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No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

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Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#451

Post by [deleted] »

jstanley wrote: post #369
nyeah wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is supply and demand to consider. Buybacks create a tendency toward higher share prices, but only while they continue. That demand cuts off when the buybacks stop. If the buybacks are at a discount to whatever the stock turns out to have been worth at the time, then that benefits all the shareholders. That can be a great use of money for all shareholders. But buybacks at inflated prices benefit only exiting sha…

> Buybacks create a tendency toward higher share prices, but only while they continue. Buybacks increase the share price because you have a company that is worth (for sake of argument) the same as it was worth before, except now there are fewer shares available. A fixed market cap divided by fewer shares equals a higher share price. In the limit case imagine buying back all but 1 share. Now that 1 share represents th…

[deleted]

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#452

Post by advisedwang »

terminalshort wrote: post #3

> In the 20th century, U.S. companies put their excess profits into corporate research labs. Basic research in the U.S. was done in at Dupont, Bell Labs, IBM, AT&T, Xerox, Kodak, GE, et al. This changed in 1982, when the Securities and Exchange Commission ruled that it was legal for companies to buy their own stock (reducing the number of shares available to the public and inflating their stock price.) Very quickly B…

Previously a company could:

1. Re-invest profits in R&D. Benefit to shareholder: potentially grow the value of their shares dramatically.

2. Make a dividend. Benefit to shareholder: cash that they can re-invest or use, LESS capital gains tax.

Ending stock buybacks creates another option:

3. Buyback stock. Benefit to shareholder: increased share value, and they can control when it is realized.

If there are boards that believe (3) > (1) > (2), then allowing stock buybacks will result in those companies shifting R&D investment into buybacks.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#453

Post by hearsathought »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #373
twobitshifter wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not why it can’t be done so much as why it isn’t done. Share buybacks allow companies to reward executives directly as their compensation is tied to stock price. If we started not doing that, the priorities might shift, but those executives like things the way they are. Before Tim Cook Apple had never done a buyback - Jobs was always thinking Apple could do better with the money in R&D than paying off shareholders. W…

> Share buybacks allow companies to reward executives directly as their compensation is tied to stock price. If we started not doing that, the priorities might shift, but those executives like things the way they are. This isn't right but it's adjacent. Executives don't need buybacks to get whatever compensation. Their compensation is negotiated and you can write the contract to make it whatever. However, paying divi…

> However, paying dividends is a taxable event, which means shareholders don't like it.

Shareholders love dividends because it is taxed as capital gains ( long-term capital gains if you own the stock longer than 1 year ). It's why most of the publicly listed stock ( of profitable companies ) pay dividends - because shareholders want dividends. Apple was forced to pay dividends by investors. So was Meta. As was Alphabet. All under shareholder pressure because dividends get tax as capital gains. Any company sitting on a pile of cash will get pressure to pay it out as dividends by shareholders.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#454

Post by [deleted] »

xixixao wrote: post #59
twobitshifter wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not why it can’t be done so much as why it isn’t done. Share buybacks allow companies to reward executives directly as their compensation is tied to stock price. If we started not doing that, the priorities might shift, but those executives like things the way they are. Before Tim Cook Apple had never done a buyback - Jobs was always thinking Apple could do better with the money in R&D than paying off shareholders. W…

Dumb maybe question: Why couldn’t the companies with excess profits just pay they employees more in salaries?

[deleted]

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#455

Post by ricksunny »

AfterHIA wrote: post #420

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JCR_Licklider https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Mansfield If you know; you know. #ARPA

I remain perpetually perplexed why people who invoke Mansfield's name almost universally shrink from describing why they feel it is relevant to invoke Mansfield's name.

Yes, there was a Mansfield amendment and a would-be 'nother Mansfield amendment. It had some (waves hands) ever-unarticulated effect on defense funding of research. Motivations of Mansfield are never articulated. Seems so self-defeating to not describe.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#456

Post by gamblor956 »

oskarkk wrote: post #343
gamblor956 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like they were able to use NASA's designs for reusable rockets... Oh wait..they did... Because NASA thought reusable rockets were possible decades ago. The reason they never built them was because certain Congressmen blocked the funding.

