this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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got news for you, all innovation happens on the tax roll. and because it's free and public to use, companies take it, stick licenses on it, and sell it back to you (gotta love paying twice).
I've got news for you: historically, "centralised" research has led to fewer innovations in consumer technology and bureaucrats unilaterally redirecting funds away from promising areas for political reasons. For just two examples: Cybernetics was the target of a political campaign in the USSR, and their biologists denied genetics of all things and tried to promote agricultural policy based on genetics being wrong.
Alternatively, we could just look at where the USSR is now to see how well their centralised research and development efforts are going 👀
your example is irrelevant and makes little sense as a counter when all research and innovation globally is still paid for by taxes. no business will spend billions on new ideas, they spend billions on commercial application of public (tax paid) ideas in order to profit.
You could even lump giant US corporations into that group too. Companies like IBM innovated less and less the larger they got. You can't expect constant innovation from a singular machine that runs the same all the time.
Because it’s not right? The biggest competitor to the US technologically for decades was the USSR. They were the first into space, made the first computers etc. and they were much more centralised than China is.
US media says socialism bad tho :clueless:
This isn't about socialism or "the US media", it's a fact that authoritarian regimes suppress science they don't like which is bad for science.
I mean, Soviet policy led to fucking up agriculture in a number of other countries because they rejected genetics; they killed one of their top cosmonauts because nobody wanted to listen to the literal hundreds of safety and operational problems the Soyuz rocket had; and caused one of the worst nuclear disasters in modern history because "Soviet engineering does not fail".
But yeah, I think all this just because of what I've been told, and not because I've seen with my own eyes scientific advancements stifled by authoritarian regimes 🙄
To be even handed you could point to science and industry doing exactly the same shit when given a freer hand. Whether it's basically all industrial "accidents" in various and sundry capitalist economies (scare quotes because overriding safety protocols or not doing due dilligence in hiring because money isn't an accident it's social murder), stuff like that super secret American bomb sight being a scam, industrial agriculture everywhere fucking the soil for short term profits, oil spills, the whole climate crisis and burying of it for money etc.
It's sort of difficult to get in the blame game because everything is multifaceted and regardless of whatever theoretical construct presides over everything humans have the same incentives for corruption at lots of levels.
you also need to keep in mind the USSR was huge, completely and utterly fucked up by ww2 after inheriting a Russia completely and utterly fucked by centuries of tyranny and ww1. In a huge empire, rapidly industrialising, that just had millions of people killed and tens of thousands of towns destroyed there are going to be problems. No system is perfect enough to just overrule the material and social damage done during that.
TBH my own take is they did pretty well but centralised management everywhere has a tendency to fuck everything up. Oh to be clear, anything with a single leader is highly centralised. Like tech startups are centralised, most research labs are under the iron grip of a PI and thus centralised (and talk to anyone below tenure on the academic track to learn of the problems there).
Most reasoned response by far. And, agreed: I'm not saying capitalism is perfect, or even that it's better than socialism or communism. Capitalism encourages cutting corners which obviously isn't good when it's something like a space mission; capitalism also brought us PFAS chemicals and leaded gasoline and Hummers and Citizens United and on and on - no shortage of evils born of capitalism we can point to.
My only point was that concentrating all research and development under the government is a sure way to slow it down (see cybernetics from one of my other responses here), and history shows it plain as day.
“Authoritarian regimes” 🙄 god shut up nerd
Yes, and Chernobyl never exploded because Soviet engineers don't make mistakes.
Komarov did not know he was going to die in Soyuz 1, he was excited and happy to be going up and didn't want Gagarin to get all the glory: https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/05/02/134597833/cosmonaut-crashed-into-earth-crying-in-rage
Science was so much better in the USSR there's even a whole list of things about how much better it was: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repression_of_science_in_the_Soviet_Union
🤡
Omg a Wikipedia article shit talking the USSR? Communism is over, pack it up boys.
You can spew anti-communist Cold War era propaganda all you want.
I know the USSR wasn’t perfect. But it really serves only the interests of the US empire to focus on that without ever mentioning all the bullshit anti-science shit the US and Western powers engaged in for centuries.
Acting like only communist nations had issues is propaganda, plain and simple. Ignoring all the similar issues western capitalist nations had is propaganda, plain and simple.
Michael Parenti - Blackshirts and Reds:
I doubt the person you're replying to is a socialist though ig. Prolly just a lib judging by them citing NATOpedia lol