HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

⬐ taurath

Its quite possible we really underestimate the level to which state enterprise plays a role in innovation. Its sort of like we think "oh in the 80s sure but not anymore!". Ditto pharmaceutical "technology" with really heavy basic research funded by universities.

I have no idea where the line is though, and its hard to say what might've happened in a better "market".

⬐ tored

The big difference to the 80s compared to today, at least in the West, is the the Cold War.

Cold War was a huge economic engine for state subsided private companies that not only produced defense material but also that innovation spread into commercial products, cars, electronics, telecommunication etc.

Today that process within some areas (not tanks) almost the reverse, Defense departments now buy off the shelves components instead of custom made.

With that said I think that Chomsky oversimplifies when calling the todays IT sector for parasitic, you have that perspective when you think the state should govern the economy & innovation from a state perspective. I think a better and more pragmatic view is is should be a symbiosis between two different interest.

⬐ bwship

We just left the 20 year "Forever War", not much difference in terms of the ability for the state to steal tax payer dollars and give it to private companies. History repeating.

⬐ dundarious

Chomsky is an anarchist and, at least long term, does not want a large “nanny” state that does everything. However, he may accept increased public/accountable/democratic power as a stepping stone away from large private/unaccountable/tyrannical power.

⬐ mempko

Look at the miracle of the covid mRNA vaccines. Moderna was state sponsored years ago to develop the tech.

⬐ d--b

The good thing with state innovation is that it doesn’t necessarily end up with the question: “and how do we make money from this?”, which too frequently is answered by “oh we’ll just sell people’s data”.

⬐ surajs

data is never personal, data by definition is public, not to sound too anarcho-capitalist about this but "people's data"a ready starts to sound like there's a notion of collective ownership involved as opposed to "personal" data or information which wouldn't be there for the "stealing" or "selling" in the first place had the technology it rides on didn't exist and so on and so forth.

⬐ antifa

>data is never personal, data by definition is public

This is obviously not true.

⬐ kube-system

I’m not sure how it’s possible to come to that conclusion unless you deny the existence of any sort of right or moral obligation to privacy.

⬐ sebmellen

Or without ignoring the concepts of self-sovereignty and the right to ownership. The horseshoe theory strikes again.

⬐ elihu

This is a good reminder, I think, of the benefits of government spending on basic research. The way I look at is that tech companies are mostly bad at research and innovation, because it's expensive and it's often hard to derive revenue from some entirely novel new technology, and there's a big risk of someone coming along and doing it better. (Innovators dilemma and all that.) Tech companies are mostly pretty good at productizing technology, though. At least, they're about as good at it as anyone else. (There are a few well-run non-profit-driven open source projects that make very good products too.)

Good Universities are better at actual innovation and inventing novel technologies, but they usually have little incentive to productize things. Or to put it in different terms, the product is the journal or conference proceeding article, because that's what satisfies the people who write grants.

The grants come mostly from government, which isn't good at innovation or productization, but they know how to pay other people to do those things for them. It's a weird system: government taxes employees and (to a lesser degree) businesses, and then uses that money to pay University researchers to invent things that are eventually used in the private sector as the foundation of some new commercial product.

Is there a more efficient way to do this? Probably. We could have more government funding to Universities directly for productization of their research, or give out a lot of grants to individual people who are just maintaining open source projects or making/maintaining something similar that many people benefit from but the value would be lost if one were to try to make money off of it. We could also give taxpayers some say in how the basic research portion of their taxes is spent.

⬐ yakata

> or give out a lot of grants to individual people who are just maintaining open source projects or making/maintaining something similar that many people benefit from but the value would be lost if one were to try to make money off of it.

There is definitely a lot of missed opportunity in not supporting some open source projects that provide general public benefit.

Some of those products would compete with parts of the services Google and co offer.

That's probably the "problem".

⬐ tablespoon

> ...private capital does not want markets. They want markets for other people but not for themselves. For themselves they want a nanny state, a powerful nanny state, that will support them.

⬐ Seattle3503

This touches on the "Commoditize Your Complement" phenomenon.

> A classic pattern in technology economics, identified by Joel Spolsky, is layers of the stack attempting to become monopolies while turning other layers into perfectly-competitive markets which are commoditized, in order to harvest most of the consumer surplus.

regulatory capture is one way to achieve this goal in your sector.

⬐ ronenlh

Ayn Rand dramatized this in Atlas Shrugged. They also want regulations which hinder competition.

⬐ actually_a_dog

That's because making money in a market environment is hard. "Free market" theory predicts that there is no long term economic profit to be made in the face of a truly free market, in which there is perfect competition among the participants. That means that all profit in the so called "free market" comes from exploiting the conditions which make it not a free market, most prominently, information asymmetries.

