Market politics

[dmunjal]

Tesla also got a loan from the US government to help set up Model S production.

Government incentives helped Tesla get off the ground. Most of the states that had strong early adoption of Teslas also had some kind of state level incentive.

Government money thrown at long range research keeps that kind of research going. Private money is available for research into tech that might go to market in a few years, but private money is sparse for longer term research. Especially for ideas that may advance our knowledge of how the world and universe works, but is unlikely to apply directly to anything commercial. Though most of this sort of research does eventually lead to improvements in some kind of tech down the line, it isn't always a direct contribution or obvious from the start.

The tech industry is the biggest success story of industry with little outside help. The industry is heavy on intellectual property and light on the need for heavy industry support. Many of Silicon Valley's biggest companies make little or no hardware and turnaround from idea to production is based on how fast the developers can work.

Heavy industry works differently and the large manufacturing footprint requires time and effort to set up. Many of Tesla's manufacturing screw ups were due to not appreciating the difficulties in both setting up manufacturing and making manufacturing efficient.

I worked at Cisco in the 90s and it's very much a hardware company that was completely privately funded. What they did to get around this large scale manufacturing capital investment was to outsource much of it to China.

The open source movement is an example of private industry funding long term research.

There is room for both but who gets it right more often than not? And who gets punished if things don't pan out? Only the private sector.

 

[Norbert]

Mercedes saved Tesla when it was close to failure, not the government.

My point was that it did come close to failure. And you should know that this is far from the whole story. (See also wdolson's post above.)

IMO, government intervention brings more trouble than help in these disruptive examples.

Instead you want to rely on the help from a german car company that arrived almost literally in the last possible minute?

You referred to Elon Musk. He repeatedly proposed a carbon tax, and as far as I understand, thinks of that as really important.

The market forces in the free market, as they are, do not reflect the true cost of oil and pollution. What is your position on subsidies for the oil industry, which are many billions each year?

Instead of canceling that, Trump sends troops to Saudi Arabia and Syria to protect oil.

So how do you expect the free market to do the right thing? How do you expect the free market to look forward 20 years?

 

[dmunjal]

My point was that it did come close to failure. And you should know that this is far from the whole story. (See also wdolson's post above.)



Instead you want to rely on the help from a german car company that arrived almost literally in the last possible minute?

You referred to Elon Musk. He repeatedly proposed a carbon tax, and as far as I understand, thinks of that as really important.

The market forces in the free market, as they are, do not reflect the true cost of oil and pollution. What is your position on subsidies for the oil industry, which are many billions each year?

Instead of canceling that, Trump sends troops to Saudi Arabia and Syria to protect oil.

So how do you expect the free market to do the right thing? How do you expect the free market to look forward 20 years?

No one can predict the future. The best way to predict the future is to create it as Andy Grove said. But I've seen so much technological innovation in so many areas that have solved so many problems that were considered intractable. Remember "The Population Bomb?"

I don't think government involvement is always wrong but we put too much emphasis into letting the government deal with solutions, many which fail. It also let's us off the hook for making the necessary changes.

I think the private sector has done a better job of reducing CO2 emissions than the government has over the last 10 years.

I also believe the right way to solve climate change is for the private sector to create products and solutions that get people to change their habits and lower their carbon footprint. Tesla is a good example of this. Government does help in kicking this off but it should get out of the way and let capitalism do its magic.

 

[Antares Nebula]

In stunning upset, Democrat Beshear is apparent winner in Kentucky governor race, a blow to Trump, NBC projects

 

[Norbert]

No one can predict the future. The best way to predict the future is to create it as Andy Grove said. But I've seen so much technological innovation in so many areas that have solved so many problems that were considered intractable. Remember "The Population Bomb?"

We can, in fact, predict the effect of CO2 emissions.
We can make educated estimates of the effect of air pollution on premature deaths.

I don't think government involvement is always wrong but we put too much emphasis into letting the government deal with solutions, many which fail. It also let's us off the hook for making the necessary changes.

Then you agree that oil industry subsidies should be stopped immediately?

I think the private sector has done a better job of reducing CO2 emissions than the government has over the last 10 years.

Over the last 9 years, CO2 emissions have not been reduced.

In any case, that would be no surprise, as the private sector is producing most of the CO2 emissions, and in so far as the government sector is producing CO2 emissions, that is because it uses technologies created by the private sector.

I also believe the right way to solve climate change is for the private sector to create products and solutions that get people to change their habits and lower their carbon footprint. Tesla is a good example of this. Government does help in kicking this off but it should get out of the way and let capitalism do its magic.

As I said, capitalism won't do any magic if the market forces do not reflect the true costs of oil and pollution, which are to a large degree paid by the government (and our health insurances), which is wrong. You have not responded to that.

In fact, your position is the very position which destroys any capitalistic magic.

