neoconservatism, not Democrats. And man, did they run with it. Obama's record is mixed, for sure. Hillary may as well be a neocon. But if McCain had been elected we'd have had American troops dying in far greater numbers than under Obama.
I had no love for Hillary Clinton or her militarism, but at least she's not an ignorant loose cannon like the current resident of the White House. And your sexist insults only undermine the rationality of your argument.
Democrats are just as guilty on the warmongering front. Obama was Just as bad as Bush. Clinton bombed Serbia on spurious nonsense. And Hilary the witch/bitch would've been even worse. Extract head from rectum before posting next time. Must do better.
The government's may change, however the Department's under them don't. NASA has been around a long time. It's funding has only recently been cut and subsequently, so has its innovation.
Marx was right; he was right all along. Who owes who money? Capitalism continues unabated to see who the winner is aka the one with all the money. And then what?
It is quite a US-centric view of the world and the definition of innovation is quite vague. There are countries which still spend large amounts on research and increasingly also nations like China and India. Innovation will not stop, but if the US is no longer innovative and things are produced in China and India anyway, that will ensure that the US will further loose importance in the world. In my opinion capitalism is not opposed to innovation, it is rather neo-liberalism what you mean. There can be capitalism without neo-liberalism and to make you believe that one means the other is quite deceiving. If that article is correct, then Marx was right about his prediction that capitalism is destroying itself, sooner or later.
Via patents is one way (foolishness to "own" an idea on a planet of billions). - TPP was perpetual regreening of patents - permanently "own" an idea. - Via cutting off the actual inventor(s), defaulting ownership ONLY to an employer. - Via killing competitors - for instance big Pharma having FDA deprecate former versions when their "new" medicine is at best no better and at worse fraught with damaging side effects. One statin alone helps at best 1 in 300, seriously injures 15 of the 300, and requires 5 or 6 additional prescriptions to mitigate its "side effects". GlaxoSmithKline says only 30 to 50% of their meds are effective. WTH - patent trolls, not just the low level completely fake, but larger like Qualcomm's anything-that-touches-the-internet owes us a patent tax - PO'ing Apple. The omnivorous 1% attempting to eat the omnivorous 1%. SkyTran. There's no reason infrastructuring 100 year old car/train/bus/airport. SkyTran, we paid for it, and car/train/bus/paving/driving/oil/gas/rubber/etc. industry keeping us firmly in their totally unnecessary grip. And so goofy Amazon attempting to circumvent via sky dropping drones. Corn, subsidies and warping its production, - via direct federal farm subsidies - via NAFTA'ing into Mexico, wiping out their farms/farmers/workers, sending them into the US to ... farmhand for illegal employer wages. - with excess send into EU as livestock feed - with excess dumped into US food supply - "high fructose corn syrup", 80% of what's on the grocery store shelves - GMO. - with excess dumped abroad via NGO "helping" other poor countries, wiping out their farms/farmers/farm hands - with excess federally mandated as 10% ethanol is our every gas purchase at the pump We're so distorted via monopoly it's not even funny.
I'm coming up on 20 years of personal experience with the hiring of H-1Bs. As an employee tasked with interviewing, and watching my management toss citizen resumes for identical or lesser H-1Bs, in skill/experience/pay. And as friend of many an H-1B and the illegal practices of their employers. An H-1B/OPT/L1/EB/etc. is not here for a paycheck or job experience. They're here for citizenship and employer is playing Lord, with indentured servant. Visa indentured running 6 to 17 years or more. Keep in mind for citizenship, not for pay or job experience. Hence, in the federal 2016 LCA database, approved ("certified"): - $7.25, for teacher - under $8 for a software engineer - $21 an hour, for PhDs at universities - under $45K at Silicon Valley and Wall St (Microsoft, Facebook, JPMorgan, Bloomberg, Cisco, etc.) Statistically (not my homework, someone else's), 80% of H1Bs are paid $60K or less. For an average June grad citizen STEM software developer with a Bachelors - that's about the going rate in 1996. The only assumption about the necessity of H1Bs is industrial assumption that the public is still buying the false "shortage" myth.
