>The true innovators are entities like intel, nvidia, IBM, AMD, ARM, the IETF and IEEE who are able to create standards like USB, wifi or bluetooth.
You mean all those private companies? I wasn't talking about Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a toy service for funding toy products.
When I said a top-down vs bottom-up approach to the economy, I meant a single government-controlled bureaucracy vs. private enterprise. In this case it would be government vs. IBM, AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and every other private enterprise. I didn't mean Fortune 500 companies vs. startups.
Of course those companies will do the work, but the difference is in where the money comes from and on what research it's spent on.
Was is the government, or did it come from private profits ? How much money private companies are willing to invest, and where do they really direct their research ?
That's why the government's spending is a little more focused and objective because it won't be research that will increase profits of certain companies. You can be sure government research will benefit everyone.
If apple invests a lot of money to have a unscratchable screen, it's not really smart research. In the same idea, intel doesn't seem to really improve its processor designs like it was able to increase frequency for so many years. That's why darpa, the DOD and NASA do more relevant research, because they know what direction to give it.
The development of computers for example, started because the army was using it. Darpa released the internet protocols to the public. The DOD made the GPS possible.
Today technology is much more complex than what it was 100 years ago, so even if the research is executed by private companies, you can't really expect private capitals to search for discoveries that might not be exclusive to them. Even patents can't always generate revenues because it's easy for china or russia or other countries to find out what discoveries were made, and find it back and sell it. That's why it's important to consider how research funds are spent, on what, for what expectations.
>If apple invests a lot of money to have a unscratchable screen, it's not really smart research. In the same idea, intel doesn't seem to really improve its processor designs like it was able to increase frequency for so many years.
That's just wrong and it hurts ... Intel is improving their design every year. They extract much more efficiency per CPU cycle, per Watt than we have ever before. It turns out there are fundamental physical limits to what we can do with Silicon and we are hitting them now, after near 40 years of exponential growth driven largely by private industry. Are you purposely so ideological blind that you aren't even willing to grant that??!
You're arguing for either-or and I'm saying you need both. There are areas where, the government laid the ground work and private industry took and ran with it. The government was never going to create a smartphone. Smartphones are a product of years of iteration, coupled with runs of hundreds of millions of units.
>That's why darpa, the DOD and NASA do more relevant research, because they know what direction to give it.
No, they don't. They didn't know that people would have wanted to use computers at home or in their pocket. They didn't know you could miniaturize transistors to the extent that quantum effects would be a problem. They didn't know, and they didn't care.
I honestly don't know what you're arguing. You seem to argue for some form of traditional Communism in place of the free market system with now (with government regulation). We generally know how that goes. Focused government research will create the impressive Soviet space program and leave little room for TVs, microwaves and smartphones, and spread misery and massive waste around.
Markets are good at making products, but markets are awful at making scientific and technological discovery.
Markets will indeed improve existing technology, but they won't find anything really ground breaking. A smartphone is just a compact desktop, with less functionalities and capabilities. It's just another product, there's nothing really new about a smartphone.
DARPA and NASA can do research markets just can't do, not because the markets are not able, but because markets are just an economical tool to deliver products.
I'm not arguing for communism, but I think that real research can't be driven by profits.
> Focused government research will create the impressive Soviet space program and leave little room for TVs, microwaves and smartphones, and spread misery and massive waste around.
Since when does TV, microwaves and smartphone solve misery and waste ? I'm just saying you need space for both capitalism and government, I think today, after the end of the cold war, in the US, there is just too much space given to companies and capitalism, and not enough to research that benefits the public.
Without support of the government, Tesla would have never appeared. Markets are just not able to create real alternative, they tend to scratch for more monopoly and monolithic technologies. More lawyers, more intellectual property, less engineering and real innovation.
It's crazy to read you talk about the soviets, to even manage to have a space program without capitalism shows that capitalism is not essential. It's a catalyst, nothing more. It won't give new technlogies, because money speaks for money, not for improvements. Learn to make the difference between increased profits and globally increased efficiency.
You mean all those private companies? I wasn't talking about Kickstarter. Kickstarter is a toy service for funding toy products.
When I said a top-down vs bottom-up approach to the economy, I meant a single government-controlled bureaucracy vs. private enterprise. In this case it would be government vs. IBM, AMD, Intel, Microsoft, and every other private enterprise. I didn't mean Fortune 500 companies vs. startups.