 

[Curt Renz]

Reuters - tonight: Democrats claim victory over Trump-backed Kentucky governor, seize Virginia legislature

 

[wdolson]

No one can predict the future. The best way to predict the future is to create it as Andy Grove said. But I've seen so much technological innovation in so many areas that have solved so many problems that were considered intractable. Remember "The Population Bomb?"

I don't think government involvement is always wrong but we put too much emphasis into letting the government deal with solutions, many which fail. It also let's us off the hook for making the necessary changes.

I think the private sector has done a better job of reducing CO2 emissions than the government has over the last 10 years.

I also believe the right way to solve climate change is for the private sector to create products and solutions that get people to change their habits and lower their carbon footprint. Tesla is a good example of this. Government does help in kicking this off but it should get out of the way and let capitalism do its magic.

The population bomb is still armed and ticking. Birthrates are dropping worldwide, but it's too little too late. The human population is larger than the long term carrying capacity of the planet and that is the core driving factor of most of the world's ills right now.

Corporate players can be more efficient, but at the end of the day corporations are beholden to their owners, not the public. If the needs of the general population and the needs of the shareholders diverge, the company is obligated to side with the shareholders unless they are up against a black letter law made by the government.

A number of individual companies doing things doesn't have the coordination that a functioning government can have. The problem is that thanks to the Republicans completely forgetting how to govern, the US has not had a fully functional government in a couple of decades.

One of the insidious things the right wing propaganda machine does is convince the public both parties are equally incompetent at governing. The Republicans bumble around and break things and the propaganda machine convinces those who aren't brainwashed that the Democrats are just as bad at governing. So people lose faith in all the institutions of government.

Government is not often the most efficient way to get things done, but it actually can be much better at projects that are going to take a long time to complete and cost a lot of money up front. The US has the interstate highway system because of a plan drawn up in the Eisenhower administration that took more than 30 years to complete. Los Angeles was only able to become a large city because of massive water projects to bring water from other places to Los Angeles. There projects required initial investment way beyond what any company could handle and took decades to pay for themselves, but they vastly improved the country in many ways.

By the 1930s the electric grid reached most larger cities, but rural areas had no electricity. It was not cost effective for the utilities to run power lines to low density areas. FDR fixed that. We badly need a similar program to bring high speed internet to rural areas, but people are too convinced the government can't do anything, and with Republicans in charge it can't.

The tech industry has brought a lot of good to the world, and it had less help from governments than a lot of other industries, but not all industries have the built in advantages that allowed the tech industry to do that. And there are lots of things the tech industry isn't doing that somebody else needs to step in to do (like high speed internet for rural areas, or just fixing bridges that are about to fall down).

And I know some Silicon Valley companies make hardware. Cisco is one, HP and Tesla are other players making physical machines, but quite a few are just making software. I work for a Silicon Valley company that makes hardware. I believe I am the only software developer in the company. Definitely the only one developing software to run on their products. They may have some web code writers in a backroom somewhere.

In stunning upset, Democrat Beshear is apparent winner in Kentucky governor race, a blow to Trump, NBC projects

And Trump seems to think Bevin won by 15. The bunker scene is coming soon.

 

[bhtooefr]

The open source movement is an example of private industry funding long term research.

The open source and free software movements are a cascade of attention-deficit teenagers that reinvent the wheel constantly, and lose interest as soon as it's barely working, because there's nobody to tell them to actually finish things, or really, truly work on things like good UI.

 

[JRP3]

I worked at Cisco in the 90s and it's very much a hardware company that was completely privately funded.

How much of their business model depended on the existence of technology previously developed and/or funded by the government?

 

[JRP3]

Oops, so much for one of those socialized medicine models that everyone is saying we should model after.

Who says we should model after one of the poorer performing examples? Why not model after a better one, and even seek to improve it further? Nah, that can't happen, can't improve on anything ever...

 

[bkp_duke]

How much of their business model depended on the existence of technology previously developed and/or funded by the government?

Cisco? Nearly zero. They built and developed the core infrastructure for the internet as we know it. Other competitors saw the market Cisco was creating and joined in (Juniper, etc.). Pretty much the only thing they didn't develop was Ethernet and the IP protocol, but those were things that were "evolutionary" and them or something like them would have been developed because of the market forces at play.

 

[bkp_duke]

Who says we should model after one of the poorer performing examples? Why not model after a better one, and even seek to improve it further? Nah, that can't happen, can't improve on anything ever...

Hey, it's the left that threw out the UK as an example, this was simply a counterpoint.

I've already in previous posts shown how the Canadian model has similar pitfalls, but those arguments fall on deaf ears.

 

[bhtooefr]

How much of their business model depended on the existence of technology previously developed and/or funded by the government?

As I understand, Cisco, Sun, and SGI all spun out of the same project at Stanford.

