[p2p-research] Building Alliances

[J. Andrew Rogers]

> There are very clear statements by VC's that they need massive government
> investment to make the transition viable.


Yeah, the usual terms for this are "rent-seeking" and "special
interests". It is a classic game, they turbocharge their investment
with non-dilutive capital. It only seems like novelty if you don't
follow the venture world.  They do this every time they think they can
get free money out of the government for some political popular cause
or another. This time it is green tech. They are flush with cash aimed
at these investments.

I would think you would be upset about this, as it is one of the cases
where they actually being exploitive.


> Well let's just say that for millions of people, their lives have radically
> changed, and that's a good definition of innovation for me. Before that, the
> participatory elements of the web were only available to a much smaller
> elite of internet users. What I see is a world of constant improvements
> coming from many different quarters, aided by the 'open source' characters
> of the process.


Agreed, I was just using a more standard concept of innovation.  If
radically changing millions of lives was innovation, Hurricane Katrina
would have been innovative. ;-)


>> I think you are over-generalizing a narrow case. Yes, most innovations
>> come from the "outside", but that outside is "inside" somewhere else.
>
> The point though, is that the hard distinctions between inside and outside,
> between corporate and distributed, innovation are eroding, not hardening.


Of course, I never disagreed with this. Most business structures these
days aren't much more than ad hoc collaborations anyway except when
organizations get large.


> One's own experience always has to be put in
> the context of other people's experiences, and economics is a field of great
> controversy and interests, not just hard and easy facts.


The problem with economics is that every last one of the major
"schools" of thought are wrong in material ways. The problem with
economists is that they don't appear to be serious about rectifying
that situation.


-- 
J. Andrew Rogers
realityminer.blogspot.com