⬐ panick21

This is not actually what "Free market" theory predicts beyond a very simplistic Economics 101 understanding of it.

⬐ vixen99

As lucidly explained by Peter Thiel in Zero to One.

⬐ unraveller

"There are two types of businesses; ones that fail and monopolies"

⬐ riccardomc

This very concept is well explored by Mariana Mazzucato's Entrepreneurial State[1]:

> the United States' economic success is a result of public and state funded investments in innovation and technology, rather than a result of the small state, free market doctrine that often receives credit for the country's strong economy.

I really liked this Freakonomics episode[2] if you're more the podcast kind of person.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entrepreneurial_State

[2]https://freakonomics.com/podcast/mariana-mazzucato/

⬐ BingoAhoy

Make's me wonder how in many circle's the narrative can take hold of peoples mind so effectively that it's all free market accredited (and the opposite in other circles). Why (rhetorical question) is it that either capitalism or socialism are optimal (depending on which information fountain one drinks from) is the dominate narrative rather than a more healthy view that tries to optimize a hybrid of these two or a more complex alternative formulation.

⬐ paxys

I have always found the staunch libertarianism among silicon valley entrepreneurs and tech workers incredibly ironic. If you run in these circles it's hard to go a single day without coming across a discussion about how the government needs to get out of the way and let us innovate (on the latest cookie cutter freemium game or crypto app or cha room or whatever). Meanwhile all the foundational technology we have built our businesses and careers on was born out of decades worth of public sector spending.

⬐ cblconfederate

> staunch libertarianism among silicon valley entrepreneurs

Pardon me, where do you see that? All i see in SV is a racket of state-protected monopolies. Good luck protecting their IP or their hard cash in a truly open market.

⬐ ur-whale

There's a difference between on one hand the govt providing some seed money and more generally creating a regulatory environment that encourages innovation and on the other hand the govt trying to regulate what tech. does.

You're conflating two different things, one of which is good and the other bad.

⬐ JohnWhigham

And given how much public sentiment about the government's role has shifted since the end of the Cold War, I don't think we're going to see anything as life-changing as the Internet again in our lifetimes. Well, we may, but it will be created by private companies, and locked down from the very start.

⬐ anonymouswacker

If big tech corporations actually had to pay for the public sector innovations via taxes, the US Gov would probably not have trillions of USD in debt. Also, a lot less innovation. Neoliberalism is an extremely inefficient & inequitable system.

⬐ systemvoltage

There are things that Gov spending can help with foundational technologies - multi-decade research that would otherwise VCs impatient and create a complete breakdown of private enterprise. There are areas of engineering where Gov involvement creates asymmetry for big companies and screw the small guy - in turn creating inefficient private enterprise, thus fostering giant monopolies or quasi-monopolies. There is nuance which is missing in the discussion on HN perhaps due to political team sport.

⬐ soheil

Sure the internet came out of darpa in the early 70s, but to attribute the entire success of the internet to its origin takes, in his words, "real discipline."

⬐ howaboutnope

Yeah, Microsoft wanting to replace the Internet with MSN, or AOL, Facebook, Twitter and app stores are just so much more impressive. Every time it's the corporate vision that made mediocre boring bureaucrat things or hippie open source toys truly awesome.

Also, does anyone remember how boring and useless the web was before mobile devices opened the flood gates? We didn't even have proper mobs then, and walls of text wherever you turned.

⬐ qmmmur

I'm finding it hard to decipher if this comment is satire.

⬐ warner_of_doom

He is not saying that entrepreneurs and workers in the private sector are not hard-working and owe all their success to the state alone.

He is pointing out that things like GPS, the Internet, industrialized-agriculture, display-tech, aviation, etc. are shown as successes of capitalism in the west when their origins lie heavily in the state sector.

It would therefore be hypocritical for us to tell some third world / developing country to adopt our ways of "free trade" and "free market capitalism" when we don't really practice it ourselves and neither does any other "successful" country.

The developed far-east is a glaring example of the same.

⬐ galaxyLogic

Yes Internet is a very good example. It was not originally developed by private companies but later yes. So it looks like state has a big role in developing innovations which don't seem to bring immediate profit to any one company. Even the whole patent-system is something that only governments can provide. And patents drive innovation I think

⬐ soheil

For every example you can find where state created something there are countless examples where the private sector created something else if not better, eg. cars, electric grid, gas/oil drilling, penicillin and pharmaceutical industry. And no China is not a good example of a state run country, for all practical purposes it's a capitalistic country except when it comes to societal issues. Soviet Union is what I think you had in mind but I guess that example stopped being so "glaring" when communism brought its demise.

⬐ warner_of_doom

Did you even read the first line I typed? He is not saying that the private enterprise does nothing. Neither am I. Private enterprise can and does drive innovation, cost-reduction, commercialization, etc.

