We have a Luddite President. His brain works on dystonia. On one hand, he is pushing AI, on the other, he is pushing coal as a power source. He works on peace in the Middle East while making war on Democrats.
I completely agree that the country's attitude after President Kennedy challenged us to go to the moon is vastly different. We used to be a “can-do” nation. We had inventors working in their garages all over America. Necessity is the mother of invention. All that has disappeared.
We don’t seem to have the curiosity anymore. Perhaps I exaggerate, but from all appearances, the nation is exhausted, and the lack of will to do the hard and difficult is obvious. I could list 101 things that we would have worked on decades ago that both parties would have worked on. A Congress that solved problems.
When I look at America, I see something that more resembles England after WWII.
Earl, FWIW, my wife and I took the park service tour of Fort Sumter yesterday. There is a small museum in the remains of the fort with various civil war related exhibits. One of the exhibits was a campaign flyer of "Abraham Lincoln for President - Hannibal Hamlin for Vice President" that had a eagle a top a flag that read "Free Speech. Fee Homes. Free Territory."
I get that this is not exactly on point with your observation, but it made me realize nothing has changed in populist politics in at least 160 years: The voters "We want free stuff". The politicians: "I will give you free stuff". But real progress has always been made by individuals. Not by government fiat. Government needs to get out of the way. Populist governments get in the way, instead. Not just Trump. See what the new NYC mayor has to say.
More OT - I was also reminded that a secondary cause of the southern states succession, obviously well beneath the prospect of abolition of slavery (the park service guys would carefully say "enslaved persons" and not "slaves" but I digress) were the tariffs that hurt the southern state ag exports to the benefit the northern state industrialists. Those pesky tariffs have been causing problems for a long time.
A very long time. It has been a while since we had a statesman for President. Someone who was willing to sacrifice their popularity to do the right thing. It takes a rare man or woman to do that.
I guess Trump, in asking Americans to only have a couple of dolls or five pencils, was his way of asking us to sacrifice for his tariffs.
Of course, the sacrifice for what is the question. Let’s see, end US farmers' business, check; collect tariffs money to give back to farmers, check. Yeah, makes sense to me
"The basic idea of this model is that technologies become obsolete as they’re replaced by better technologies. If you’re in academia, this might not be a problem, but if you’re in a company that’s trying to turn a profit, this should worry you."
Why this needless swipe at academia?
You've written posts before that are rightfully aghast at Trump's Sherman's March through American university funding and their ability to get researchers.
Then here, you indulge in the "Look at those useless academics who don't have to worry about obsolescence," framing.
These Nobel prize winners only won for research done in 1992 and updated in 2015 because they had secure academic positions for the intervening 23 years.
It is frustrating to see you decry the general decline of the until recently world beating US university system, but then indulge in the very attitudes that caused so many people to cheer on the destruction of that same system.
I didn't take this as a swipe at academia. The sentence is simply recognizing the difference between private industry and academic research. The former is beholden to the profit motive, which results in the dynamics of creative destruction that Noah discusses. Academia is not behold to profit in the same way (yes, results and grants matter, but it's not directly connected to markets the way private research is). As someone in academic research myself, I don't feel threatened by other researchers working on the same thing as me - rather, I'm happy for the potential for collaboration.
You are obviously more versed on this topic than I am. My knowledge of Isreal military tech transfer is from 20-30 years ago working with a number of Isreal tech companies (I am a patent attorney) many-most of the companies and vcs were founded and run by fighter pilots and other ex military from the 1968 and 1973 wars. One guy i liked had lost an eye in a tank. I have stories, but I haven't been back since 2005.
It is interesting, that Patent Invalidation has become/is a very important tool to eliminate an infrigement claim ! I recall 3M lost their won jury judgements against Avery Denison on retroreflective structures (road and highway signs - helps us see them) - with something from a 1930's book that disclosed it !
Think of it this way. Patent examiners, especially pre-internet, limited their searches mostly to existing patents or a few of their favorite publications. They only get a few hours to decide on novelty and nonobvious. When there is millions of dollars on the line, defendants tend to be much more thorough
I have fyi, 6 waxed seal, signed, 1916 - 1930 patents of the Electric clock Inventor, Henry Ellis Warren. And his handwritten notebooks and even the discovery page of his fundamental patent for self starting synchronous Electric motor. Be built the Telechron clock company.
Patents are for sale. Maybe you know of an market/exchange?
