PODCAST: "Hexapodia" is þe Key Insight! XLIV: R&D & Industrial Resarch Labs

Pre-Note:Here in the U.S., at the leading edge of the world economy, measured producivity growth fell off a cliff in the late 1960s, recovreed somewhat in the 1980s, resumed what had been its “normal” pre-1970 pace in the 1990s with the dot-com boom—and then fell off a cliff again in the mid-2000s.Did the neoliberal swing toward “short-termism”, viewing corporations as cash-flow engines and nothing else—plus the great reduction in public R&D and infrastructure spending—play a role in this? Perhaps. Maybe even probably.Could and should we rebuild the corporate industrial research labs that atrophied, at least somewhat, during the neoliberal era? Perhaps. Maybe even probably.Key Insights:* Sometimes the best things in history come from accidents and stupidity.* Collective stupidity enabling individual intelligence enables us to do unexpected things—sometimes very good things (and sometimes very bad things).* Because every institution has its own particular biases and limitations (as well as strengths), you need a diversity of institutions if you are going to achieve big goals.* The market ain't going to provide enough and the right kind of R&D—no single institution or set of institutions will.* The best we can do is to very amply fund as many kinds of R&D institutions as possible.* Hexapodia!References:* Ashish Arora & al.: The Changing Structure of American Innovation: Some Cautionary Remarks for Economic Growth…* John Gertner: The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation…* Iulia Georgescu: Bringing back the golden days of Bell Labs…* Ilan Gur: ‘Interested in bringing back Bell Labs? Some thoughts on why it's not possible, and what we should do instead…* Lawrence Lessig: Code 2.0…* Noah Smith: The dream of bringing back Bell Labs: Was America's most famous corporate lab a product of its time, or something that can be reproduced?…+, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0/mode/1up> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe