Ep. 110: The Shiny-Object Psychology of American Capitalist “Innovation”

Would y'all consider doing an episode on the corporate strategies/media that are employed to create social legitimation/acceptance of mining for renewable energy despite the commodification of nature and the Global South? I am thinking specifically of resistance in Thacker Pass in Nevada, but also Atacama Desert in Chile with lithium.

I came to this episode late (sorry still catching up). Great topic, given that most pure science research is government funded (private firms tending to only fund research when they can see a chance of a return). But I think you missed an open goal here. You should have defined your terms (e.g. "Innovation is not creativity, its about having an idea and then using it to some improving effect, a two part issue". Once one understands that, you can see that 99.999% of innovations are little things, small improvements that add up (the 50 fold improvement in manufacturing efficiency in the auto industry has resulted from these micro improvements). This illustrates that innovation is not about the odd wealthy great person, like Newton, but about everyone solving problems and doing better, i.e. its very much a distributed, and social phenomenon. With this perspective you could ask is the US culture, with its absent social safety nets, and winner take all values, actually conducive to ordinary folk trying out new ideas.

While I do agree with most of the episode, the Marxist anthropologist Eric Wolf in "Europe and the People without History" talks about cycles of expansion and contraction which correlate with ratio of cost of capital to cost of labor. When that ratio is high, meaning that businesses are spending relatively more on capital (land, equipment, etc - perhaps regulator capture?) than on labor, businesses expand, and vice versa. Or at least that's how I remember it.Assuming there's a relationship between capital expenditure and innovation (a big assumption), then perhaps there is a theoretical explanation for innovation under capitalism. Nevertheless, when I was a child watching the cartoon The Jetsons, I assumed I'd be using jetpacks by the 1990s.

This was awesome, thanks guys. Radio War Nerd also did a really good episode on US govt funded research projects, and the amount of real technological innovation that ultimately came out of state funded research in America.

Matt

Another really fun stat to bring up is Cuba's infant mortality rate, which is slightly lower than that of the United States despite their per capita GDP being substantially lower.

Matt

Especially since China's development, like that of many other East Asian countries that have been economically successful (but to an even greater extent), was HEAVILY state-driven. Also the states that did best during the East Asian currency crisis in the late 90s had the strictest capital controls, which is relevant.

Matt

Source for "most of global income gains are from china?" Sounds like a good own to have at my fingertips.

"Imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It's madness. Nowadays the Controllers won't approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games."

Coupcumber

When it was mentioned that open and widespread access to scientific information contributes to innovation, I thought about Sci-Hub and its founder, Alexandra Elbakyan, and her leftism. I'm very grateful for her and others that create similar projects. It's because of them I've been able to learn so many things by having access to what would otherwise be too expensive. Bless