One would think that there are public policies that would substantially accelerate the pace of innovation. I’m not so sure. I’ll address this issue in a roundabout fashion, starting with a discussion of innovation in some seemingly unrelated fields.
In 1969, we had just landed on the moon, the Boeing 747 was carrying 400 passengers at 600 mph, and cars sped down expressways at 70 mph. President Nixon would soon launch the war on cancer. Given the incredible progress in medicine and transport over the previous 50 years, people expected fantastic gains in manned space travel, air and ground transport, as well as a cure for cancer. Certainly within the next 50 years. I was also guilty of excessive optimism, as several supersonic commercial airplanes were being developed at this time.
Of course, those dreams did not pan out. We fly and drive more slowly than in 1969. (Where’s my flying car?) There was impressive innovation, but mostly in areas that people didn’t expect, such as the internet.
Tyler Cowen recently linked to a post by Evert Cilliers, listing what he thought were the 10 best songwriters of all time. Five were born between 1885-1902, and the other five between 1940-43. The reputation of the latter group rests almost entirely with their work from the 1960s. I don’t think many people in 1969 anticipated that the golden age of songwriting was over. (I didn’t.) And the golden age of cinema seemed to end around 1980 (except in Asia.)
At this point, there are often two different responses:
1. The fact that art goes in cycles of creativity shows that it is not a progressive field like physics. The scientists of today are better than the scientists of the past, whereas today’s artists are inferior.
2. It’s just nostalgia to assume the best artists were in the past. Today’s scientists are better, our chess players are better, our athletes are better, so our artists and musicians must also be better than ever.
I’ll try to show that both views are wrong.
Let’s start with the first argument, which compares apples and oranges. It’s true that modern scientists know more than earlier scientists. But it’s also true that the theoretical physicists of the period from 1900 to 1969 were more creative and more productive than during the period since the “standard model” was developed. (In 1969, people didn’t know that the golden age of physics was over.) In the same way, art experts today know more about art than art experts 100 years ago, but that doesn’t mean that today’s painters are more creative than those of 100 years ago.
It seems like there are certain periods of time in each field that are more “fertile”. Periods when it’s easier to be a great innovator. If Thomas Edison had been born in 1347 instead of 1847, it’s unlikely he would have invented lots of neat consumer products. But that’s also true if he had been born in 1947. Is it a coincidence that 5 great songwriters were born between 1940 and 1943? I’ll try to show that it was not.
The second argument makes some sense. Nostalgic people often claim that the athletes of the past were greater than today’s athletes, a claim that’s almost certainly false. Nonetheless, it is very likely true that the arts really do have periods of creativity and decline, and this isn’t just baby boomer nostalgia.
Consider European painting between 1625 and 1725. Those familiar with art history know that this 100-year period was extremely uneven. During 1625-75, great artists such as Rubens, Velasquez, Vermeer, Rembrandt and Poussin produced many, many astounding masterpieces, perhaps the greatest flowering of the European visual arts. And then . . . almost nothing of significance for 50 years. This is far enough back that history’s verdict is likely to be final.
Nor can this 1625-75 golden age to attributed to coincidence. While I only cited 5 painters, the next tier were also far superior to those of 1675-1725. Behind Vermeer and Rembrandt, you had many other Dutch painters such as Frans Hals, Jacob Ruisdael, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch and Carel Frabritius (a film was just made of one of his paintings.) It’s the second tier that confirms it really was a fertile period for innovation in art, not just a coincidence. Of course, the same could be said about painting in the Renaissance, or the period from 1865-1920 (after which cinema took over.) I’m no expert on music, but doesn’t the period from Bach to Beethoven also qualify?
There’s no point in discovering the Theory of Relativity twice, inventing the light bulb twice, writing another Beethoven-style symphony, directing another Godfather, or painting another Vermeer. To get innovation, we need a development that opens up new opportunities. The computer chip obviously qualifies. Basic research in reading the human genome has allowed recent discoveries regarding the genetic links of various populations around the world, reinvigorating ancient history.
