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How much countries spend in R&D
81–88 of 88 posts
Re: How much countries spend in R&D
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about stopping subsidies to companies altogether? Its not a necessary market mechanism.
Governments are in a competitive market for how business friendly they are. This creates pressure to create beneficial tax and subsidy regimes or risk losing businesses. If a government plays it too strict, multinationals will minimize their operations and local businesses won't be able to compete internationally. The way I see it, it's really the market at work, doing exactly what markets do. Negotiating a price (ta…
They could just cut taxes instead.
Re: How much countries spend in R&D
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
>How about looking into what else their education system does that is possibly absent in the Indian system? No rote memorization for starters. I have found that if you want problem solvers, it's usually not people from rote memorization cultures. Hierarchical thinking is the next problem. If you want to disrupt something, you have to be a little bit of a rebel.
> No rote memorization for starters. I have found that if you want problem solvers, it's usually not people from rote memorization cultures. Rote memorization is the basis of all learning. It's actually the first step and it's at the heart of western education ( or it was until we decided to go to a silly route ). You have to memorize the ABCs, the multiplication table, vocabulary, etc. And we used to teach kids lati…
I see what you mean, you have to memorize the very basics. What I meant by route memorization learning culture is a bit different though.
I went to China once and during my visit I met a math teacher. He showed me some of the problems his students could solve.
I was impressed, it were very difficult problems for 11th graders. I couldn't solve some of them myself.
On one problem I asked him how to solve it and he handed me their math book. It was a chapter that had this problem solved in the beginning, and then about 100 questions which were just the same problem with different numbers.
I was hugely disappointed. The students didn't know how to solve a class of problems, just cherry picked problems that they learned by heart.
The problem here is not that you memorize some things, but in math you should understand the problem, and not just be able to input different numbers in an algorithm.
For vast memorization we have Google, for solving algorithms we have computers, for thinking how to solve something we need humans. And this class was trying to educate humans to be computers.
Re: How much countries spend in R&D
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes I had exactly the same experience! it seems like the people reviewing what qualifies have absolutely no technical understanding. Even when trying to be honest, the questions are posed so vaguely that they are really relying on you taking the moral high ground when choosing what _you_ think qualifies as R&D, even then it becomes an internal battle of definitions.
As one of those reviewers I beg to differ on the non-understanding part :). You have to understand that the reviews happen in context. What isn't always understood by the layman is that countries/regions etc. aren't reluctant to grant subsidies, but actually want to subsidize as much as they can get away with. The break on the system is international treaties of mutually agreed limits on what you are allowed to subsi…
It sounds like we are talking about different things: this was in the form of R&D tax rebates, and all due respect, the reviewers involved asked for more and more "plain english" descriptions of the technology to the point of meaningless.
Re: How much countries spend in R&D
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is why a more exaggerated comparison would be this: a person who walks home after finishing work to cook dinner with the family using vegetables grown in the backyard vs a person who eats out in a bar, drives home drunk, gets into an accident, ends up in hospital, and creates a huge increase in GDP. The example downplays the positive impact of the increase in GDP (eg the drunk driver creates jobs for car manufa…
That example would make sense if anyone was thinking or arguing that every individual transaction that increases GDP is inherently good simply because it increases GDP. But I don't think anyone has that narrow of a focus on GDP. Obviously no one enjoys needing to spend money for medical issues.
If you are part of the 'financial' economy (not looking profit through production but rather from arbitrage or intermediation, the old using money to make money), then that narrow focus on GDP serves you very well as it correlates directly with your opportunity.
Re: How much countries spend in R&D
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
As one of those reviewers I beg to differ on the non-understanding part :). You have to understand that the reviews happen in context. What isn't always understood by the layman is that countries/regions etc. aren't reluctant to grant subsidies, but actually want to subsidize as much as they can get away with. The break on the system is international treaties of mutually agreed limits on what you are allowed to subsi…
It sounds like we are talking about different things: this was in the form of R&D tax rebates, and all due respect, the reviewers involved asked for more and more "plain english" descriptions of the technology to the point of meaningless.
Ah! My review experience is in direct innovation project grants.
I have been on the defending (receiving) side of the R&D tax rebates. As far as I could tell, these types of negotiations are done by people from the finance and economy, not the innovation and R&D administration. This is also the domain of professional intermediaries from the Big-5 offering this as a service. If you were there as the token 'techie' (I know i was), your unspoken role would typically have been to spew jargon and tech details, of which neither your financial consultants nor the administration representative would understand one word. They weren't looking for technical insights, just judging in how-far the activities and people you are claiming the rebates for differ from your 'normal' activities and employee pool, so they can draw a line somewhere.
Re: How much countries spend in R&D
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about stopping subsidies to companies altogether? Its not a necessary market mechanism.
Governments are in a competitive market for how business friendly they are. This creates pressure to create beneficial tax and subsidy regimes or risk losing businesses. If a government plays it too strict, multinationals will minimize their operations and local businesses won't be able to compete internationally. The way I see it, it's really the market at work, doing exactly what markets do. Negotiating a price (ta…
Multinationals and globalism are definitely where the study of markets need more light & publicity. Maybe governments should be responsible for its people when they are abroad and commit crimes, and this should include companies. If it is a crime for a US company to infiltrate US government in order to use its power, then why isn't it a crime for a US company to infiltrate foreign government to use its coercive power?
And if one government wants to offer a foreign company better deals than that company's home government, then I don't see why that should be illegal. However, if that company is making (nuclear) weapons for a foreign government that might be used aggressively against their home government, then that's a serious case for debate. However, this is what treaties seem to be for...
Re: How much countries spend in R&D
#88I really admire Israel on the intellectual front. This is a nation that starts using an obscure liturgical language (Hebrew) at the turn of the 19th century, and today has Silicon Wadi which is second only to SV, the highest proportion of PhDs in the population, and a couple Nobels, Fields, Turing and Wolf prizes! I wonder if there are some aspects of Jewish culture than can be incorporated the world over. India on t…
But why does this happen in Israel? They don't benefit from the huge capital flows and single market of the US
Zionism