And, China does not count as "developed far east". Though, it is telling that a nation-state without what we consider "democracy" managed to reach $10k/capita while many other "democratic"/"free market" states have failed to do the same.

Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore do count as "developed far east". They are replete with examples of globally-leading industries promoted by state subsidies and direction.

And, why are we even discussing communism here? That's your worthless strawman argument technique. His point and my point is about the kick-away-the-ladder style "free trade" and "free market capitalism" we push on developing countries.

Not everything is about communism. Knew I was discussing with a numbnuts as soon as I read that. Continue to pontificate by yourself here. :-D

⬐ Iamadog19782364

We never really ask developing countries... If they want to be developed, do we?

⬐ strangeattractr

Investment led growth miracles that occurred in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China have almost nothing to do with innovation. These nations all suffered from excess labour and insufficient capital.

They relied on protecting domestic industry through tariffs and suppressing wages relative to productivity to sell into export markets, driving up the savings rate to facilitate further investment. They do this either through political repression of labour unions (China) or through strategic undervaluation of the currency.

South Korea and Taiwan were military dictatorships when they began this process. It's completely unremarkable that a nation that doesn't have democracy achieved middle income status, because the purpose of democracy isn't achieving economic development. Although the first nation to implement this style of economic management was a democracy, the US did so in the late 1700s after Hamilton recommended it.

The problem with this growth model is that it relies on someone somewhere to absorb the production. If not for the free market ideologues in the export markets advocating for lowering trade barriers, these growth miracles probably wouldn't have happened to the same degree. The US isn't advocating free trade out of misguided benevolence, equal access to markets is what it considers 'fair'.

⬐ taffer

I thought that import substitution had long been discarded as an explanation for economic growth in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. These economies were much more open than other countries at the time. A good counterexample would be Argentina, which tried import substitution without opening up to trade - and failed miserably.

⬐ strangeattractr

Honestly, Argentina has tried almost every style of economic management and failed.

As I said they were investment led growth miracles, but I think that people who dismiss the importance of exports to these countries are extremely misguided. Exploiting excess labour for labour intensive industries e.g. garment manufacture in export markets they gained much needed income to import raw materials needed for heavy industry. By suppressing wages and thus consumption, they made savings available to invest into capital intensive industry which then came to dominate their exports.

Once they had developed sufficiently the investment led growth becomes self-sustaining. If your exports are growing at 20% p.a. as Japan's were in the 60s and 70s, investment in infrastructure becomes justified particularly when the country is underinvested after a war. But the shift to consumption led growth is difficult to achieve, it's why you see debt to GDP climb after the period of initial growth as malinvestment becomes common. Consumption's share of GDP in South Korea is still extremely low, Japan's only began to climb after complete collapse in 1990, China's is the lowest of all at 55%.

⬐ Lio

The most successful application of the internet has been the world wide web.

It just happens that that was developed at CERN another inter-government funded research institution.

There’s a pattern here.

⬐ kube-system

A significant part of the internet’s progress since the 70s is also due to state funding. There are many large companies and universities committing code to your favorite open source projects after being funded by government dollars. There are new technologies being invented because of government grants.

⬐ airocker

The counter argument to the "subsidize" argument is that industry pays the taxes that lets government gives subsidies.

⬐ jarpschop

Sure, but there you have an argument against economic libertarianism (no taxes) in any case.

⬐ twirlock

Nothing exposes the intelligentsia's profound and pervasive pseudo-intellectualism quite like its dismissal of Noam Chomsky.

⬐ marsven_422

Communism promoter....

⬐ bertttles

"Startup culture is okay. People like their apps and so on" ahahah. What a burn!

⬐ nkmnz

If governments are such good bodies of innovation, then why are countries with relatively more powerful governmental sectors less innovative? Why do deregulation and privatization almost always lead to more innovation? Not saying there are no downsides to weak governments, but Chomsky’s “cum hoc, ergo propter hoc” is not backed by any kind of thorough investigations of things that move - if the “cum” changes it’s nature over time from state-like to private entities, success grows. As always, interdependent systems are much more complicated - especially if you knew how little government actually did for Sicilian valley and MIT except for putting shit loads of money on the table. Incentives, ideas, Innovations - none of them came from parliaments, ministries or other governmental bodies, if they were not heavily emulating private structures.

⬐ cycomanic

If you look at who innovates in the "hardware" space, it's often not US companies. I mean worldwide manufacturing is build around machines build and designed in Germany for example. I think what SC is particularly good at is growing very quickly to immense scale, because there is so much money floating around. That is also the reason why they put this into software, because the risks and timescales are much shorter. In hardware you likely have to put in years of R&D before you might see a RoI. In software that goes much quicker and because evaluation is based on "reach" you don't really need to make a profit, you just need to develop enough reach that someone else will pay you back your investment. Often much of the startup scene especially in software seems like a giant ponzi scheme, i.e. you never actually need to make a profitable business, it's always just about selling to the next investor at a higher price (see Uber for example).