The evidence has been perfectly clear for years. There is no shortage. Particularly obvious, when citizen employees are required to train their foreign replacements before being laid off. Dan Rather first covered this story in 1995. Hal Salzman of Rutgers University testifies to Judiciary Committee, which they ignore because of the Silicon Valley lobbyist dollars stuffed in their ears.
This article should be made required reading for any arsehole and/or braindead and/or corrupt politician bleating on about the innovativeness of the private sector!
On a critical note, the story 'we tell ourselves about innovation' didn't come out of nowhere of course. It has been pushed relentlessly for now about forty years. So why has it taken so long for critical voices in the media and academic circles to start questioning a story that is essentially one big stinking pile of propaganda bullshit? I certainly would like to read about that in some detail!
Actually the wealthiest Americans have their "silos of gold coins" in offshore bank accounts. You know, to avoid those pesky taxes you speak so ill of. A feat made possible by wealthy corporations lobbying for policies that make them more wealthy. Such innovation.
The point of the article is to point out that the public sector has the ability to shield itself from risk and be more innovative, and the results benefit us all.
When funding is cut from the public sector, the private sector simply cannot fund the same types of research. The private sector becomes more "innovative" to make profit, sure, but that can be done with misinformation and snake oil, NOT valid research and scientific breakthroughs.
Like most capitalist utopia thinkers, you misrepresent what government means. The government is made up of people. Government doesn't always mean "evil" "power-grabbing" or "bloated". A government is only as good or evil as the people that it is made up of. When you squelch good, honest scientific research through funding cuts, the populace becomes less informed, less concerned with innovation, and becomes more concerned with making profit.
This is an excellent article which should be shared widely. The myth of VC inventing the internet has always been irritating but it has been pervasive. The root problem is that the public does not understand the mastery that is necessary for a venture, and continually hold on to the "weekend in the garage to be a millionaire" myth, simply because it is all they can understand
Really ? Governments are likely to change every four years. Governments of places like China can afford to take the long view, but otherwise major companies that have existed for decades should have far more of a long term view and strategy, providing they can keep the shareholders at bay.
I think modern day tyres are down to more than just Goodyear and NASA.
Robert William Thomson, John Dunlop, Charles Kingston Welch (pneumatic tyres) Thomas Hancock and Charles Goodyear (vulanisation) Michelin (radial tyres) A lot of this was before NASA existed.
Computers and computer research funded by the government, alternative energies funded by the government, cable tv began with local governments wiring up rural homes, government funding of robotic research (which is about to take off), GPS developed by the Defense Department, infant formula developed by NASA, Google developed through a NSF fellowship that funded the founders' creation of the search algorithm, the bar code developed by the NSF, modern day car tires developed in a partnership between Goodyear and NASA, DOD funding of the creation of the microchip, NSF and CIA funding for touch screen development, NIH funding for development of many important vaccines.
I agree, that is certainly the most important reason governments should lead the way in innovation...they are not looking for short-term monetary profits, but longer-term human ones.
That argument really is not pertinent at all to this point - you said "We do not have a private sector". Yet you say yourself here "the more government infringes into the private sector ...", so you know very well the sense in which we are talking about the private sector, that it exists.
You're trying to make a separate argument now - that the private sector is compromised - but it was still bizarre to assert that there is no private sector at all.
As to your saying I'm holding a 'double standard', this is just standard neoliberal dogma isn't it - "If only the state would just let us all off the leash, we'd be able to serve society so much better, so it's the state's fault if we fuck up because they're draining our time and resources."
The number of people who accept that the private sector, operating without taxation and regulation, would act as anything other than a massive cash funnel from the many to the few before cannibalising itself, is vanishingly small. Anarchy doesn't work.
So if I VOLUNTARILY purchase something or commit to a contract that's the same as the government forcing me to oblige? Great logic.
