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Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

economist.com

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Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#121

Post by bleurghyflergy »

chaostheory wrote: post #9

> The common perception that China is incapable of innovation needs re-examining. No one is saying Chinese people can't innovate. The real question is whether Chinese people can innovate while inside China. (I wonder what percentage of current captains of industry in China studied abroad?) Why? Because innovation is essentially disrupting and rebelling against the status quo. ie breaking rules, disobedience, oppositi…

People move to new places to make money, and in turn elevate their status. Innovation is a means through which people gain an advantage to make money, and therefore gain more status. As Silicon Valley shows, it takes investment to make money.

China is flush with money. So your arguments, railing against China, fall flat; unless you are willing to ignore the basic tenets of Silicon Valley.

(People also make great technological strides when it comes to defense of their livelihoods. That is why so much public spending towards defense has lead to so many innovative technologies. But that is a topic for another conversation.)

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#122

Post by candiodari »

enraged_camel wrote: post #114
Retric wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US has high levels of corruption at the top, it's just better hidden and less accessible to most people. The secret is changing how the rules operate instead of selective enforcement.

>>US has high levels of corruption at the top, it's just better hidden and less accessible to most people. It is hidden... in broad daylight. For example, what is lobbying, if not legalized corruption?

You know, there is justification for lobbying, and to some extent I would even say it is a strength of our society rather than a weakness.

Lobbying informs decision makers, in a non-neutral manner, about what they regulate from the perspective of people actually subject to the regulation produced. That is a very valuable thing if you compare it to the alternative. In societies where this is absent it leads to incredible inefficiency (just ask an old Dubai taxi driver about why a building was built, for instance. Prepare to be amazed).

Lobbying provides a form of feedback that would be very hard to acquire otherwise. Neither policymakers, nor the democratic public can realistically study the entire economy in sufficient detail to regulate it. But by definition, there are people who have made it their living to study, work and use parts of the economy, and they should be given access to policymakers before they get regulated.

And that's of course where it should stop. Oh well.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#123

Post by HillaryBriss »

Getting from early-stage research to manufactured product would require a massive amount of what he calls integrated innovation: “Materials, process, device design, circuit design—all needed to be innovated…if you changed one material, you had to change the process.” His team had to develop entirely new materials and factory tools, including custom-built robots, to make his screens, accumulating over 600 patents along the way. He insists this could not have been done even in Silicon Valley, because California cannot match Shenzhen’s ecosystem of “makers”.

This phenomenon has been under appreciated by the macroeconomists guiding the US. If the people with the expertise, their factories, their suppliers - the whole chain -- migrate to places far outside the US, then something extremely important is lost.

And favorable exchange rates plus container ship globalization is not enough to get that something back.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#124

Post by mncharity »

Nokinside wrote: post #40
chaostheory wrote: post #9

> The common perception that China is incapable of innovation needs re-examining. No one is saying Chinese people can't innovate. The real question is whether Chinese people can innovate while inside China. (I wonder what percentage of current captains of industry in China studied abroad?) Why? Because innovation is essentially disrupting and rebelling against the status quo. ie breaking rules, disobedience, oppositi…

China is not Russian style system where oligarchs close to leader step in and steal your stuff if you get rich. China resembles (British) monarchy of the old. There are laws, but they are not same for the common man and to the noble (60 million members of the communist party). If you steer away from the politics, you can be entrepreneur and become rich. Corruption exists of course, but that's like taxation. You pay y…

> Corruption exists of course, but that's like taxation.

A few years ago, at an economics talk out of Harvard, the speaker suggested there were advantages for innovation in China-style vs US-style corruption. One was that when legislative bribes are mostly paid by large incumbent companies, instead of being more broadly sourced, there's more systematic use of regulatory capture to reduce competition and replace innovation with rent seeking. Caveats: it was a side comment, and it wasn't clear to me the topic was fully within their research focus.

Similar issues exist around patents. I recently heard a billion-ish hardware tech CEO describe a large defensive patent portfolio as "table stakes" for playing. Though I wonder if they meant "buy in".

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#125

Post by jzwinck »

chaostheory wrote: post #101
jimmywanger wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> constant improvement and striving for perfection. This happens in every culture when pressures are pushed upon it. For decades after WWII, Japanese goods and products were considered inferior and "just good enough", and specialized in cheap things that didn't really need to be high quality. External pressures (exports) forced more precision and rigor on them. Same thing for China. Right now it manufactures many thi…

> Look back at old Chinese teachers or masters of particular arts or culture. The Shaolin masters and their philosophy are pretty much gone. Today those who train just end up leaving the temples and either joining private security or the military for money. Culture and society's values aren't static. I'm describing what is reality today, and not in a past century. > Simply attributing the way things are in certain ar…

Fake rice does not exist. It's a persistent rumour aided and abetted by social media in Asia ("Rice from XYZ in China is made from plastic, forward this message to everyone you love!" is the text of one message I received).

