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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

#521

Post by mexicocitinluez »

philipallstar wrote: post #507
anthonylevine wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of person sees a claim like "No, not all major breakthroughs were done at private companies. Like the internet, for example" and immediately feels the need to tell them private companies are doing stuff? Are you not reading the reply chains before commenting? What motivates you to interject with information that is meaningless? The only thing I can think of is that you've voted for the people who are curren…

Lots of the internet was and is powered by research from private companies. The internet is not particularly public sector.

OP said "almost any major scientific breakthrough of the past century" was done at private companies. Which is objectively not true. They transmitted that message using technology that was created by the government. That's ironic.

Your reply

> Basically all of the internet is powered by software, standards, computers, networks and storage created by companies.

Is meaningless. It's someone jumping out of the woodwork to white knight the private sector. It's weird. It doesn't change what I said or what OP said.

It doesn't make it less ironic to say "all major things were done by private companies" using a technology that wasn't invented by a private company. It's irrelevant.

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

#522

Post by labcomputer »

triceratops wrote: post #418
barchar wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At any given point in time for an individual yes, but your cap gains rate can vary substantially over time. Also trusts are taxed fairly punitively. So it's still better for everyone since only those who need or want the income have to take it.

> Also trusts are taxed fairly punitively That only reinforces my viewpoint that buybacks advantage rich shareholders. > your cap gains rate can vary substantially over time It is 0% (up to like $100k for a couple filing jointly), 15% (up to about $580k), and 20% above that. Income tax has many more brackets than that and they kick in at way lower incomes. It's true that your income can vary substantially over time.…

> On the other hand, remaining invested in a stock that does buybacks during your working years also concentrates your risk in that stock. So people will likely sell anyway and take some capital gains to diversify.

This really undercuts your previous argument that only certain classes of shareholders benefit from buybacks. Now you are assuming that everyone falls into one of the classes anyway.

So we're back where we started: Buybacks benefit all shareholders equally.

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

#523

Post by labcomputer »

andrewlgood wrote: post #394
sidewndr46 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have mentioned that isn't comparable because salaries are taxed. The tax rate on unrealized gains in the US is zero percent from what I understand.

Not correct. Capital Gains taxes depend on the holding period. Short term capital gains (stock held less than a year) are taxed at the same rate as salaries (ordinary income rate). Long term capital gains (stock held at least a year), are taxed on a reduced level that peaks out at 20% (depends on total taxable income) with a possible additional 3.8% Obama Net Investment Tax.

Cool. You covered short term gains and long term gains. Could you answer the question, which was unrealized gains?

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

#524

Post by Vektorceraptor »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #489
Vektorceraptor wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The only people using the term NPC in this manner are, themselves, the real NPCs the term was devised to skewer

If you can't take an insult - then you are an NPC

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

#525

Post by sehansen »

ModernMech wrote: post #515
sehansen wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, no, the ROI on Xerox Parc was excellent for Xerox, because of the technology they _did_ successfully commercialize on their own: the laser printer. It helped Xerox to $8 billion in revenue in 1984, a level Apple didn't beat until 2006. Even Microsoft didn't beat Xerox in revenue until the year 2000, where Xerox had $19 billion in revenue. Apple didn't reach that level until 2010. So you could say that it took t…

Even if we accept that premise, it still doesn't follow that PARC-like research centers are the only or best way to achieve that outcome. PARC's remit was to invent the office of the future, not to do the typical R&D thing which would be to make incremental improvements on their current products. Laser printers are exactly an incremental improvement on their current products. So what you're saying here is that the be…

No, the laser printer was revolutionary. Xerox' previous business was photocopiers that could only make copies of existing physical documents you'd already typed out or pasted together. The laser printer was connected directly to your mainframe and allowed customized mass printing at a speed and quality not seen before. Before the laser printer, the alternatives were dot-matrix printers, plotters, automated typewriters, all at least an order of magnitude slower than the first laser printers and only the plotter had any chance of looking nice.

Laser printers were a central part of the computerized mass-customized printing of things like insurance policies and bank statements that happened in the 70's and were definitely a revolutionary change in what kind of problem Xerox was solving for their customers.

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

#526

Post by ModernMech »

sehansen wrote: post #525
ModernMech wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if we accept that premise, it still doesn't follow that PARC-like research centers are the only or best way to achieve that outcome. PARC's remit was to invent the office of the future, not to do the typical R&D thing which would be to make incremental improvements on their current products. Laser printers are exactly an incremental improvement on their current products. So what you're saying here is that the be…

No, the laser printer was revolutionary. Xerox' previous business was photocopiers that could only make copies of existing physical documents you'd already typed out or pasted together. The laser printer was connected directly to your mainframe and allowed customized mass printing at a speed and quality not seen before. Before the laser printer, the alternatives were dot-matrix printers, plotters, automated typewrite…

> Xerox' previous business was photocopiers that could only make copies of existing physical documents you'd already typed out or pasted together. The laser printer was connected directly to your mainframe and allowed customized mass printing at a speed and quality not seen before.

