• assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Capitalism has one positive, and that’s the notion of competition leading to the best outcome as they try to win over consumers.

      We’ve lost that though with how unfettered it’s become in general. Companies merge and conspire, eliminating competition.

      • Nudding@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Public universities and research actually produce the most amount of innovation. Another one of capitalisms lies

        • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          There’s a difference between lab bench research and discoveries and then actually making them into usable products on a mass scale. That’s a big part of where engineering comes into focus, on that scale up. There’s a lot of research that proves impractical in reality because the synthesis of a material is really finicky or the purification of it is exceedingly difficult.

          That said, I actually agree that private industry shouldn’t be part of this space. Companies shouldn’t be sponsoring research and picking winners like this. We need something analogous to national labs that’s focused solely on the scale up of discoveries – taking something discovered in a university or national lab and making it usable for the everyday person. And from there companies can get licenses from the government to offer the technology to consumers and make their own innovations, all of which must be reported to the government.

          … So I think I’ve just convinced myself that you’re right and I agree with you, actually.