The government doesn't force you to oblige. You voluntarily oblige, in exactly the same way you voluntarily purchase something or commit to a contract. If you don't want to pay taxes, you can leave the country, go and live somewhere with no infrastructure. It's completely up to you.
The only sense in which you're under duress is is exactly the same sense in which you are also under duress to enter contracts and make bargains to attain food, shelter, comfort and so on. Yes, you can attain all these things in different ways, but you can also live in different countries.
The only difference is that you resent the conditions of the social contract more, because you're an ingrate.
You can't disregard results.
Indeed - and the private sector does not produce compelling results, on the whole. It's great at generating huge piles of cash for a small number of people and mediocre at everything else. *Sometimes* it's the best arrangement for a particular job, but not always.
Your point about the future is right as well - and that's why the surest way of making sure we're equipped to handle it is public investment in a very wide ambit of research that isn't leashed to some narrow managerial remit.
I personally know two inventors. They work for themselves or for other inventors, sometimes each other. They produce real value because they have to. You may very well do a great job. But the accountability is not even remotely the same.
'They produce real value because they have to' is not good logic. If you exert pressure on someone to produce a particular result (or value) no matter what, we all know what you can end up with - skewed stats, products rushed to be signed off before they're ready, falsified safety tests, plagiarism, Juicero.
The right amount of pressure to apply to any individual will vary - *some*, I grant you, will respond well to extreme external pressure. Many, however, work best under their own steam, under the weight of their own expectations, or their peers'.
Your idea that private-sector style 'accountability' produces the best results is wrong based both on empirical evidence (the results are simply not impressive and often dangerous), and on logic (few people work both imaginatively and efficiently under extreme pressure). It's pure dogma. You're reciting neoliberalist gospel which has long since been debunked.
I used to do that, and agree that the manual method is far superior. I switched to Nespresso for ease and time.
As for the environmental side of things, the pods are recycled for free by Nespresso, plus the system is now open to 3rd party coffee manufacturers, and even reusable pods.
I'm not pretending that it's perfect, just that it's not the folly of Juicero.
Woah, hey, i'm from the UK and round where I live it's a pretty common grammatical error to the point a lot of people don't notice it.
I agree it's rife in the UK as well. But possibly the point that the poster is making is that if people say things that make no sense (how do you 'of'?) and don't even ask themselves if what they're saying makes any logical sense, they're on the slippery slope in terms of sloppy thinking, not just sloppy expression. If you're a demagogue, it's MUCH easier to dupe people not capable of analysing what you're actually saying.
Marxmarv, Trump has falsified that idea, but we need genuine competition which country can offer the best welfare, highest wage level and safest society to live in.
World is just too dangerous place for concentrated power because it inevitably leads into Trump and always even worse dictators. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Juicero is the kind of rubbish that gets produced when there is way too much money sloshing around in a tech bubble. Both the private and the public sector have roles to play in tech innovation. Government money matters more in less generous times.
Its always so funny to read about "dramatically lower launch cost" - really? They offer 60M for normal launch and 43M for reusable rocket. Is it "dramatically lower"? The rest of the world offer even cheaper price. So, SpaceX is maybe sort of achievement for US but the rest of the world just do it cheaper and better based on proven tech. And "proven" means - how reliable are "second hand" SpaceX rockets if you have no any statistics yet?
Ahh! But in the 90's we had a government in an ideological war to reduce the state, suppress all opposition and increase inequality and now we have... Ok point taken.
The single genius model of innovation is really out of date. There is a lot of work on innovation being done, although some of it is incremenal. And not everything that Musk work on is necessarily going to work: the problem with storing energy from solar power is how to do this without creating a fire hazard.
Brilliant analysis of the situation. Working in the internet since the beginning we are only too aware how all of the tech, mobile phone companies And even Elon Musk has built fortunes on taxpayer funded research while Claiming to be the engine of innovation and prosperity.
The UK has had Post Office Money since 2015. Did you miss out on the relaunch?
