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China Frets: Innovators Stymied Here

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Re: China Frets: Innovators Stymied Here

#4

It is worth reading Krugman's 1994 argument that the Asian miracle (unlike the earlier Japanese one) is purely capital based, not productivity based. http://media.ft.com/cms/b8268ffe-7572-11db-aea1-0000779e2340...

Econ 101: an economy based on infrastructure growth is not sustainable. China has problems ahead without change.

Re: China Frets: Innovators Stymied Here

#5

It is worth reading Krugman's 1994 argument that the Asian miracle (unlike the earlier Japanese one) is purely capital based, not productivity based. http://media.ft.com/cms/b8268ffe-7572-11db-aea1-0000779e2340...

Thanks, for posting that. I've never really like Krugman all that much, but he successfully put to paper, what my intuition has always told me about China's rapid growth. Even more remarkable considering he wasn't really talking about China, and it was written 2 decades ago.

Re: China Frets: Innovators Stymied Here

#6
This is certainly true, but innovators are stymied in good old California as well. Try tackling a serious problem, such as finance, and you'll find that your innovation breaks a recently passed law. That won't stop someone in Shanghai from copying your work, though.

http://www.1jton.com = http://www.facecash.com

So who's innovating now?

Re: China Frets: Innovators Stymied Here

#7

This is certainly true, but innovators are stymied in good old California as well. Try tackling a serious problem, such as finance, and you'll find that your innovation breaks a recently passed law. That won't stop someone in Shanghai from copying your work, though. http://www.1jton.com = http://www.facecash.com So who's innovating now?

This is a simplistic view. The law -- which requires payment processors to have some large sum of money, $500k I think, in the bank -- doesn't prevent innovation. There are still plenty of innovators in the payments space. What you don't have is a space frothing with activity and losing the public's money in fly-by-night schemes run by college sophomores. This sort of thing is what the law aims to prevent.

It's not anywhere close to the situation in China.

Serious problems are being challenged here in CA and in the US at large. I'm sorry you decided to shut down your startup in CA to protest the law. However, it is not the situation that the entire startup scene is defunct, or that we're hurtling headlong into an authoritarian regime a la China.

Re: China Frets: Innovators Stymied Here

#8

This is certainly true, but innovators are stymied in good old California as well. Try tackling a serious problem, such as finance, and you'll find that your innovation breaks a recently passed law. That won't stop someone in Shanghai from copying your work, though. http://www.1jton.com = http://www.facecash.com So who's innovating now?

And it isn't just IT. Isn't it illegal in California and New York to use services like 23andMe because of state laws mandating that DNA tests can only be performed by "doctor's order"? If I, in New York, want to mail my DNA to 23andMe legally, I must cross the Hudson to New Jersey and mail from a post office there. The law will always be far behind what innovation demands.

Re: China Frets: Innovators Stymied Here

#9

This is certainly true, but innovators are stymied in good old California as well. Try tackling a serious problem, such as finance, and you'll find that your innovation breaks a recently passed law. That won't stop someone in Shanghai from copying your work, though. http://www.1jton.com = http://www.facecash.com So who's innovating now?

This is a simplistic view. The law -- which requires payment processors to have some large sum of money, $500k I think, in the bank -- doesn't prevent innovation. There are still plenty of innovators in the payments space. What you don't have is a space frothing with activity and losing the public's money in fly-by-night schemes run by college sophomores. This sort of thing is what the law aims to prevent. It's not a…

You're completely correct. Just getting a business license in China takes a bribe and months of red stamping. Innovation is crushed in China mainly because of the IP laws (or ignoring thereof.)

Re: China Frets: Innovators Stymied Here

#10

This is certainly true, but innovators are stymied in good old California as well. Try tackling a serious problem, such as finance, and you'll find that your innovation breaks a recently passed law. That won't stop someone in Shanghai from copying your work, though. http://www.1jton.com = http://www.facecash.com So who's innovating now?

This is a simplistic view. The law -- which requires payment processors to have some large sum of money, $500k I think, in the bank -- doesn't prevent innovation. There are still plenty of innovators in the payments space. What you don't have is a space frothing with activity and losing the public's money in fly-by-night schemes run by college sophomores. This sort of thing is what the law aims to prevent. It's not a…

Not quite. Yours is a simplistic interpretation of a complex problem.

The problem is that the large sum of money is not $500K, which is the amount written in the statute, or $500K "in the bank," which is different from $500K in net assets. It's some other much higher number that isn't in writing and is completely up to a single bureaucrat's discretion. (See http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/176_126/think-computer-.... "A department spokeswoman says the actual amount needed is 'more than $1 million.'" I was told in person that the number is between $1 million and $80 million.) Even the Senior Counsel for the California DFI admitted that this dynamic reminded him of an authoritarian regime--but he's powerless to change it.

I didn't "decide" to shut down my startup to protest a law. The law shut down the startup.

Corruption in the United States looks different than it does in other countries. In other countries bribes are overt and expected. In the United States bribes are written into the law to serve an upper class that prices legal services out of most people's reach.

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