But I'm not saying laser printers weren't a great thing, I'm saying it doesn't take setting up a research playground like PARC to get that kind of result.

Laser printers are the kind of improvement typical R&D comes up with. Xerox's customers wanted more speed and quality out of their printers, laser printers got them that. It's not exactly clear that a typical R&D wouldn't/couldn't have come up with that. Apple for instance does this kind of R&D all the time, and they're very good at it.

Xerox PARC wasn't about getting the next incremental improvement in speed and quality for printers, it was about inventing the office of the future. But the office of the future doesn't require laser printers or printers of any kind. PARC's vision was that Xerox's core business would be eliminated, and that's precisely why Xerox couldn't be the one to actually capitalize on PARC research.

> were definitely a revolutionary change

I would say going from dot matrix printers to laser printers is an incremental change; whereas something more revolutionary would be going from dot matrix printers to no printers at all because you don't need them since you have e-mail and the Internet.

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

#527

Post by AfterHIA »

ricksunny wrote: post #497
AfterHIA wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going into the specifics of what motivated Mike Mansfield requires going beyond the conversation we're having about R&D into the domain of politics and ideology. I want to stick to relevant realities related to people in technology: 1) This killed research in the United States. This killed the program that paid for Alan Kay and Douglas Engelbart's PhDs. This has led to or is at least heavily correlated with the decli…

Ok, starting to get somewhere, so I thank you for that much. We have the understanding now that there is some discontent with one of Mr Mansfield’s amendments, specifically its perceived outcome on innovative, not-necessarily-defense-oriented-but-still-could-be research funding. Still unanswered questions: • Which Mansfield amendment is wing referred to? Namong the year would be suffiicnetly identifying • What were M…

Hey Rick. Excuse me for the long reply time. Our cinema program at our local university has been eating up a lot of my HN time. I appreciate your response in turn.

1) The relevant portions come in 1973. By 1969 we see developments in this direction. I have links but thanks to the Peter Thiel shithead take over of search I'm finding it hard to find the relevant literature on the NSF website. I found this article informative:

https://goodscienceproject.org/articles/a-note-on-the-changi...

2) From what I've been able to gather most of the rationale of restricting research came in response to the Vietnam War. It was misguided but the idea was that the role of ARPA (to become DARPA) should be concentrated strictly on military projects to prevent waste and overspending. As, "lefty that likes psychedelic rock" I get how at the time this might have made sense. Mansfield was Senate majority leader and given the popular anti-war/military sentiment I can see how the, "hippies and beats" might have seen ARPA as a menace. It's worth noting that they didn't have the incredible hindsight at the time that would include seeing the ARPANET evolve into the Internet or Engelbart's project eventually becoming the Macintosh.

As for your last paragraph-- I agree. NSF should have a larger budget. Honestly I don't think that in today's political climate that, "restarting IPTO-ARPA like it was in the 1960s" is actually a good idea. Even the idea of creating a new Xerox PARC was tried by our namesake Y Combinator and from, "what I can gather" the project was a massive failure. Like I said-- we get to a point where discussing what motivates society to fund the education of the Paperts, Kays, Engelbarts, and Brenda Laurels of the world becomes a discussion about ideology. I'm with you for creating a, "NEF" or a peacetime OSRD. Honestly in some sense if critics are right about the United States being in a state of, "cold/pre civil war" this might become necessary. I'm with you in this regard. The issue is motivating the powers that be and those with the capital to realistically fund projects like this to do so. Historically this requires either a period of unprecedented peace or a war. Given the current situation I'm think that the later is more likely. This really pains me as a millennial but as a wise man once said, "we must deal with the world as it is not as we would like it to be."

Thanks for the worthwhile exchange. Wishing you and yours the best this evening ricksunny.

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

#528

Post by triceratops »

labcomputer wrote: post #522
triceratops wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also trusts are taxed fairly punitively That only reinforces my viewpoint that buybacks advantage rich shareholders. > your cap gains rate can vary substantially over time It is 0% (up to like $100k for a couple filing jointly), 15% (up to about $580k), and 20% above that. Income tax has many more brackets than that and they kick in at way lower incomes. It's true that your income can vary substantially over time.…

> On the other hand, remaining invested in a stock that does buybacks during your working years also concentrates your risk in that stock. So people will likely sell anyway and take some capital gains to diversify. This really undercuts your previous argument that only certain classes of shareholders benefit from buybacks. Now you are assuming that everyone falls into one of the classes anyway. So we're back where we…

> This really undercuts your previous argument that only certain classes of shareholders benefit from buybacks.

If you have so much of a stock that you need to sell to diversify you're still rich.

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