Patents, schools, and false equivalency

I posted the following two comments to "Lost Einsteins, the Innovations We Are Missing", David Leonhardt, New York Times, 2017-12-03.

One could also make a correlation between innovation and the type of industries in the area.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul area once drew a lot of people to work in the computer industry.  I was one of them.  Then the medical device industry drew a lot of people.

Rochester MN has been drawing medical talent for generations.  It also once had a large IBM facility.

I wonder what all the patents in NW Minnesota were for.  Snowmobiles, fishing gear?

And then there is politics.  Do the local governments make their places nice places to live, and so many people move there?







Follow-up comment

Well, I looked up several facts about Roseau County, MN, way up north on the Canadian border.  It was where Polaris snowmobiles were invented.  For more seehttp://www.polaris.com/en-us/company.

The Census 2016 estimate of Roseau’s population is 15,629 with 18% of school age 2813 students.  So, it would be quite “easy” for Polaris to have three patents.

The research triangle of North Carolina is another high patent area.  The triangle is University of North Carolina, North Carolina State University, and Duke University, all well-known research universities.

I think a more interesting correlation would be how much people were open to new ideas.  I think the willingness to do something different would have a better correlation than number of children.

If government is so bad then why…

...do so many companies try to get government business?

Privately run prisons
Military contracts
Highway and bridge contracts
Private schools with government vouchers
Sports stadiums with tax money

And to boot they want government to protect their businesses with

Courts to adjudicate disputes among companies
Courts to protect copyrights with large judgments against individuals (what's this about tort reform?)
Enforcement of patents
Trade negotiations
Employees educated and trained at government expense

I'm sure you can think of many more things that governments want from government without paying any taxes to support their wish lists.

Like a little kid, they want the tooth fairy to leave a quarter under their pillow every morning.  That's a quarter million or even a quarter billion.

Bring on the sequester

I really would rather not say so, but I think the sequester might be a good idea in the long term.  It might really put an end to the arguments about smaller government.

Think about it.  If the number of air traffic controllers and checkin security people are cut back, it might make air travel by business people even longer.  If the amount of money allocated to states to clear the Interstate system of snow was reduced, it might make shipping by truck more expensive.  If the number of FDA inspectors were cut back, it might cut into the sales and profits of food processing companies.  If the number of customs agents were cut back, it would reduce the volume of imported goods that so many merchants depend on.  If the number of patent examiners were cut back, it would take even longer for companies to get patents.  If the number of Federal court employees were cut back, it would take even longer for companies to make their billion-dollar suits against their competitors.

Too many people ignore all the important services that government provides for people and corporations alike.  A sequester might lead to rude awakening that we can't do without government.

Who creates jobs? Government or Corporations?

According to "The Myth of Job Creation", Editorial, New York Times, 2012-10-21, Obama and Romney agree that "government does not create jobs".  The New York Times disagrees, "Except that it does, millions of them — including teachers, police officers, firefighters, soldiers, sailors, astronauts, epidemiologists, antiterrorism agents, park rangers, diplomats, governors (Mr. Romney’s old job) and congressmen (like Paul Ryan)."

It is so hard to break the Norquist attitude that government is useless.  If government was so useless, why do so many corporations spend fortunes to get a government that will pass laws they favor?  If government was so useless, why do so many corporations seek government contracts?  If government was so useless, who would give corporations patents?  If government was so useless, who would adjudicate corporations billion-dollar suits against each other?

Free market view published

Today the Duluth News Tribune published my local view on the free market. They titled it "Free Market Requires Many Levels of Regulation. You can find it free at http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/216679/group/Opinion/ for the next week or so.

Hey, I just thought of this naive question. Are free markets those where everything is for free? That is, do those in favor of free markets want to give away all their goods and services?