The small print on those "Post Office" services makes clear that they're mostly just rebadged offerings from a third party. Post Office Money is typically something rebadged from a legacy financial institution e.g. Bank of Ireland. That's not quite the Girobank way.
Same goes for "Post Office" broadband and phone: it's mostly "Post Office" in name only. Since being launched a decade or so ago the service has variously been provided by BT, then by Orange and more recently by TalkTalk's wholesale arm.
Does that sound much like competition or innovation?
Girobank was a radical break from the old routine, Post Office relabelling other established companies' products less so.
Fair enough but if using less water isn't good enough, at least consider a machine which accepts free range coffee instead of those wasteful pods containing whatever Nestle decide to parcel out. You can have any coffee available at the strength you like, even mix them. It doesn't take long to scoop, tamp and screw and you have the bonus of sticking your nose in the bag of ground coffee. In three months you'll be grinding your own beans and in six you'll be snorting lines of Waitrose Fairtrade 100% Colombian off the kitchen worktop.
This is an argument for Keynesian economics, right? I'm for it
We are a long way from Keynesianism right now. The UK should be running a small budget surplus at present during the period of growth, gathering ammo to offset the next recession. As we should have been in 2004-2008. The Tories don't do Keynes, but more surprisingly Labour doesn't really either.
America has become so anti-innovation – it's economic suicide
Comments
Who needs innovation when you have marketing?
The USA is a 'dog eat dog' society and the world is becoming more social over time. They are doomed to fail.
So, where has experience improved massively in the last 10 years?
This was government funding of private companies by and large not actual government employees doing the development and manufacture. Not to denigrate the input and regulation/oversight provided by government employees BTW. Been there done that.
Contractor tech to gummint inspector (me): "Don't waste your time looking for a leaking transformer at the bottom of the transmitter cabinet".
There is no capitalism "project", just shit happening. If anything is faith based it's Marxism.
Hogwarts.
In case you didn't know, government researched and developed concentration camp ovens, financed slavery, hung children for stealing a loaf of bread and deported them to molesters, enacted tax benefits for satanic mills and slaves, pursued stupid wars killing millions. Religious governments tortured, enslaved and murdered millions and still discriminate against non-believers and encourages their murder.
Government isn't always the good guys (seldom in fact), and neither are the church or industry.
New microprocessors and architecture. Faster and more efficient than anything anyone else has been able to build.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunway_TaihuLight
You could, of course, argue that nobody else is as interested in building big mainframes any more.
Obviously because they can. Like a dog licking his balls.
False equivalence - a favorite tactic of the right.
Democrats are not as bad as Republicans on the warmongering front. That's not to say they're great. But Republicans never met a war or a weapons system they didn't like. Democrats as often as not would rather reduce the defense budget, rather than inflate it.
Republicans invented neoconservatism, not Democrats. And man, did they run with it. Obama's record is mixed, for sure. Hillary may as well be a neocon. But if McCain had been elected we'd have had American troops dying in far greater numbers than under Obama.
I had no love for Hillary Clinton or her militarism, but at least she's not an ignorant loose cannon like the current resident of the White House. And your sexist insults only undermine the rationality of your argument.
Dump the false equivalence; it doesn't fit.
Manhattan Project. Timely, innovative and WHOLLY Govt. Next nonsense about how private is always better, please...
Democrats are just as guilty on the warmongering front. Obama was Just as bad as Bush. Clinton bombed Serbia on spurious nonsense. And Hilary the witch/bitch would've been even worse. Extract head from rectum before posting next time. Must do better.
Back in the day of vulcanised rubber. Where did the synthetic rubbers come from?
The government's may change, however the Department's under them don't. NASA has been around a long time. It's funding has only recently been cut and subsequently, so has its innovation.
Marx was right; he was right all along. Who owes who money? Capitalism continues unabated to see who the winner is aka the one with all the money. And then what?