⬐ nkmnz

Germany is a relatively free country, especially if you compare the last 50 years of economic policy to it’s neighbors such as France or the GDR. While the latter example is self evident, the former has a long history of governmental mandated innovation as well - did not ensure a lot of competitiveness...

⬐ cycomanic

If you think France is not a free country and does not have a lot of innovation, you need to do some serious reading. France is the 3rd largest economy in Europe, has essentially the same GDP per capita as Canada (slightly below Germany).

⬐ nkmnz

The issue seems to be in the term “relatively”. I never said France was an unfree or poor country. I just said that Frances policies _in the past_ were heavily in favor of huge national corporations. Even though Germany had to adopt the GDR, it’s GDP per capita is >18% higher than Frances.

Edit: sorry, the ussr commented was someone else.

⬐ actually_a_dog

You realize you're using the descendant of a computer network created by the US government so that military command and control could survive a nuclear attack, right? I could give lots more examples of things you use every day that were developed or funded by the US government, if you like.

⬐ nkmnz

You realize that you use speech, which was invented before there where governments?

You see, your argument is of very little use - while it’s still not shown that funding wasn’t the most important task. AFAIK the processes by which grants have been provided for military research have been highly competitive, i.e. market-based.

⬐ tored

That is all true, but the government is incapable of commercialization, so there isn't an alternative reality where we would have consumer wide spread state network if it wasn't privatized. And I think it is there Chomsky is wrong when calling it parasitic, when it is actually a symbiosis.

⬐ actually_a_dog

The government is only incapable of commercialization because we put artificial limits on it doing so. While we're spinning up hypotheticals, isn't there an alternative reality where we have an even better, free to access (because it's funded by everyone's taxes), ubiquitous internet? Wouldn't that be better than the status quo?

⬐ AnimalMuppet

> While we're spinning up hypotheticals, isn't there an alternative reality where we have an even better, free to access (because it's funded by everyone's taxes), ubiquitous internet?

France's Minitel?

> Wouldn't that be better than the status quo?

It wasn't.

⬐ tored

What is status quo? Why is it bad? Why would it be free just because it is funded by taxes?

It is true that it does exist some limitations on what kind of commercial interest the government can execute. Some by law (in Sweden for what a Kommun (city) can do, can't own property abroad), and some by agreement with other states (e.g. EU).

Some of these limitations are necessary because there is a huge risk that politicians start gambling with tax payer money on high risk enterprises, we have many examples of that is Sweden, especially on the Kommun (city) level.

That is usually why subsidies are preferred, because you transfer a large part of the risk to the private sector, the drawback is of course the the government doesn't share the earnings of that private company if successful, however because the government has the right to tax it does but indirectly.

In Sweden the government subsidies broadband expansion but it is private companies that does the actual digging and then other private companies runs the broadband connection. The private consumer still needs to pay some sum to connect to the house, but heavily subsidized, that way you avoid unnecessary connections.

There does exist a risk that state subsidies can create corruption, tax payers buys unwanted things from private companies, that is why it is important with a structured and transparent process regarding subsidies.

However there is limitation on subsidies by agreement, with the membership in EU Sweden can no loger subsidy sectors to the same extent it could do previously and that is bad.

I don't think Sweden's large broadband expansion would be possible if it was state run only. It would be like the old Televerket (the previously state run telecommunication company), slow, sleepy and not interested in solving problems for the consumer. But with the government injecting capital to the private sector the broadband expansion is mostly succesful.

⬐ actually_a_dog

Before I answer what is the status quo, I'll just ask: why wouldn't internet access be free to access if it's taxpayer funded? Remember, we were constructing hypotheticals here, and there's no reason the government needs to make a profit on something like this, any more than it makes a profit on roads and bridges [0].

Now, on to the status quo. In what follows, I'm going to consider broadband only. Dialup exists, but isn't particularly interesting because, well... it sucks.

Among the problems the US has with broadband is that only 25 million out of around 330 million of us actually access the internet at broadband (25Mbps+) speeds [1]. The reasons for this are up for debate, but the most logical explanations would seem to be lack of access, lack of affordability, or a combination of both.

Another problem we have is a lack of competition among broadband providers. According to [2], 83 million Americans only have a single broadband internet provider available to them. If that's, say, Comcast, a company not well known for its stellar customer service, to put it mildly [3], then your choice amounts to either deal with the devil and take whatever they offer you, or just don't have broadband.

