71–80 of 210 posts
OK so the British HNers commenting seem to be unimpressed. :) Leaving this specific agency/project aside, what would be the right way to do this? How do we do public investment in high risk projects well?
The USA's DARPA program funded important research into - The internet - GPS - Graphical user interface and mouse - Onion routing - Voice assistant Hopefully this program executes well. There is clearly a big social payoff to betting big on credible people doing risky research with high potential impact. https://www.itpro.co.uk/technology/34730/10-amazing-darpa-in...
I mean, just look at how they’ve fared in the last 18 months alone - how many unaccountable tens of billions did they pay out to their donors?
I had Tory ministers’ children approaching me about putting together business plans to help them get covid grants - same crowd who I used to help with R&D grants, which were also used to get high net worth individuals with money of dubious origin into the country. I anticipate I’ll be hearing from them again.
This kind of funding will not develop anything but the wealth divide.
It makes sense to have a limited amount of funding going towards carefully selected, high-potential projects be exempt from risk limits. However, I do not believe it is a good idea for them to exempt it from public records laws, this will surely reduce public trust in the agency and if anything, high-risk projects need an enhanced level of transparency.
I still don't see how any government granting committee can outperform hundreds of private venture funds competing for exposure to new opportunities. Even if you have a government dept. of 10x geniuses, they don't scale to compete with a healthy investment community. As described, the risks I see are that, it has the incentives for a patronage slush fund, there will be selection bias to hedge political risk around pe…
Different structures yield different results. Venture backed startups produce results different to internal R&D departments, for example. Open source/open culture projects yield different results than typical startups.
I don't think a VC fund would have invented the internet, not in the 60s. I don't think the worldwideweb could have been invented by a typical corporation. If it had been, it would have been more like facebook than the www. America Online and others were attempts at a proprietary FB-esque www. The web would have been different if they won. Linux is different from Windows. Different types of organisations make different kinds of things. If we only have one type of organisation, we limit the possible outcomes.
The vast majority of current VC success stories are neither here nor there in terms of public benefit. The next tiktok is a great return for VCs, but consumers are not likely to lack for social networking innovations either way. I think this is a sign of overinvestment in one category. They're fighting over the pie, more often that baking it now. This wasn't the case circa 2005.
Funding structure and organisational structure are kind of similar for these purposes.
Tesla's uniqueness is another case in point. Musk funded it himself. There isn't really a type of financing, besides self financing, that could have done that. Banks and hedge funds don't want high risk projects. VCs don't want projects that require lots of funding once successful. Despite being a superstar CEO, Musk's initial investment diluted him from 100% to nearly 0 at one point. Technically, the shares that he owns were earned back as CEO performance bonus. Not attractive to a VC... compared to a facebook.
I doubt that Tesla is the only such project possible, technically. Funding structures just make it less likely.
In much of the west (UK certainly), our economies have gotten very intangible. Software, Banking, financing, entertainment, patentable tech. Some of this is because the world presents those opportunities. Some of it is because of financial structures. We have bigger/better financing structures for some things more than others.
Silicon Valley developed a unique economy based on a pretty unique web of financiers, angels and VCs.
All that said, I have no idea if this agency is good/useful. Sounds dubious, honestly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not so positive. There is potential for this to become just another way to channel pork to friends and cronies. Which, considering the track record of the current executive, is probably the most likely scenario. I'm all for DARPA-like initiatives, but when it comes to taxpayers' money we should have decent accountability mechanisms.
The current UK government has a blacklist of left wing journalists who they won’t respond to freedom of information act requests and they are fighting a culture war about bullshit while Dominic Cummings has the gall to claim his friends happen to be the only marketing company in the UK who are trustworthy!
Source?
Also, isn't it illegal to not respond to valid FOI requests? Otherwise wouldn't that defy the whole point of FOI?
I still don't see how any government granting committee can outperform hundreds of private venture funds competing for exposure to new opportunities. Even if you have a government dept. of 10x geniuses, they don't scale to compete with a healthy investment community. As described, the risks I see are that, it has the incentives for a patronage slush fund, there will be selection bias to hedge political risk around pe…
The USA's DARPA program funded important research into - The internet - GPS - Graphical user interface and mouse - Onion routing - Voice assistant Hopefully this program executes well. There is clearly a big social payoff to betting big on credible people doing risky research with high potential impact. https://www.itpro.co.uk/technology/34730/10-amazing-darpa-in...
That’s nice, but this isn’t what this will be about. This will be a means of funnelling cash to party donors without oversight, nothing more. Hence the FOI exception. I mean, just look at how they’ve fared in the last 18 months alone - how many unaccountable tens of billions did they pay out to their donors? I had Tory ministers’ children approaching me about putting together business plans to help them get covid gra…
That’s great. Removing a platform for people that say, in hindsight, ‘it was obvious that was going to fail’ is a step in the right direction. If western societies insist on outsourcing R&D through misguided tax laws, they have no idea the amount of harm they are doing to the next generation of young people (who will be subservient to the innovating countries that were smarter in their policies).
I'm not so positive. There is potential for this to become just another way to channel pork to friends and cronies. Which, considering the track record of the current executive, is probably the most likely scenario. I'm all for DARPA-like initiatives, but when it comes to taxpayers' money we should have decent accountability mechanisms.
Not all of DARPA's work is public, yet I'm sure that DARPA is fully accountable.
By excluding this new agency from FOI the UK government simply wants to be able to decide which projects to publicise and when, and which projects to keep secret, in the same way as DARPA operates.
The USA's DARPA program funded important research into - The internet - GPS - Graphical user interface and mouse - Onion routing - Voice assistant Hopefully this program executes well. There is clearly a big social payoff to betting big on credible people doing risky research with high potential impact. https://www.itpro.co.uk/technology/34730/10-amazing-darpa-in...
That’s nice, but this isn’t what this will be about. This will be a means of funnelling cash to party donors without oversight, nothing more. Hence the FOI exception. I mean, just look at how they’ve fared in the last 18 months alone - how many unaccountable tens of billions did they pay out to their donors? I had Tory ministers’ children approaching me about putting together business plans to help them get covid gra…