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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29465 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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Forget the name but there’s a book about one of the guys who ran Xerox PARC

Fun note: I've read a few popular books on the history of science which tell stories about places like PARC, Bell Labs, GE, and IBM funding pure research in the ~40-60's. Iirc companies got leaner, financialed, government funding expanded dramatically, more people went into academia, bureaucracy expanded at all levels etc. Walter Isaacsons recent "CRISPR" book talked about research labs spending weeks filling out 100 page forms for government approval/grants for some projects (possibly the recent mRNA vaccines). Lots of factors at play. It all sounds sad, but I can only hope its somehow closer to optimal.

Shustek: Let’s take a short diversion here. The Arpanet that you had worked on eventually becomes the Internet and the World Wide Web and is obviously something that’s changing all of our lives. I think I remember correctly reading that you politically tend toward libertarianism, the idea that small government is best. Yet all of this early networking work with ARPA was funded by the government. Do you think in retrospect that that’s a proper role for government? Should they have done that and if they didn’t would anyone else have done that?

Metcalfe: No, I think they should have. I think one of the few things government should do is finance research. I have learned, from many years, that the only companies that can afford to do research are monopolies. Real companies can’t afford to do research other than monopolies. There’s some famous ones, like the telephone monopoly, [AT&T] Bell Labs; the computer monopoly, [IBM] Watson Labs; the copier monopoly, Xerox PARC. And on it goes. In retrospect, the monopolies aren’t worth it for the research they do. It’s nauseating how much we hear about how cool Bell Labs is, or was. But other than the transistor, UNIX, and the Princess telephone, what did we get for all that money? And then for years AT&T as a monopoly sat on innovation, and IBM after that, and Xerox after that. It’s just not worth it.

http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/text/Oral_History/Metcalfe_Robert_1/Metcalfe_Robert_1_2.oral_history.2006.7.102657995.pdf

It’s nauseating how much we hear about how cool Bell Labs is, or was. But other than the transistor, UNIX, and the Princess telephone, what did we get for all that money?

This is "aside from that, what did the Romans do for us" territory. The transistor, Unix, C, the laser, the photovoltaic cell, the charge-coupled device, the entire field of information theory. The cosmic microwave background was also discovered there. AT&T's monopoly certainly held back telecom, but Bell Labs was as cool as its reputation.

So? Technology enables a better standard of living, and rent seeking is how our society does that. It’s just a tax to fund PMC lifestyles for people who aren’t good at STEM or willing to do physical work.

I would strictly speaking prefer that this wealth go to useful people, like the inventors of technology, or the people who maintain it. But it’s absurd to act like regulations and bureaucracy destroy wealth. They sometimes slow down its growth, but mostly they just distribute it.

But it’s absurd to act like regulations and bureaucracy destroy wealth. They sometimes slow down its growth, but mostly they just distribute it.

You're making Bastiat's broken window fallacy.

You see the resistributed money go to the bureaucrats and think "Look, GDP!", but you don't see how that money would have been better used for more GDP in the hands of not-bureaucrats.

That would be why I said it slows down growth, but doesn’t destroy it.

If you would have grown 5%, but due to X you only grow 4%, then 1% of growth has been destroyed.

They do destroy wealth. Regulations on appliances which make dishwashers and laundry machines take longer and not work as well directly reduce your quality of life, and therefore your wealth. Same with regulations on how much water can flow through your faucets. The time taken up filling out those 100 page forms regulation compliance is wasted; it is destruction of wealth.

Like an ideal gas, the bureaucracy will expand to fill the available space.

Yes, the only way we make progress is when technology is moving fast enough to outpace regulation.

Bullshit jobs are known phenomena.

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