On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 22:08:39 -0700 "Tom Sixkiller" wrote:


"R. Hubbell" wrote in message
news:0bqDb.12269$pY.7976@fed1read04...
On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 12:59:35 -0600 "Jim Fisher"
wrote:

"Tom Sixkiller" wrote in message

The pioneers we celebrate today would be thrilled at the extent to
which
flight has transformed the world. But they would also be shocked at
the
extent to which our culture has abandoned the values and attitudes
that
made
their feats possible. Where Americans once embraced progress and
admired
the
innovators who brought it, today we want the benefits of progress
without
its costs or risks, and we condemn the profit motive that drives
innovation.

Bullsquat. This opening statement pretty much ruined the whole damn
article
for me.

American Innovation and Progress is alive and well, thank you. Try to
say
that paragraph up there with a straight face to anyone who works for
NASA,
Boeing, Cirrus or anyone working for Burt Rutan.


It's a lame article. I believe innovation is alive and well.

It's alive, but it's hardly "well".

Innovation is doing fine. Progress is definitely hampered. But it inches
forward kicking and screaming.


Progress is
definitely slowed and there are a lot of reasons. Monopolies are a big
part of slow progress.

Monopoloies? Who'd that be? And when has the big corporations ever been a
source of innovation since the "Golden Age"?

I don't know. Are you going to tell us? I never mixed innovation and
big corporations together.


They can make cost of entry into markets very
high thus squeezing out competition. Then they have no reason to
introduce new technologies. They can continue to charge high prices
for the things they sell even after long having paying back all R&D
costs or infrastructure costs or whatever the case.

Yes, and that comes from their political clout, which has ALWAYS siffled
innovation. Ever heard of the "Dark Ages"?

Political clout is only a part of a monopoly.

And I have heard of the dark ages, do you have some examples of monopolitic
practices from the dark ages and how they stifled innovation?



But slow progress fortunately doesn't slow innovation.

Nice contradiction there.


Describe how that's a contradiction.

Innovation and progress are not the same just in case you were thinking
they were.

R. Hubbell