So, how did we get here? I'm not one to just reflexively say "blame the gubmint," but, in this case, it's true. There was competition in the cable industry in the mid 1990's, until the Telecommunications Act of 1996, an astoundingly complex piece of legislation, scrambled the regulatory environment that was present, ultimately allowing all the regional cable providers that existed before then to consolidate and form the giants we have today: AT&T, Comcast, Charter, and the rest.

Well, great! There are lots of cable companies, so that means there's lots of competition, right? Wrong. These companies co-evolved together and created a situation where each one has lots of local monopolies [4], leading to the situation today, where, paradoxically, there are quite a few cable companies, but consumers frequently only have one to choose from.

And, so, we reach the end of our journey, in which the country that literally invented the internet has extremely slow and expensive broadband internet [5].

In a broader sense, one may ask "how did we get into such a situation?" And, if I may speculate a bit, I believe it's because we have not regarded broadband internet access as a utility.

Before I get into that, I want to quickly mention that since starting a broadband ISP involves huge capital costs in the form of last mile infrastructure [6] (e.g. if Comcast and AT&T want to compete in a certain area, both need to lay down their own cable infrastructure to do so, because neither one wants to share), and significant economies of scale. This leads to them being what's called "natural monopolies." And, surprise, surprise, this is exactly what I mentioned happened!

Now, monopolies can tend to be bad for consumers, but, in the case of natural monopolies, competition is either impractically expensive or fairly impossible. For instance, you don't want more than 1 municipal water company, because then you need to have twice as much water pipe and twice as much purification and pumping infrastructure, and that's just plain wasteful. For something like cable/telecom, it's more that duplicating that last mile is just silly, and would generally be ridiculously expensive, so, the companies just don't do it.

So, you're left with this monopoly sitting here and your consumer over there in need of some kind of protection from it, lest otherwise the water company raise the price of water to $1000/l or something, because it's decided that would be the most profitable thing to do.

There are really only a couple things you can do here:

* Regulate the monopoly by, for instance, limiting price increases and mandating a certain quality of service, minimum coverage areas, that they sell access to their networks for a reasonable cost, or whatever.

* Or, take it over and make it a municipal utility, thus eliminating the profit motive to raise prices to ridiculous levels.

But, we've done none of these things. So, I'm stuck with Comcast, and life sucks. THE END.

Now, tell me, do you think we might be able to improve upon this system just a little bit, or no? ;-)

---

[0]: Yes, toll roads and bridges exist, but those are generally either run by private companies, or the tolls go toward paying off bond issues taken out to fund them, not to make a profit.

[1]: https://www.allconnect.com/blog/americas-broadband-divide-re...

[2]: https://ilsr.org/report-most-americans-have-no-real-choice-i...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Comcast#Low_custo...

[4]: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/899472976

[5]: https://www.broadbandsearch.net/blog/internet-costs-compared...

[6]: I'm kinda ignoring satellite and cellular for now, so bear with me.

[7]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/natural_monopoly.asp

⬐ taffer

> why wouldn't internet access be free to access if it's taxpayer funded?

For the same reason that electricity isn't free: it's a scarce resource that needs to be allocated in a sensible way. And yes, you are of course right that Internet access is a natural monopoly, but if you look at which countries are really good in this area (like Sweden, Finland or South Korea), it is never a state monopoly, but well-regulated private companies.

⬐ actually_a_dog

Free at the point of use. Funded by taxes. You left that part out. There's no reason that instead of paying $80/month to Comcast that the municipal government can't tax me, say, $600/year for broadband.

⬐ taffer

I don't understand what point you are trying to make. Why should the municipality be better at providing Internet access than any other company?

⬐ actually_a_dog

Why should they be any worse? If it's a municipal utility, you eliminate a profit motive, which naturally helps control prices and promote access.

⬐ taffer

Ideally, there is some competition between multiple providers to drive innovation and efficiency, and that's what regulators are trying to achieve. So you get the best of both worlds.

⬐ actually_a_dog

You did notice the bit about ISPs being a natural monopoly, though? What material difference is there between a privately owned, but well regulated monopoly, and a government owned enterprise, except the lack of profit motive on the part of the latter?

⬐ taffer

The goal of regulation here is to create competition between multiple providers. Remember that only the last mile to your home is a natural monopoly which can be awarded through public tenders. Everything else, such as the backbone and actual sales to the end customer, is not a natural monopoly, and monopolizing these areas would actually be detrimental to the customer.

⬐ zoolily

Look at Chatanooga, TN's munipcal broadband for an example of how a government can be better. As for why, broadband is typically a monopoly or duopoly (phone + cable), which private companies take advantage of by raising prices and spending less money upgrading their networks. Since the municipality isn't limited by shareholders to focus purely on profit, it can invest in infrastructure that's not profitable, such as by providing Internet access to low population areas.