If you are referring to long expired patents being sold as a collector's item, I am not familiar with anything in particular - maybe E-Bay? But if you mean non-expired patents, there are plenty of outfits that "buy" and "sell" and "market" and - most notoriously - offer to sue a target on your behalf in exchange for a big chunk of any recover, aka patent trolls.
Economics for promoting growth. [In fairness, however, anti growth has been a growing element in US fiscal policies since Bush destroyed Clinton's surpluses. Trump just added anti-immigration and supercharged anti-trade policies.]
There is an overlooked (It think); encapsulated empirical set of markets to prove out how competition drives innovation.
War. Especially World War I. And specifically, Combat aircraft design and their engines. Even the tactics.
Briefly,
1. In a 4 year span, aircraft went from a a usable top speed of 70mph to 140mph in 1918
2. Pilots went from using hunting rifles stuck out the cockpit to top wing mounted machine guns. Because they'd shoot the propeller off. Until.
3. They put metal on the edges of the propeller. Until
4. Roland Garros invented the interrupted gear that synchronized the machine gun trigger to the propeller. allowing thru the propeller bullet fire.
5. From rickety fragile and slow monoplanes. with exterior reinforcement wires and struts to strong 2 wing biplanes. back to one wing monoplanes with internal struts and structure
The forcing function, shoot down the enemy pilot, imminent death, resulted in rapid innovation and deployment into the "Market competition" of air combat.
"Innovation is therefore maximized when companies are “neck and neck”. Could be modified and supplemented with, during war, when Competition is maximized they are "deadly after each other's neck" !!
Case in point; the speed with which Ukraine has developed drone technology from a standing start. They've neutralized, more or less, Russian ability to conduct an effective land war against them. Then they've concocted a strategic drone project to degrade Russian oil production and distribution.
A huge chunk of technological innovation in Israel came directly from the military needs from the 1960s on. I think the US tends to keep things confidential (top secret, whatever) far longer than necessary.
I think overall, depending on the status of Cold or Hot conflicts, Secrets are kept as needed. A little list,
DARPA, the Defense R&D funder and ITEK, the CIA-Lockheed Corona spy satellite optics company did these things. Eventually public:
a. DARPANET: the Internet
b. email
c.Optical Lithography - as 1st cousin to spy satellite optics
d. Starfire: A laser “star” that allows adaptive optics to change mirror or mirror segment displacement to neutralize optical distortion of sky objects caused by thermals in the atmosphere.
e. Replaced film. DARPANET created the CCD imaging Semiconductor, for spy satellite cameras. The 1st, Corona, used classic photographic film. Canister was dropped from orbit and parachute was forked by a USAF C130.
Capabilities are still secret like Israel's couple dozen nuclear weapons.
The answer to this question is probably that I should just go read the papers, but in a nutshell, how is Aghion and Howitt different from the completely standard notion that investment in creating new technology has returns that the investor cannot realize? That it has a positive externality, the standard rationale for public funding of research and Pigou subsidies for private investment in technology creation? [It even OUGHT to be a justification for at least allowing expensing of private investments in technology creation, even though really ALL investent is in effect expensable in a progressive consumption tax regime]
There is only one important macroeconomic question today that economists seem utterly incapable of answering: why is the birth rate plummeting all over the world?
All the creative destruction in the world will be useless unless there are people.
Perhaps the Nobel committee should issue ‘grand challenges.’
Well, as a non-economist I am very happy that a narrative history writer has won a Nobel prize for economics, and so should you Noah. Quantitative economists that crank out labyrinthine equations derived from massive data sets may be impressing each other, but they are not moving the word forward, even nudging it. Narrative drives politics, and if Mokyr's insights can reach broadly then all of us who care about innovation and growth and human improvement should be dancing on the rooftops.
I vividly remember learning the schumpeterian growth model in grad school and thinking, really… that’s it, that’s what the best possible macro model looks like? The professor was talking about it alongside Romer in such gushing tones and all I could think was how little it described. It was abstracting so much away that it was unclear to me that anything was left. I’ve never been able to take macro seriously as a field since.
We have a Luddite President. His brain works on dystonia. On one hand, he is pushing AI, on the other, he is pushing coal as a power source. He works on peace in the Middle East while making war on Democrats.
I completely agree that the country's attitude after President Kennedy challenged us to go to the moon is vastly different. We used to be a “can-do” nation. We had inventors working in their garages all over America. Necessity is the mother of invention. All that has disappeared.
We don’t seem to have the curiosity anymore. Perhaps I exaggerate, but from all appearances, the nation is exhausted, and the lack of will to do the hard and difficult is obvious. I could list 101 things that we would have worked on decades ago that both parties would have worked on. A Congress that solved problems.