Any American company could use NASA's designs for reusable rockets... Oh wait, only SpaceX did it. And 10 years after they did it, they're still the only company that did it (not counting New Shepard of course, as it can't put anything into orbit). Are some congressmen forbidding other companies to use their own money to make better rockets?

Lol. SpaceX wasn't the first private company to develop a reusable rocket. It was just the first one owned by a billionaire that convince other people to fund it.

SpaceX is notorious in the aeronautical industry for attempting to interfere in the research and funding of other companies. Over a decade ago a competitor had viable plans for a 2 stage rocket... until Musk sued to block the funding.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#457

Post by NickC25 »

astrange wrote: post #301
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In tech it was the switch from creative corporatism, which is focused on opportunities, invention, and infrastructure, to extractive corporatism and oligarchy, which are focused on scams, exploitation, and the creation of rigid hierarchies of privilege. We're now in the end stage of the latter in the US. The US still plays at invention - or rather a few of its oligarchs do - but it's far, far behind what's happening…

The US doesn't have oligarchs except maybe Alex Karp. Oligarch is a specific thing with a specific meaning.

Bezos, Ellison, and Zuck combined have over $1 trillion in net worth.

That alone places a combined 3 people with more money than the GDP of all but 20 countries.

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#458

Post by BobaFloutist »

vinorathna-r wrote: post #364
croes wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giant magnetoresistance was discovered in 1988, it became useful in HDDs in 1997. If they had evaluated 1993 the discovery would be called useless and a waste of money.

I agree that basic research like the discovery of GMR often has an unpredictable timeline and shouldn't be judged too early.. However, I still believe that a light-touch monitoring system is important. It's not about evaluating the usefulness of the discovery in the short term, but rather ensuring that: Funds are being used for the stated research goals (fiscal responsibility). The project is making scientific progre…

> The project is making scientific progress as defined by its own milestones (accountability).

How do you differentiate between pursuing a hypothesis that turns out to be incorrect (an essential part of science if we want to actually learn anything new) and failing to make scientific progress?

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#459

Post by Andrex »

rybosworld wrote: post #413
cloverich wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mental model as an outsider, is the vibe out of Google is that they push the most talented folks out via process / politics. Not intentionally, just the reality of squeezing the creative type employee / work. Replacing creative smarts which is difficult or impossible to measure, with operational smarts, more easily measured. Those creative smart people mostly go on to start up other companies. Its worked out ok fo…

Bureaucrat-ification isn't a phenomenon unique to Google - it happens at every company eventually. It's really hard to describe why it's inevitable (there are a lot of factors). But it's self-evident really. All of the major tech players started with a single innovation that afforded them enough revenue to acquire almost everything else in their portfolio. Aside from search, the only major product Alphabet built-in h…

> It's really hard to describe why it's inevitable (there are a lot of factors).

I think there's a lot of small factors, but of those the biggest on (IMO) is the fallacy that throwing people at a problem gets it done faster. For some situations: yes, for all situations: no. And you need experience or some kind of sharp intuition to know when to expand and when not to expand.

Add more and more people to a job and they'll find ways to justify their value at the expense of efficiency. And there's a snowball effect from there as an org adds people who believe adding people is always good.

Then the corpo runs into layoffs and everyone throws their hands up and says "How could we have avoided this?" By not overhiring in the first place.

(All IMO naturally.)

Re: No science, no startups: The innovation engine we're switching off

#460

Post by [deleted] »

ryandv wrote: post #441
dxdm wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So is gender research or feminist queer dance theory studies a part of basic or applied science? People's ideas about how humans should live together can be beneficial for the wealth and well-being of whole societies and its members. Was Rousseau part of basic or applied science? We can wonder about how useful certain efforts are, of course, especially in all their extent; but I don't know how wise it is to dismiss…

> Was Rousseau part of basic or applied science? This one is easy - neither. The term "science" has gone through semantic dilution in a manner similar to how everyone is now an engineer - software engineer, prompt engineer, sanitation engineer. Falsifiability is one of the key distinguishing characteristics of a proper science, as famously propounded by Karl Popper. "Gender identities" not only can not be falsified,…

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