⬐ diordiderot

> why do deregulation and privatization always lead to more innovation

This is called shiny object capitalism. Look at who produces novel therapies and drugs.

The success of the 21st was built on piles and piles of cold war government handouts

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9jaXRhdGlvbnNuZWV...

⬐ turbinerneiter

This.

Innivation is fueled by money. Innovation is risky. Private investors need a return on their investment. Public doesn't need a direct financial return.

Hence innovation thrives wherever there is money with little strings attached. For smaller sums, private investors can do that (think about an accelerator that gives 1 million to 10 startups). For bigger sums, you need a space race against a foreign power funded by the gov.

⬐ tehjoker

I would posit that Chomsky has performed far more research on this question than you have. Your assertions require citations, but even if true, they ignore the role of wealth and power in the world that allows highly advanced rich countries to dominate science and technology. Furthermore, the obvious counterexample of the USSR showed that state finance of science allowed it to compete toe to toe with the US for quite some time.

⬐ nkmnz

Maybe the burden of proof is on you/Chomsky to show that governmental bodies - parliaments, ministries and alike - did provide more than just money.

⬐ tehjoker

In fairness, I have difficulty finding a book where he discusses this but he has a good interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av96iIRa0f8

⬐ baybal2

Who is this Naom Chomski? I seem to see him everywhere these days.

⬐ tehjoker

Chomsky is a very famous leftist (an anarcho-syndicalist) that is a former MIT Institute Professor that did foundational linguistics research and also made his bones protesting the Vietnam war. He writes voluminously on topics like the manufacturing of consent for war in the media, who has power, inequality, the role of science, the role of the state and market in science, and capitalism. In recent years, he has made a big point to talk about nuclear war, climate change, and the decline of democracy -- crises that threaten the world. During the 2020 election, he said to vote blue no matter who.

On the left, Norman Finkelstein, a former protegee, noted that Chomsky became known for an approach to politics and history that was very empirical at a time when many communists were very dogmatic and missed certain predictions about Maoist China. In my opinion however, Chomsky is also dogmatically anti-Marxist-Leninist to the point of caricature. I suspect that is how he retains his position in high society.

⬐ daptaq

One should also note that he is usually better known for being a Linguist than a "Leftist" (also AFAIK he abandoned the Anarchist label a while ago). Any computer scientist has encountered his work if he has ever engaged with the "Chomsky Hierarchy".

⬐ waingake

He certainly hasn't abandoned the anarchist label, and is still very active in leftist circles, frequently giving interviews in these areas.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12618.Chomsky_On_Anarchi...

⬐ daptaq

Correct me if I am mistaken, but I heard that he used to call himself some sort of an Anarchist up until his debate with Foucault.

⬐ ggm

Your last sentence is I think true. Your first sentence is I think demonstrably false, for all contexts except linguists and computer scientists.

He's best known as a public commentator and political activist. As a public contrarian to the current world system. He's not best known for Chomsky grammar classes on tv

⬐ tehjoker

Check out the books he's written: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/2476.Noam_Chomsky

⬐ gwicks56

I covered quiet a bit of his work in a Language and Computation elective. I previously only knew him from his political writings. His Linguistics work left me with a deep respect for his intelligence, as well as a deep pessimism that computers would really understand language any time soon (this was 15 years ago).

⬐ MihikaBasu

Now Noam Chomsky has an opinion on the #startup culture. Must be an interesting gig!

⬐ poorjohnmacafee

While of course there are startups that engineer novel and industrially relevant products, I have to agree that "startup culture" is indeed largely synonymous with "apps" (web, mobile, b2b, saas, marketplace etc.) and that this is, as he calls it, "narrow entrepreneurism".

"Narrow" given there is a vast global economy in need of hard engineering innovations - agriculture, mining, construction, energy, chemicals, biotech, manufacturing, machinery, vehicles, aerospace, science/discovery, environment/planet, telecomm, computer hardware, robotics. On the other hand apps, marketplaces, SaaS, AI, blockchain, RPA, most of the world doesn't really care about it and perhaps they shouldn't...

⬐ danjac

"Narrow entrepreneurism" could also be mom-and-pop stores that provide a need to a local community. A lot of apps fall into this category: the might be perfect for a small number of people, whether concentrated locally in one city or country or dispersed across the globe. As with a mom-and-pop store, such apps might generate a comfortable income for a small team working full time, but won't make you a billionaire or even a multi-millionaire. And you don't need to care about changing the world, just focus on providing a good service that makes a small number of people happy.

Unfortunately winner-takes-all seems to be the dominant Internet business model, whether that's due to nefarious monopolistic actions on the part of the big players or just the natural course given the underlying technology and economics.

