Jed Rothwell wrote:
Jones Beene wrote:
Venture capital is the life blood of Capitalism.
Yes, but it has nothing to do with fundamental innovation or basic research. People such as Einstein, Dirac, Mizuno, Miles or Oriani are not motivated by money, and their work seldom yields any direct profits.
I have nothing against capitalism. But cold fusion is still at the fundamental research level, and there is no way a venture capitalist can invest in it.
It is the "spark"... the one economic factor that distinguishes the USA from other competing free market countries in being able to move innovation out of the lab and into the market place at top speed.
The US has not done anything at top speed since Boeing developed jet aircraft!
I'm confused. Twice in recent posts I've seen jet aircraft mentioned as an American innovation. But I thought it was actually some guy named Messerschmidt who first produced a viable jet-powered aircraft. Granted, Boeing did a very good job of playing "catchup" and actually made some money off of the development, which no German company ever did, as far as I know. (But then, that's often the story with early innovators, isn't it?)
And while we're on the subject, I thought I heard someplace that the Messerschmidts actually ran on coal. Gassified coal, it's true, but coal none the less. Seems there were some problems with Germany's petroleum supply lines at the time, and they didn't feel they had the option of just shutting down the Luftwaffe for the duration of the crisis. (Course, everybody would probably have been better off if they had.)
