Top Ways to Kill Innovation

by mingyeow • 17 years ago

3 10 17 years ago

pg2• 17 years ago

He's missing the top 2 historically: civil disorder, and excessively powerful central governments.

bokonist3• 17 years ago

Excessively powerful, or excessively intrusive? A government can be very powerful, but choose not to use that power in wealth destroying ways (example: post-Deng China).

pg2• 17 years ago

I can't think of a case where excessively powerful has not become excessively intrusive. Even if governments don't mean to interfere in the economy, they have to in order to protect their power, because money can be turned into political power.

You saw this particularly clearly with Putin. Anyone whose wealth was combined with any sort of political ambition got destroyed. He only had that problem because he inherited some rich and comparatively untamed people from the previous administration. You couldn't get rich in Russia today without already being a Putin loyalist. I suspect it is the same in China.

johnnybgoode3• 17 years ago

Although this is probably not what PG meant, all central governments are excessively powerful and excessively intrusive. While you and I might agree that the Chinese government is relatively better than many others when it comes to avoiding wealth destruction, I think we'd also agree that they are still destroying wealth.

Top Ways to Kill Innovation

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