⬐ Areading314

I think focusing on apps alone misses the point. Startups like Uber or Peloton or Affirm are not just apps they all solve business problems like logistics, hardware, or access to financing. Yes they use software, but doesn't everybody?

⬐ hef19898

Uber is a glorified ride haling app, Taxi providers has similar stuff before that. Without exploiting their drives to the extent Uber does. Logistics is a well understood problem, the only company I could think of that made a impact in logistics is Flexport. And they didn't solve any real problem, they managed to build the latest global freight forwarder. Very impressive, but at the core this is nothing revolutionary.

⬐ dnh44

We tried using Flexport a couple years ago and my impression was that they were a mediocre freight forwarder with a nice web app. They were also considerably more expensive. I have no idea how they are now; maybe we'll try again in a year or two.

⬐ yakata

perfect examples of parasitic products that have no real reason to exist.

⬐ Supermancho

This is the same reductionist nonsense Chomsky engages in.

What "real reason" is there for anything to "exist" and what do those terms mean? There's no real reason for corn in a can to exist, you have corn on the cob!

It's a subsidy whenever any product was developed based on parts of a project the people in a state created, because the state was paying them. Well, then I guess I exist because of state subsidies. The state reimburses and sets standards for medical procedures and I had open heart surgery at 2. Hell, is Steve Jobs' Apple the result of state subsidy because he formed a company that's state sponsored, when he should have struck out on his own to be a fingerpaint artist from his own materials and talent?

These arguments feel like ridiculously cherry picked characterizations that have no weight and contribute nothing.

⬐ caballeto

Uber serves millions of customers around the world by providing lower prices and better service, something that is not matched by taxi cabs or any similar services. Calling businesses that create so much value parasitic is a way of comparison.

Anecdotally, I have taken a trip from London to Heathrow airport 2 times, one time with a taxi cab and the other time with Uber. Uber cost two times less, and the service was on the same level or better.

⬐ typon

Selling a dollar for 90 cents isn't revolutionary. Anyone can serve millions of customers when you operate out of the bounds of what's normally required for a business.

⬐ axelroze

The main selling point of Uber/Lyft are the network effects (same app working everywhere) and the ability to judge drivers by their rating. Price IMO is not that important because people who are price-conscious drive their own vehicles. Cab companies are too fragmented to get something like such a system running.

This ironically shows how size matters a lot. Be it state investment or huge VC, more cash, more power and more centralization means better service (if the megamoney was spent well).

I agree that Uber's way of underpaying drivers is not scalable (basic mathematics) and price hikes should happen to make the numbers work out. However the service level now people expect is very much innovative.

⬐ galaxyLogic

The important thing about apps is that because they run on cell-phones, they are all basically communications technology.

Anything you do can be done better when multiple people can collaborate on it and get accurate instrumentation about it. And anything can be done cheaper when it can be automated, and that's what apps provide too.

⬐ pkdpic_y9k

I agree he makes a couple important points and misses a couple important points as always but Im more struck by his general affect. I used to find Chomsky refreshing and motivating but something seems to have changed in the last couple years since the last time I was listening to him regularly...

⬐ Barrin92

I don't see Uber or Peloton as solving any particular problem but more like fairly sophisticated mechanisms to make money off regulatory or leasehold arbitrage.

Peloton hasn't really solved any social problem. The bike works just as well for burning calories as any other, what they managed to accomplish is sell people licenses for something they used to own at twice the price with a subscription on top and make them feel good about themselves instead of feeling like they're being robbed. That's the real innovation.

Uber hasn't solved any material transportation problem either. We're not suddenly able to 10x our urban transport capacity because of it. Probably the opposite, if anything it's induced congestion and draws resources from the modes of transport that actually solve those problems. The innovation here is that it's managed to do this while pretending not to be an employer.

⬐ ceilingcorner

I don’t understand how people say Uber isn’t innovative. You can pull out your phone and order on-demand transport in seconds. If you were around before it took off and had to use a cab, Uber is literally 1000% better than the previous solution.

⬐ dTal

Not that it disproves your point, but Edinburgh taxi service has always been in a league of its own. I have seldom seen one take more than 2 minutes to arrive, even in the days when you had to gasp telephone. I think there's some clever organization on the backend. Whatever makes Uber work, the whole regulatory-end-run driver-exploitation angle is not essential to it.

⬐ bwship

Yea, I can remember calling a cab to go out in LA, and then you would sit at the house with your friends for a half hour and hope it came.

Or in San Francisco, the cab would ask you where you are going. And if you said Inner Sunset, not even Outer Sunset, they would just leave.

In NYC though, you just walk out of your building, stick your hand out, and the cab would be there.

It is 1000% better in most places.

⬐ heurisko

It depends where you are.