It is quite a US-centric view of the world and the definition of innovation is quite vague. There are countries which still spend large amounts on research and increasingly also nations like China and India. Innovation will not stop, but if the US is no longer innovative and things are produced in China and India anyway, that will ensure that the US will further loose importance in the world. In my opinion capitalism is not opposed to innovation, it is rather neo-liberalism what you mean. There can be capitalism without neo-liberalism and to make you believe that one means the other is quite deceiving.
If that article is correct, then Marx was right about his prediction that capitalism is destroying itself, sooner or later.
Too much effort, too much risk. Safe bet, drag out monopolies and pinch extra profit from paychecks.
Via patents is one way (foolishness to "own" an idea on a planet of billions).
- TPP was perpetual regreening of patents - permanently "own" an idea.
- Via cutting off the actual inventor(s), defaulting ownership ONLY to an employer.
- Via killing competitors - for instance big Pharma having FDA deprecate former versions when their "new" medicine is at best no better and at worse fraught with damaging side effects. One statin alone helps at best 1 in 300, seriously injures 15 of the 300, and requires 5 or 6 additional prescriptions to mitigate its "side effects". GlaxoSmithKline says only 30 to 50% of their meds are effective. WTH
- patent trolls, not just the low level completely fake, but larger like Qualcomm's anything-that-touches-the-internet owes us a patent tax - PO'ing Apple. The omnivorous 1% attempting to eat the omnivorous 1%.
SkyTran. There's no reason infrastructuring 100 year old car/train/bus/airport. SkyTran, we paid for it, and car/train/bus/paving/driving/oil/gas/rubber/etc. industry keeping us firmly in their totally unnecessary grip. And so goofy Amazon attempting to circumvent via sky dropping drones.
Corn, subsidies and warping its production,
- via direct federal farm subsidies
- via NAFTA'ing into Mexico, wiping out their farms/farmers/workers, sending them into the US to ... farmhand for illegal employer wages.
- with excess send into EU as livestock feed
- with excess dumped into US food supply - "high fructose corn syrup", 80% of what's on the grocery store shelves - GMO.
- with excess dumped abroad via NGO "helping" other poor countries, wiping out their farms/farmers/farm hands
- with excess federally mandated as 10% ethanol is our every gas purchase at the pump
We're so distorted via monopoly it's not even funny.
I'm coming up on 20 years of personal experience with the hiring of H-1Bs. As an employee tasked with interviewing, and watching my management toss citizen resumes for identical or lesser H-1Bs, in skill/experience/pay. And as friend of many an H-1B and the illegal practices of their employers.
An H-1B/OPT/L1/EB/etc. is not here for a paycheck or job experience. They're here for citizenship and employer is playing Lord, with indentured servant. Visa indentured running 6 to 17 years or more. Keep in mind for citizenship, not for pay or job experience.
Hence, in the federal 2016 LCA database, approved ("certified"):
- $7.25, for teacher
- under $8 for a software engineer
- $21 an hour, for PhDs at universities
- under $45K at Silicon Valley and Wall St (Microsoft, Facebook, JPMorgan, Bloomberg, Cisco, etc.)
Statistically (not my homework, someone else's), 80% of H1Bs are paid $60K or less. For an average June grad citizen STEM software developer with a Bachelors - that's about the going rate in 1996.
The only assumption about the necessity of H1Bs is industrial assumption that the public is still buying the false "shortage" myth.
The evidence has been perfectly clear for years. There is no shortage. Particularly obvious, when citizen employees are required to train their foreign replacements before being laid off. Dan Rather first covered this story in 1995. Hal Salzman of Rutgers University testifies to Judiciary Committee, which they ignore because of the Silicon Valley lobbyist dollars stuffed in their ears.
Find your nearby "maker lab"/"make it lab". They are highly collaborative.
This article should be made required reading for any arsehole and/or braindead and/or corrupt politician bleating on about the innovativeness of the private sector!
On a critical note, the story 'we tell ourselves about innovation' didn't come out of nowhere of course. It has been pushed relentlessly for now about forty years. So why has it taken so long for critical voices in the media and academic circles to start questioning a story that is essentially one big stinking pile of propaganda bullshit? I certainly would like to read about that in some detail!
