Re: Where would we be without these important patents?

Andy F. wrote:

The Russian space program, of course, borrowed extensively from Western
technology, including many ideas which were or had been patented.And
although the Soviets invested considerable resources in science, their
system was an abysmal failure in terms of economic innovation.

The collapse of Russia (and communist regime as a rule) is a very complex
issue.
A couple of reasons were:

- demotivation, regardless how hard one worked the reward always went to
oligarchy and not to the creator of wealth. The same is actually going to
happen into an corporatist society where a few corporations reach the
monopoly state after they "eat" all the competition.

- oppressions, if a valuable scientist/engineer spoke against regime he was
arrested/isolated/killed.

- cronyism, the people promoted in leadership positions were not the best
but the one licking communists asses. Not very different by some corporate
culture and republican political culture.

- lack of market competition, in order to standardize production, quality
norms was imposed to be met. It worked well for quite some time by 50s in
Russia and 60s in Eastern Europe a lot of progresses was made. However some
companies were not been able to fullfill mandated standards.
Then the paranoia kicked in. Since communist leadership did not accepted the
idea of competitive market, they decided to tweak standards so anyone will
be able to fullfill them. When due to demotivation and cronyism some
companies began not to be able to meet neither older standards they once
meet the standards were tweaked again so that anyone will be able to do the
same. And so on ... Into a competitive market these issues won't happen.
However, even into a capitalist market where a small number of huge
corporations will set up a monopoly by killing the competition, the same is
going to happen too.

- waste, huge resources were wasted in national parades for the leaders.

- secrecy and paranoia, they invested a lot in research, mainly military
related. However, any important discovery was kept for secret military
usage and never reached civilian industry. Civilian industry was in purpose
kept behind military to avoid any possible leak to the west. However,
military industry relied on a lot of tools and machines produced by
civilian industry. They had the discoveries to improve many things but they
never released them outside so these discoveries were just lost while
everybody worked with obsolete equipment. In the end any investment into
military become just a waste of resources.
Contrary to communist block, in US many new discoveries from military
(microwave, laser etc) were implemented in civilian industry providing them
with a competitive edge.

- fears and lies. If a company leader was not able to meet the requirements
they were afraid to reported the situation. Jail time or worst was not
uncommon as punishment. They would rather lie in the reports to the party
that everything is ok or better than required. Even if some officials from
the government was willing to help they never got a real idea what is going
on. The productivity and quality become a disaster while the official
reports showed that everybody is on the cutting edge.

And many more crap like this.

The patent stuff has nothing to do with the collapse of communism.
The communism collapsed just because it was a fanatic extreme ideology.
Any extreme ideology is going to fail regardless if is left or right.
The only solution is somewhere in the middle, fully democratic, and without
any form of fanatic radicalism or fundamentalism.




.

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