What this really underscores is that conventional capitalism provides little incentive for fundamental innovation.
I'm not as convinced as you may be, but there certainly seems to have been a decline in past decades, in terms of private funding for basic research. At one time, Bell Labs, Xerox, IBM, HP and others did quite a bit of basic, fundamental research. IBM still do, last I saw, but here's the question... if it made economic sense to fund private, basic research in the past, what has changed? WHY don't the HP's and Bell Labs, and Xerox's of the world still spend as much on research.
Note: I am, of course, talking out of my ass here, as I have no actual objective numbers to support the idea that private funding for basic research is diminishing. But, subjectively, from what I read, see reported, hear, etc., it sure seems to be the case.
All this stuff we're gluing together is the product of state-funded research, mostly from the cold war era. DARPANet, the web (CERN), DARPA research on "augmented human intelligence," etc.
That's probably true, but there is a danger in looking at the past on a macro level and saying "this means the future must be $THISWAY". The problem is, we don't know what the other outcomes could or would have been. If DARPA had not funded all of that research, we cannot say that the same innovations would not still have been developed via other sources. History, IMO, hints at conclusions, but it's hardly a definitive guide to the future.
“Based on the NYSE index data, the mean duration of holding period by US investors was around 7 years in 1940. This stayed the same for the next 35 years. The average holding period had fallen to under 2 years by the time of the 1987 crash. By the turn of the century it had fallen to below one year. It was around 7 months by 2007.
Similar pattern exists in the UK also as shown in the chart above. There the average duration has fallen from around 5 years in the mid-1960s to less than 7.5 months in 2007.
Over the past 15 years even in international equity markets, holding periods have fallen. The Chinese market was red hot until few months ago. However the duration for the Shanghai stock market index is close to just 6 months.This shows that Chinese investors do not have a long term horizon.”
I'm not as convinced as you may be, but there certainly seems to have been a decline in past decades, in terms of private funding for basic research. At one time, Bell Labs, Xerox, IBM, HP and others did quite a bit of basic, fundamental research. IBM still do, last I saw, but here's the question... if it made economic sense to fund private, basic research in the past, what has changed? WHY don't the HP's and Bell Labs, and Xerox's of the world still spend as much on research.
Note: I am, of course, talking out of my ass here, as I have no actual objective numbers to support the idea that private funding for basic research is diminishing. But, subjectively, from what I read, see reported, hear, etc., it sure seems to be the case.
All this stuff we're gluing together is the product of state-funded research, mostly from the cold war era. DARPANet, the web (CERN), DARPA research on "augmented human intelligence," etc.
That's probably true, but there is a danger in looking at the past on a macro level and saying "this means the future must be $THISWAY". The problem is, we don't know what the other outcomes could or would have been. If DARPA had not funded all of that research, we cannot say that the same innovations would not still have been developed via other sources. History, IMO, hints at conclusions, but it's hardly a definitive guide to the future.