Comment by seu
12 days ago
> “They don’t have any secret sauce other than state financing, state supported supply chain, and a state commitment to build the technology.”
State, state and more state. I wonder how does this feel for those out there convinced that the state is just a hurdle to innovation and advance.
In Europe we have: state mandated closing of perfectly working plants, cancellation of previously granted new plants permits.
I studied civil engineering at a public university and was told "we are being asked to downsize our physics department".
In these conditions, how can I reasonably believe that state is the solution here ?
I don't disagree, but I found this funny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5M7Oq1PCz4 (Adam Something: Tech Bros Invented Trains and It Broke Me)
It's a monorail on two rails... But the funny part is that they label themselves as "deep tech" and the narrator is wonder what that means.
If you know there are EU grants open for "deep tech", all these weird projects start making a lot more sense. They're bleeding the states on silly ideas. At least it creates short-term jobs.
I don't think there are many people who believe the state shouldn't intervene at all and that humanity will blossom without it. I'm sure most people strive for some kind of balance.
For those of us who are old enough and were born in the USSR, it feels like we've seen how a similar scenario with too much state intervention has played out before. On one hand, we were so proud of putting a man in space before anyone else; on the other hand, we used to hoard a year's supply of toilet paper and other basic necessities.
Honestly, I think the problem for the USSR were more closely tied to early on becoming a military dictatorship than the particular economic ideas that military dictatorship took on.
The only way to make collectivism work is being a force monopolist / military dictatorship.
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States have always been able to Get Things Done quickly, at the expense of individual rights (eminent domain, conscription, ethnic cleansing, etc.), and private enterprise has always been able to Get Things Done quickly at the expense of collective rights (union busting, ignoring pollution externalities, discrimination, etc.).
The art is in the balance.
That sounds like sneering at a sports team that's winning "that team is only winning cos they play better together and their manager is better"...
Reminds me of when Greece won the Euros or when Iceland beat England.
It's almost like a band of individuals doesn't make a team and that sometimes you need a conductor at the helm
The state is a reflection of the populace. Western populations are presently geriatric and averse to change. So they set up things like NRC so that 50 years will see one reactor open.
Many Eastern populations are young (though aging) and are growth-oriented. Hence the people there lean into the state.
The US, in particular, is all about "never sacrifice grandma for a dollar" which means unlimited dollars are targeted towards grandma. If she says Wind Power is scary then grandma knows best. No surprise that growth-oriented people are anti-state in that universe.
The median age in China is higher than in the US.
fortunately grandma is politically irrelevant in china (ayi's are worse than Mao), though the age of its leadership is showing, as they are still obsessed in trying "socialism" and see skyscrapers as the ultimate hallmark of development (they built so many cathedrals in the sky the government had to put moratoriums on financial requirements to build them)
The state gave us the internet. So I think those people are a small minority or they haven't paid attention.
The diffusion of information from innovation is a positive externality, so it makes sense there's a government role here.
But one of the pathologies you see in government-funded activities is sticking with funding because a group has become dependent on it, long after the effort ceased to make sense. Arguably nuclear is in that category now.
It’s both, a good state sets up the rules that help solve the game theoretic tragedy of the commons. Without a good framework and smart investment by the state, the 1000x more individuals in the private sector wouldn’t have been able to physically build the internet.
Government agencies like DARPA literally invented the internet, so it was definitely more than solving the tragedy of the commons, although that was important too.
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If you look at the list of the corporate sponsors for this think tank, it is pretty obvious that tech has awoken to what the state can do to foster "innovation and advance".
Maybe it depends on what the state actually does..
I'm sure a lot of party officials got plenty of nice gifts in the process of building out nuclear. But still - it got built. I guess we'll see in a couple of decades if the quality didn't get compromised.
It's not like the state doesn't do that in Western nations. Look at solar power in the US. Tax incentives from manufacturing, installation and the end user.
The issue is that the state doesn't have a crystal ball. It's still just picking winners and losers (and often gets it wrong).
It can't predict which technology will be the winner in the end. And in fact it tends to "force" it's choice of technology which can end up retarding adoption of the actual winner.
Imagine if the US government had gotten behind the technology of video cassette recording. It would have gone all in on Betamax.
I'd much prefer the government making it easier for private entities to pursue the research themselves and let the market determine the winner.
State has a lot of power. The tricky part is how to wield this power wisely, when individual people are anything but wise.
Chinese government can do whatever they want, but the result may be two years of Covid Zero lockdowns so that the Great Leader doesn't lose his face, or mass incarceration of Uyghurs because they don't want to give up their religion and identity.
Looking at the current Western politicians, I wouldn't trust them with such massive power either. If you are an American Democrat, imagine Trump having the same unrestrained power as Xi. Is it worth some nuclear power plants built quickly? You decide.
But if you've been to Xinjiang or look at some of the releated bloggers or youtubers, these are obvious rumors. China's freedom of religion is doing better than most countries because the majority of China's people are non-religious and there is no religious conflict.
Well, sure, but the risk is that a bad top down decision can be horrible beyond your dreams.
There is a reason China is near the top of the list when it comes to fastest shrinking countries by 2100.