When I look at America, I see something that more resembles England after WWII.
Earl, FWIW, my wife and I took the park service tour of Fort Sumter yesterday. There is a small museum in the remains of the fort with various civil war related exhibits. One of the exhibits was a campaign flyer of "Abraham Lincoln for President - Hannibal Hamlin for Vice President" that had a eagle a top a flag that read "Free Speech. Fee Homes. Free Territory."
I get that this is not exactly on point with your observation, but it made me realize nothing has changed in populist politics in at least 160 years: The voters "We want free stuff". The politicians: "I will give you free stuff". But real progress has always been made by individuals. Not by government fiat. Government needs to get out of the way. Populist governments get in the way, instead. Not just Trump. See what the new NYC mayor has to say.
More OT - I was also reminded that a secondary cause of the southern states succession, obviously well beneath the prospect of abolition of slavery (the park service guys would carefully say "enslaved persons" and not "slaves" but I digress) were the tariffs that hurt the southern state ag exports to the benefit the northern state industrialists. Those pesky tariffs have been causing problems for a long time.
A very long time. It has been a while since we had a statesman for President. Someone who was willing to sacrifice their popularity to do the right thing. It takes a rare man or woman to do that.
I guess Trump, in asking Americans to only have a couple of dolls or five pencils, was his way of asking us to sacrifice for his tariffs.
Of course, the sacrifice for what is the question. Let’s see, end US farmers' business, check; collect tariffs money to give back to farmers, check. Yeah, makes sense to me
I really like the model that technologies become obsolete as they’re replaced by better technologies.
Materials science and engineering and Chemistry are underrated sciences, and we see technological substitutions happen all the time!
In the 1870s, petroleum from Russian Azerbaijan and Pennsylvania in America largely replaced palm oil from Nigeria as an industrial lubriciant.
https://open.substack.com/pub/yawboadu/p/how-a-corporation-became-a-colony?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=garki
Or when Peruvian Guano or Chilean nitrates got replaced with synthetic fertilizer from German Scientists.
Or now with Chinese synthetic diamonds killing De Beer's diamond cartel.
https://open.substack.com/pub/yawboadu/p/guns-germs-and-cobalt-q-and-a-9-insights?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=garki
Technological substitution is the biggest killer of resource nationalism.
"The basic idea of this model is that technologies become obsolete as they’re replaced by better technologies. If you’re in academia, this might not be a problem, but if you’re in a company that’s trying to turn a profit, this should worry you."
Why this needless swipe at academia?
You've written posts before that are rightfully aghast at Trump's Sherman's March through American university funding and their ability to get researchers.
Then here, you indulge in the "Look at those useless academics who don't have to worry about obsolescence," framing.
These Nobel prize winners only won for research done in 1992 and updated in 2015 because they had secure academic positions for the intervening 23 years.
It is frustrating to see you decry the general decline of the until recently world beating US university system, but then indulge in the very attitudes that caused so many people to cheer on the destruction of that same system.
I didn't take this as a swipe at academia. The sentence is simply recognizing the difference between private industry and academic research. The former is beholden to the profit motive, which results in the dynamics of creative destruction that Noah discusses. Academia is not behold to profit in the same way (yes, results and grants matter, but it's not directly connected to markets the way private research is). As someone in academic research myself, I don't feel threatened by other researchers working on the same thing as me - rather, I'm happy for the potential for collaboration.
You are obviously more versed on this topic than I am. My knowledge of Isreal military tech transfer is from 20-30 years ago working with a number of Isreal tech companies (I am a patent attorney) many-most of the companies and vcs were founded and run by fighter pilots and other ex military from the 1968 and 1973 wars. One guy i liked had lost an eye in a tank. I have stories, but I haven't been back since 2005.
Interesting !
I like Patent attorneys and patents !
It is interesting, that Patent Invalidation has become/is a very important tool to eliminate an infrigement claim ! I recall 3M lost their won jury judgements against Avery Denison on retroreflective structures (road and highway signs - helps us see them) - with something from a 1930's book that disclosed it !
If memory serves me ...
Think of it this way. Patent examiners, especially pre-internet, limited their searches mostly to existing patents or a few of their favorite publications. They only get a few hours to decide on novelty and nonobvious. When there is millions of dollars on the line, defendants tend to be much more thorough
Exactly!! And now Obciousness and AI??
I have fyi, 6 waxed seal, signed, 1916 - 1930 patents of the Electric clock Inventor, Henry Ellis Warren. And his handwritten notebooks and even the discovery page of his fundamental patent for self starting synchronous Electric motor. Be built the Telechron clock company.
