I was thinking, after my response, how many of the biggest revolutionary new companies started small. HP and Apple both started in the proverbial garage. Gates founded DOS on software he bought for $3000. Walton started with a single store and expanded to overcome the giants of K-Mart, Penney's and Sears by being much better at inventory control (from folks I know who work at such companies, they weren't heaven to work for...so it wasn't that Walton did better because he exploited the workers....they _all_ treated the workers like commodities.) Recently Facebook started from very modest beginnings.
I would argue the reason for this is that they all had the tools they needed, available to them at reasonable prices. Their innovation was putting them together. I've had the good fortune to have my inventions widely used, and to know people who've transformed how large industries operate. None of this was done on massive investments. The massive investments came beforehand...putting together the basic building blocks. Given that, America's economy has historically proven better in allowing a Jobs, a Hewitt, etc. to start a company than other countries' economies. That's one of the reasons Japan lost a decade or two instead of overtaking the US as forecast in the early to mid '80s. It is true that engineering can overcome overwhelming obstacles by throwing money at the problem. Examples include the A-bomb and the moon race. But, almost 60 years after the Manhattan project, one cannot separate the uranium that is all around us and make an A-bomb (thankfully). Rocket flights stay expensive.....and while there are commercial ventures that work...they rely on the great value of low weight objects in orbit (e.g. communications or GPS). So, the logical conclusion is that you don't make things cheap by throwing money at the problem; you make things cheap by spending money on basic research, which provides building blocks, which allow people to make cheap parts, which can be put together....resulting in a new Apple or HP. That's a bit simplified, and there are nuances to the problem....but a good, inexpensive engineering solution rarely is found by the government providing tens of billions to engineers. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