...but then all of that benefited from the military-industrial complex, which was entirely funded by the government.

 

[JRP3]

Cisco? Nearly zero. They built and developed the core infrastructure for the internet as we know it. Other competitors saw the market Cisco was creating and joined in (Juniper, etc.). Pretty much the only thing they didn't develop was Ethernet and the IP protocol, but those were things that were "evolutionary" and them or something like them would have been developed because of the market forces at play.

As I understand, Cisco, Sun, and SGI all spun out of the same project at Stanford.

...but then all of that benefited from the military-industrial complex, which was entirely funded by the government.

Discuss

 

[JRP3]

Back to actual politics, Virginia goes blue, and maybe Kentucky too Democrats Score Election Victories In Virginia And (Probably) Kentucky

 

[bkp_duke]

Discuss

The ethernet and IP protocols were indeed gov developed, but it was not a HUGE, EXPENSIVE project.
History of the Internet - Wikipedia

Unlike what is being proposed here, which is Billions upon Billions of continued subsidies, the development of the Internet was more of the planting of a seed and cultivating the initial early growth. After that, the private sector took over and worked with standards groups to keep the development rolling.

Unlike what is proposed for continued EV subsidies, this is how things should be done. Early project initiation in the public sector, and then the BULK of expense taken on by the private sector to fully develop and expand things.

I know you THINK you had a gotcha there, but it's an apples to oranges comparison, and well . . . your assumptions were wrong.

 

[bkp_duke]

Tucson voters overwhelmingly strike down 'sanctuary city' proposal

Back to politics.

 

[jbcarioca]

As I understand, Cisco, Sun, and SGI all spun out of the same project at Stanford.

...but then all of that benefited from the military-industrial complex, which was entirely funded by the government.

While considering that, DARPANET produced the internet, after all.
Then consider Teflon, and the list goes on.

No well-informed honest person will disagree that much technological innovation has been directly funded by governments, especially pure research and the initial struggles for practical applications. Similarly, only private sector initiative seems to function efficiently to translate discovery into desirable products.

I am obviously biased because I was with Stanford Research Institute >40 years ago when my entire life was devoted to finding out how to commercialize bright discoveries. Some wonderful successes, some spectacular duds. At SRI teh people doing basic research were mostly government funded. The rest of us were doing applications.

So, for those who insist that only private or only government can succeed I offer a handful of examples from my own learning with SRI. Each began with government funding from some government, each was commercialized with private funding.

The mouse, the handheld calculator, LCD, synthetic rubber, first commercial computer, domain names, real time voice translation.

Would those have happened without both government basic research and private commercialization?

 

[dmunjal]

How much of their business model depended on the existence of technology previously developed and/or funded by the government?

A lot of it but the core technology was developed in house.

As Mark Zuckerberg said in "The Social Network," "if you invented Facebook, you would have invented Facebook."

Ideas and inventions are plentiful here in Silicon Valley. Execution is what wins the war.

 

[jbcarioca]

The ethernet and IP protocols were indeed gov developed, but it was not a HUGE, EXPENSIVE project.
History of the Internet - Wikipedia

Unlike what is being proposed here, which is Billions upon Billions of continued subsidies, the development of the Internet was more of the planting of a seed and cultivating the initial early growth. After that, the private sector took over and worked with standards groups to keep the development rolling.

Unlike what is proposed for continued EV subsidies, this is how things should be done. Early project initiation in the public sector, and then the BULK of expense taken on by the private sector to fully develop and expand things.

I know you THINK you had a gotcha there, but it's an apples to oranges comparison, and well . . . your assumptions were wrong.

Good grief! ARPANET was indeed a huge project at the time. All the primary components of the internet came from very large government projects. Those who argue otherwise are mostly ignorant of government procurement practices (almost all governments, in fact). They regularly establish overall projects and fund tiny pieces one at a time.

So, depending on whether you view the overall project or only a given subcontract gives you wildly different views:
So, IP, mouse, domain names, telecomm form T1 to Giga-speeds, etc, every single one was a tiny piece attached to a huge project.

As for funding after initial development you need only look at geophysics, oil depletion allowances, military security for oilfields, development and buildout of the internet, the GPS system (Glonass too, actually). Those have gigantic government subsidies to promote private sector profits. Then consider carried interest, and MACRS.

One of the monumental logical failings of those who oppose BEV adoption subsidies and government support of buildout for charging infrastructure totally ignore all the subsidies devoted to other subjects.

I suggest anybody who disagrees with the foregoing might do some modest investigation of how much government subsidy is devoted to building and supporting sports stadiums in the US. Once someone does that they'll find out that BEV direct subsidies and free public charging country wide all together will actually be LESS than the commercial sports subsidies.

I am not necessarily arguing against the commercial sports subsidies. I do argue that BEV support is far more of a benefit to the populace than are the sports, which could be self-funded anyway.