Efficiency vs. Equality

“ High-skill immigrants innovate, patent and start new firms at higher rates than natives. At least one-quarter of the new firms in technology and science fields, from software and semiconductors to biotech, are founded by immigrants. In Silicon Valley, more than half of the high-tech start-ups were founded by immigrants.

— Alex Tabarrok - Launching The Innovation Renaissance

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Michael O’Leary at the Innovation Convention 2011 - Brussels (by InnovationUnion)

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“ The result is that the social benefits of corporate innovations and competition are easily overlooked, ignored, taken for granted, forgotten. But these benefits are enormous. And any assessment of the worthiness of corporations in modern life had best take them into accurate account lest we adopt policies that make us all poor and miserable.

— Irrationally Pessimistic about Corporations (via jimdew)

Tags: innovation corporation competition benefits economic welfare economics

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Ideas Having Sex - How prosperity and innovation exceeded the expectations of John Stuart Mill and Adam Smith

by Matt Ridley

Even so, the generation of new useful knowledge is far from uniform, steady, or continuous. Innovation is like a bush fire that burns brightly for a short time, then dies down before flaring up somewhere else. Fifty thousand years ago, the hottest hot spot was west Asia (ovens, bows and arrows); 10,000 years ago, the Fertile Crescent (farming, pottery); 5,000 years ago, Mesopotamia (metal, cities); 2,000 years ago, India (textiles, zero); 1,000 years ago, China (porcelain, printing); 500 years ago, Italy (double-entry bookkeeping, Leonardo); 400 years ago, the Low Countries (the Amsterdam Exchange Bank); 300 years ago, France (Canal du Midi); 200 years ago, England (steam); 100 years ago, Germany (fertilizer); 75 years ago, America (mass production); 50 years ago, California (credit card); 25 years ago, Japan (Walkman). No place remains for long the leader in knowledge creation.

Tags: innovation ridley rational optimist economics science capital intellectual property government exchange sex idea
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Thomas Sowell about "the real public service"

bushranger:

A must read!

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libertarianlovefest:

Johanna Blakely details the lack of copyright protection that has helped to shape a remarkably innovative fashion industry. This is an important lecture that should be watched by anyone interested in the intellectual property debate.

Nice talk but there are some problems. I take the pharmaceutical industry as an example.

Development cycles. The fashion industry generates thousands of ideas every year. You doesn’t need much overhead in form of machines, working spaces etc.. The development cycles are very short. Make design. Produce it.

The pharmaceutical industry has a very long development cycle. It’s about 20 years per product. You need a lot of researchers, labs and materials.

Trend cycle. There are at least four trends per year for the fashion industry. The latest summer fashion, winter fashion, spring fashion and of course autumn fashion. That is, each fashions should be in vouge for about three months.

Finally, the bar chart is kind of nonsense.

You see the sales of some goods in billion USD. Top three are food, automobiles and fashion. The bottom three are films, books and music. Seriously. How often needs someone food, clothes or an automobile compared to films, music and books?

Tags: ted johanna blakely fashion intellectual property innovation trend development pharmaceutical industry
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