I've travelled in Europe and had good service just googling the number of a local taxi firm, and speaking to them.

I used Uber once, and they decided not to take my fare; they never showed up.

⬐ pfranz

Which part is innovative? The business model of random people using their own vehicle and taxiing others or the app to coordinate dispatching?

I wholeheartedly agree the system wasn't great in many cities before Uber, but it's just a sleek version of what was obvious at the time--it just hadn't been built and the incentives weren't there.

I think you can look at bus/train systems as a comparison. In many cities you can download their app, set a destination, and it shows you what tickets you need to buy. You wave your phone to prove you bought your ticket. In many cities you can see the actual buses live on a map. Many bus stops show when the next bus arrives live. Uber was founded in 2009 and iPhone released in 2007. Google Maps was released in 2005, added traffic info in 2007, and Google Maps shipped with the first iPhone. It wasn't hard to see these pieces coming together--it just needed a lot of work, coordination, and a few generations of hardware and software improvements.

I do think they were the first and were innovative in a lot of aspects. I think their impact on the business of taxiing is way more "innovative" than the app and tech--but innovative doesn't necessarily mean "good" or a great use of resources.

⬐ didntknowya

Uber is far from perfect, but when they first started it was a very welcomed approach in contrast to the taxi cartels with their rude drivers who would readily decline your trips if it wasn't at their convenience.

sadly uber has declined quite a bit since- but it was a good kick in the butt to the taxi industries to step up their game.

⬐ ceilingcorner

To me, design and ease of use counts as innovative. Whether it was inevitable or not isn't particularly relevant.

As I said, if you had to regularly use cabs prior to ±2009, they were a nightmare. Uber is a massive improvement.

⬐ axelroze

I wish people who dislike Uber as a service lived in places with bad cabs and bad public transit. Uber is a blessing for the user in such areas. Pricewise it is sketchy and likely unethical but on the service level it is 10x and well worth of existing. I am not saying that Uber as employer is good, but damn the service level blew me off first time I went to another city that had Uber.

⬐ elevenoh

There's money in marketing 'startup culture' to those who'll build narrow apps atop your platform (e.g android, google, web services etc.)

There isn't much money in such in the 'hard engineering innovation' domains you mention.

⬐ panick21

Of course there are more startups in places that are easier to start something.

However, anybody looking at things like Space industry or the battery industry and claims that there are no start ups is crazy. There are large numbers of start ups some that get 100s of millions or billions of investment to solve complex problems.

The amount of new space launchers is frankly absurd. There are not to few, but to objectively to many startups trying to do the same thing.

⬐ cblconfederate

It's more like "media". If old-school TVs allowed you to rent apartments or call taxis we wouldn't say they are in the business of hotels or transportation, we d say they are still "media". App economy is about overvaluing the "hard work" of the medium that extracts rents from both sides, while the real hard work is done by millions of minions that are pejoratively called "gig workers"

⬐ spoonjim

The people who are building photo apps wouldn’t have anything to contribute to mining tech, so I’m not sure there’s much of a loss here.

⬐ axelroze

To do anything software dev you need some basic level of smarts. People who have them can also be trained/educated in any other scientific disciplines and create value there. Talent is a zero sum game. If one works on photo apps then that same person does not work on mining tech.

⬐ ackbar03

> "Narrow" given there is a vast global economy in need of hard engineering innovations - agriculture, mining, construction, energy, chemicals, biotech, manufacturing, machinery, vehicles, aerospace, science/discovery, environment/planet, telecomm, computer hardware, robotics

I think he makes a very important point about the role of the state. These hardcore engineering innovations and definitely cool and are interesting problems to work on, but I don't think the economics of it work out for startup companies given the amount of R&D it requires and probably lack of clear path of monetization. It reminds me of a fact I recently saw, the largest patent holder in China isn't Huawei or Tencent or any of the large tech companies, its the State National Grid or something like that, a state entity.

That being said, I don't think its necessarily good or bad, its just the way the ecosystem works. Even with the hard engineering innovations, in my opinion oftentimes the application/monetization of it into the form of a working product is still non-trivial, and that's the value captured by startups, so both are necessary in my view

⬐ xtiansimon

> “..I don't think its necessarily good or bad, its just the way the ecosystem works.”

Are you not referring to the “market” ecosystem?

You are flipping my lid, because in the earlier paragraph I read your comment about the largest patent holder in China being the state.

Is the conclusion not: the government of China funds R&D for those projects which the market is not an effective driver, but the project is determined to be important to the government (ideally, ‘the people’)

That sounds like what government is nominally intended to do. If that’s not the case in the US, and our best and brightest are maximizing hamburger delivery apps—-hot, fresh, cheap and profitable for all—-is this not a patently bad thing?