You will not find anyone who actually ate any of this mythical rice. Just friends of friends of cousins.

http://www.snopes.com/plastic-rice-from-china/

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#126

Post by malloryerik »

Canada wrote: post #117
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Rule by law" is the use of law to control the people. You use laws as convenient to punish your enemies, but aren't particularly interested in enforcing laws fairly. It becomes more of the default whenever there is no independent judiciary to interpret the law, or an independent media to make sure the government stays honest. "Rule of law" is the aspiration that we are used to in the west (fair application of the la…

With over a billion people in the country, the highest levels of leadership can't easily stop the kind of corruption that most businesses are victimized by: Extortion by local officials. It's like, they walk in to your factory, claim your fire extinguishers are not regulation, and demand that you buy a dozen of them from their friend and no one else, and it's going to cost you 50,000 RMB ($7k USD). And if you don't g…

Can I ask what you mean about the internet sucking? Is it censorship, quality of sites, or speed and reliability of service?

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#127

Post by Canada »

malloryerik wrote: post #126
Canada wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With over a billion people in the country, the highest levels of leadership can't easily stop the kind of corruption that most businesses are victimized by: Extortion by local officials. It's like, they walk in to your factory, claim your fire extinguishers are not regulation, and demand that you buy a dozen of them from their friend and no one else, and it's going to cost you 50,000 RMB ($7k USD). And if you don't g…

Can I ask what you mean about the internet sucking? Is it censorship, quality of sites, or speed and reliability of service?

Everything is censored. You have to tunnel pretty much everything. Massive packet loss is par for the course. You can't have a routable address. You can't just fire up a VM in minutes, you can't even have a VM without a registered company with a license to run a web server.

Things we take for granted like attaching a 2mb file to an email or a simple Google search can take several minutes to accomplish.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#128

Post by mncharity »

Canada wrote: post #117
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Rule by law" is the use of law to control the people. You use laws as convenient to punish your enemies, but aren't particularly interested in enforcing laws fairly. It becomes more of the default whenever there is no independent judiciary to interpret the law, or an independent media to make sure the government stays honest. "Rule of law" is the aspiration that we are used to in the west (fair application of the la…

With over a billion people in the country, the highest levels of leadership can't easily stop the kind of corruption that most businesses are victimized by: Extortion by local officials. It's like, they walk in to your factory, claim your fire extinguishers are not regulation, and demand that you buy a dozen of them from their friend and no one else, and it's going to cost you 50,000 RMB ($7k USD). And if you don't g…

> Our systems aren't perfect, but it's rare we have to put up with shit like that.

I'd love to see a breakdown of the US economy, sketching which rules apply where. Including gray and black markets.

When a couple of Boston-NYC gray bus operators went legit, incumbent Greyhound fought them in various ways, including leveraging corruption in federal law enforcement. The sole battered survivor had to hire a DC lobbyist.

SpaceX is massively disrupting a large mature industry, while doing no defensive patenting at all. Apparently relying entirely on something like "you don't piss off US Senators and DoD".

There's a lot of fascinating texture to how the US economy is structured, but I've never seen a broadly scoped and roughly quantitative sketch.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#129

Post by justicezyx »

chaostheory wrote: post #106
justicezyx wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech is not part of Darpa's motivations for inventing the predecessor of internet. Note that Internet is driver from some evolved tech off Darpa's research. Again, internet was not designed to advance any political goal, but to withstand nukes. And the internet now days is different from Internet when it's born. The difference is probably more prominent than between a monkey and a human being. BTW not sure a s…

You're right. Freespeech wasn't DARPA's motiviation. However it was the motivation of at least one of the engineers of ARPANET. "My bias was always to build decentralization into the net. That way it would be hard for one group to gain control. I didn’t trust large central organizations. It was just in my nature to distrust them." -- Robert (Bob) Taylor That's from the Issacson's book.

Sure, as long it's made clear that DARPA's motivation has no intention of freespeech, and DARPA is the main driver behind early internet research.

Re: Shenzhen is a hothouse of innovation

#130

Post by seanmcdirmid »

Canada wrote: post #127
malloryerik wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask what you mean about the internet sucking? Is it censorship, quality of sites, or speed and reliability of service?

Everything is censored. You have to tunnel pretty much everything. Massive packet loss is par for the course. You can't have a routable address. You can't just fire up a VM in minutes, you can't even have a VM without a registered company with a license to run a web server. Things we take for granted like attaching a 2mb file to an email or a simple Google search can take several minutes to accomplish.

Reddit, hackernews, quora aren't censored.
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