Actually the wealthiest Americans have their "silos of gold coins" in offshore bank accounts. You know, to avoid those pesky taxes you speak so ill of. A feat made possible by wealthy corporations lobbying for policies that make them more wealthy. Such innovation.
The point of the article is to point out that the public sector has the ability to shield itself from risk and be more innovative, and the results benefit us all.
When funding is cut from the public sector, the private sector simply cannot fund the same types of research. The private sector becomes more "innovative" to make profit, sure, but that can be done with misinformation and snake oil, NOT valid research and scientific breakthroughs.
Like most capitalist utopia thinkers, you misrepresent what government means. The government is made up of people. Government doesn't always mean "evil" "power-grabbing" or "bloated". A government is only as good or evil as the people that it is made up of. When you squelch good, honest scientific research through funding cuts, the populace becomes less informed, less concerned with innovation, and becomes more concerned with making profit.
This is an excellent article which should be shared widely. The myth of VC inventing the internet has always been irritating but it has been pervasive. The root problem is that the public does not understand the mastery that is necessary for a venture, and continually hold on to the "weekend in the garage to be a millionaire" myth, simply because it is all they can understand
Really ? Governments are likely to change every four years. Governments of places like China can afford to take the long view, but otherwise major companies that have existed for decades should have far more of a long term view and strategy, providing they can keep the shareholders at bay.
I think modern day tyres are down to more than just Goodyear and NASA.
Robert William Thomson, John Dunlop, Charles Kingston Welch (pneumatic tyres)
Thomas Hancock and Charles Goodyear (vulanisation)
Michelin (radial tyres)
A lot of this was before NASA existed.
Hear hear.
A free market economy is something that has only ever existed in textbooks.
There is no such thing as a free market economy. You sir, are the deluded one.
Computers and computer research funded by the government, alternative energies funded by the government, cable tv began with local governments wiring up rural homes, government funding of robotic research (which is about to take off), GPS developed by the Defense Department, infant formula developed by NASA, Google developed through a NSF fellowship that funded the founders' creation of the search algorithm, the bar code developed by the NSF, modern day car tires developed in a partnership between Goodyear and NASA, DOD funding of the creation of the microchip, NSF and CIA funding for touch screen development, NIH funding for development of many important vaccines.
I agree, that is certainly the most important reason governments should lead the way in innovation...they are not looking for short-term monetary profits, but longer-term human ones.
That argument really is not pertinent at all to this point - you said "We do not have a private sector". Yet you say yourself here "the more government infringes into the private sector ...", so you know very well the sense in which we are talking about the private sector, that it exists.
You're trying to make a separate argument now - that the private sector is compromised - but it was still bizarre to assert that there is no private sector at all.
As to your saying I'm holding a 'double standard', this is just standard neoliberal dogma isn't it - "If only the state would just let us all off the leash, we'd be able to serve society so much better, so it's the state's fault if we fuck up because they're draining our time and resources."
The number of people who accept that the private sector, operating without taxation and regulation, would act as anything other than a massive cash funnel from the many to the few before cannibalising itself, is vanishingly small. Anarchy doesn't work.
The government doesn't force you to oblige. You voluntarily oblige, in exactly the same way you voluntarily purchase something or commit to a contract. If you don't want to pay taxes, you can leave the country, go and live somewhere with no infrastructure. It's completely up to you.
The only sense in which you're under duress is is exactly the same sense in which you are also under duress to enter contracts and make bargains to attain food, shelter, comfort and so on. Yes, you can attain all these things in different ways, but you can also live in different countries.
The only difference is that you resent the conditions of the social contract more, because you're an ingrate.
Indeed - and the private sector does not produce compelling results, on the whole. It's great at generating huge piles of cash for a small number of people and mediocre at everything else. *Sometimes* it's the best arrangement for a particular job, but not always.
Your point about the future is right as well - and that's why the surest way of making sure we're equipped to handle it is public investment in a very wide ambit of research that isn't leashed to some narrow managerial remit.