Patents are for sale. Maybe you know of an market/exchange?
If you are referring to long expired patents being sold as a collector's item, I am not familiar with anything in particular - maybe E-Bay? But if you mean non-expired patents, there are plenty of outfits that "buy" and "sell" and "market" and - most notoriously - offer to sue a target on your behalf in exchange for a big chunk of any recover, aka patent trolls.
long expired..ie collector items.
cheers
Two Nobels that are direct affronts to Trump!
The Peace prize for opposing autocrats and
Economics for promoting growth. [In fairness, however, anti growth has been a growing element in US fiscal policies since Bush destroyed Clinton's surpluses. Trump just added anti-immigration and supercharged anti-trade policies.]
There is an overlooked (It think); encapsulated empirical set of markets to prove out how competition drives innovation.
War. Especially World War I. And specifically, Combat aircraft design and their engines. Even the tactics.
Briefly,
1. In a 4 year span, aircraft went from a a usable top speed of 70mph to 140mph in 1918
2. Pilots went from using hunting rifles stuck out the cockpit to top wing mounted machine guns. Because they'd shoot the propeller off. Until.
3. They put metal on the edges of the propeller. Until
4. Roland Garros invented the interrupted gear that synchronized the machine gun trigger to the propeller. allowing thru the propeller bullet fire.
5. From rickety fragile and slow monoplanes. with exterior reinforcement wires and struts to strong 2 wing biplanes. back to one wing monoplanes with internal struts and structure
The forcing function, shoot down the enemy pilot, imminent death, resulted in rapid innovation and deployment into the "Market competition" of air combat.
"Innovation is therefore maximized when companies are “neck and neck”. Could be modified and supplemented with, during war, when Competition is maximized they are "deadly after each other's neck" !!
Case in point; the speed with which Ukraine has developed drone technology from a standing start. They've neutralized, more or less, Russian ability to conduct an effective land war against them. Then they've concocted a strategic drone project to degrade Russian oil production and distribution.
A huge chunk of technological innovation in Israel came directly from the military needs from the 1960s on. I think the US tends to keep things confidential (top secret, whatever) far longer than necessary.
I think overall, depending on the status of Cold or Hot conflicts, Secrets are kept as needed. A little list,
DARPA, the Defense R&D funder and ITEK, the CIA-Lockheed Corona spy satellite optics company did these things. Eventually public:
a. DARPANET: the Internet
b. email
c.Optical Lithography - as 1st cousin to spy satellite optics
d. Starfire: A laser “star” that allows adaptive optics to change mirror or mirror segment displacement to neutralize optical distortion of sky objects caused by thermals in the atmosphere.
e. Replaced film. DARPANET created the CCD imaging Semiconductor, for spy satellite cameras. The 1st, Corona, used classic photographic film. Canister was dropped from orbit and parachute was forked by a USAF C130.
Capabilities are still secret like Israel's couple dozen nuclear weapons.
I responded above. It would not let me post response, just a new comment)
The answer to this question is probably that I should just go read the papers, but in a nutshell, how is Aghion and Howitt different from the completely standard notion that investment in creating new technology has returns that the investor cannot realize? That it has a positive externality, the standard rationale for public funding of research and Pigou subsidies for private investment in technology creation? [It even OUGHT to be a justification for at least allowing expensing of private investments in technology creation, even though really ALL investent is in effect expensable in a progressive consumption tax regime]
There is only one important macroeconomic question today that economists seem utterly incapable of answering: why is the birth rate plummeting all over the world?
All the creative destruction in the world will be useless unless there are people.
Perhaps the Nobel committee should issue ‘grand challenges.’
Good overview, thanks!
Well, as a non-economist I am very happy that a narrative history writer has won a Nobel prize for economics, and so should you Noah. Quantitative economists that crank out labyrinthine equations derived from massive data sets may be impressing each other, but they are not moving the word forward, even nudging it. Narrative drives politics, and if Mokyr's insights can reach broadly then all of us who care about innovation and growth and human improvement should be dancing on the rooftops.
I vividly remember learning the schumpeterian growth model in grad school and thinking, really… that’s it, that’s what the best possible macro model looks like? The professor was talking about it alongside Romer in such gushing tones and all I could think was how little it described. It was abstracting so much away that it was unclear to me that anything was left. I’ve never been able to take macro seriously as a field since.
Mokyr's "culture" would be the Pigou subsidy that leads to more investment technology creation that is profitable at a firm/individual level.