'They produce real value because they have to' is not good logic. If you exert pressure on someone to produce a particular result (or value) no matter what, we all know what you can end up with - skewed stats, products rushed to be signed off before they're ready, falsified safety tests, plagiarism, Juicero.
The right amount of pressure to apply to any individual will vary - *some*, I grant you, will respond well to extreme external pressure. Many, however, work best under their own steam, under the weight of their own expectations, or their peers'.
Your idea that private-sector style 'accountability' produces the best results is wrong based both on empirical evidence (the results are simply not impressive and often dangerous), and on logic (few people work both imaginatively and efficiently under extreme pressure). It's pure dogma. You're reciting neoliberalist gospel which has long since been debunked.
I used to do that, and agree that the manual method is far superior. I switched to Nespresso for ease and time.
As for the environmental side of things, the pods are recycled for free by Nespresso, plus the system is now open to 3rd party coffee manufacturers, and even reusable pods.
I'm not pretending that it's perfect, just that it's not the folly of Juicero.
Marxmarv, Trump has falsified that idea, but we need genuine competition which country can offer the best welfare, highest wage level and safest society to live in.
World is just too dangerous place for concentrated power because it inevitably leads into Trump and always even worse dictators. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Juicero is the kind of rubbish that gets produced when there is way too much money sloshing around in a tech bubble. Both the private and the public sector have roles to play in tech innovation. Government money matters more in less generous times.
Its always so funny to read about "dramatically lower launch cost" - really? They offer 60M for normal launch and 43M for reusable rocket. Is it "dramatically lower"? The rest of the world offer even cheaper price. So, SpaceX is maybe sort of achievement for US but the rest of the world just do it cheaper and better based on proven tech. And "proven" means - how reliable are "second hand" SpaceX rockets if you have no any statistics yet?
Not just science funding. Programmes that help small manufacturers up their game as well.
Ahh! But in the 90's we had a government in an ideological war to reduce the state, suppress all opposition and increase inequality and now we have...
Ok point taken.
The single genius model of innovation is really out of date. There is a lot of work on innovation being done, although some of it is incremenal. And not everything that Musk work on is necessarily going to work: the problem with storing energy from solar power is how to do this without creating a fire hazard.
No its not. It is so environmentally wasteful. The packaging etc.
I wonder why they all do it then?
Excellent article.
Brilliant analysis of the situation. Working in the internet since the beginning we are only too aware how all of the tech, mobile phone companies
And even Elon Musk has built fortunes on taxpayer funded research while
Claiming to be the engine of innovation and prosperity.
I ditched Windows for Linux years ago. Turboprint.info might be able to help.
Ditto Australia
The small print on those "Post Office" services makes clear that they're mostly just rebadged offerings from a third party. Post Office Money is typically something rebadged from a legacy financial institution e.g. Bank of Ireland. That's not quite the Girobank way.
Same goes for "Post Office" broadband and phone: it's mostly "Post Office" in name only. Since being launched a decade or so ago the service has variously been provided by BT, then by Orange and more recently by TalkTalk's wholesale arm.
Does that sound much like competition or innovation?
Girobank was a radical break from the old routine, Post Office relabelling other established companies' products less so.
Fair enough but if using less water isn't good enough, at least consider a machine which accepts free range coffee instead of those wasteful pods containing whatever Nestle decide to parcel out. You can have any coffee available at the strength you like, even mix them. It doesn't take long to scoop, tamp and screw and you have the bonus of sticking your nose in the bag of ground coffee. In three months you'll be grinding your own beans and in six you'll be snorting lines of Waitrose Fairtrade 100% Colombian off the kitchen worktop.
The issue here is timescale. Governments have a larger time horizon than companies.
We are a long way from Keynesianism right now. The UK should be running a small budget surplus at present during the period of growth, gathering ammo to offset the next recession. As we should have been in 2004-2008. The Tories don't do Keynes, but more surprisingly Labour doesn't really either.
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