Can government speed up innovation in music, art, technology and basic physics? For technology, some cite the government’s role in creating the internet. But wouldn’t the private sector have tried to link up computers during the 1990s, once the PC revolution was in full swing? If Edison had not invented the light bulb, wouldn’t someone else have done so at roughly the same time? Indeed, someone else did so! The US government tried to invent the airplane and failed. But it didn’t matter because the Wright brothers succeeded, and did so privately.
If industrial policy can do anything useful, it would be to create the fundamental scientific and artistic discoveries that lead to many smaller discoveries. But can it? I’m skeptical that it can do very much. In the arts, pop music was reinvigorated by hip hop once rock music had stagnated. Does anyone think a government program could have invented rap music? Can government produce the next Einstein in physics? I’m not saying there is nothing they could do (and they can certainly discourage innovation), but it remains to be proven that government can play a major role in producing fundamental innovation.
Innovation seems to occur when the time is ripe. Since I’ve talked a lot about music, I’ll end with a great song from the 1960s: “You Can’t Hurry Love”.
Or innovation.
Here’s the Fabritius painting that led to the novel and the film.
And remember that Fabritius was a “minor” artist!
PS. The Cilliers article actually focuses on the top 8 songwriters, but later on indicated that Jagger and Richards are #9 and #10, and well above the next tier.
PPS. It may well be true that today’s music and films are, on average, made with more skill and “craftmanship”, by more talented people. But they are less innovative, less “great”.
READER COMMENTS
Brett
Sep 15 2019 at 12:38am
The government is better at speeding up technological development than scientific discovery, and we see that with the Space Race vs the War on Cancer. They made huge aerospace strides in the Space Race because the science involved was actually pretty well understood by the 1950s – getting the technological applications of that done soon mostly required a willingness to spend huge amounts of money designing, prototyping, and building it.
Whereas with the War on Cancer, there was and is just so much we don’t understand about cancer (which itself is actually hundreds of different diseases, not a singular “cancer” disease) in scientific terms. Siddharta Mukherjee’s Emperor of All Maladies is really good on this – aggressively trying to push money into immediately developing treatments didn’t hurt per se, but it also wasn’t nearly as productive as the people pushing for it hoped for.
Brett
Sep 15 2019 at 12:40am
I should qualify “well understood”. That doesn’t mean we understood everything – we couldn’t directly model turbulence with mathematical equations and thus had to use wind tunnels. But there weren’t huge scientific surprises standing in the way of technological development.
Scott Sumner
Sep 15 2019 at 2:54am
I don’t deny that the government can spend a lot of money on a technology that doesn’t interest the private sector and has little value to society, such as manned space exploration. I’ll even concede that can spend a bit of money on scientifically valuable projects like unmanned space exploration. But this won’t spur economic growth.
john hare
Sep 15 2019 at 4:51am
Interesting that you mention space exploration. It’s one of my hobby areas.
The government designed SLS (Space Launch System, formerly Ares) rocket is well into it’s second decade of development and still won’t fly for another few years. The known costs of development are between 15-20 billion to date and net cost per flight will be well over a billion per IF it enters service. This is with re-purposed Shuttle engines and boosters. There are several space launch architectures that could have flown the projected missions for SLS years ago for far less cost. So a pork driven project is not only not moving tech forward, it is actively consuming resources that could have been more gainfully employed.
I cannot tell if the SBIR (Small Business Innovative Research) program is bearing fruit either in proportion to it’ cost. Many companies live on those grants which are based on convincing the granting agency that there is merit in something. As an inventor myself*, i find it unfortunate that a major part of an idea being taken seriously is whether it could qualify for grants. It is my unprovable opinion that research focus is being diverted into known areas at the expense of possible breakthroughs.
Tied to economics. It is hard for me to justify taxpayer money for space exploration for it’s own sake. Locating potentially dangerous asteroids and other indicators that affect life on Earth sure, although empire building is noticeable there as well. Space development on the other hand, should be done by people that see potential needs or profits with money invested by people for their own reasons.
*altitude compensating nozzle, injector concept, turbopump concepts, etc. All unproven and unfunded
Scott Sumner
Sep 15 2019 at 9:27pm
Thanks for that info. I agree about NASA.
Phil H
Sep 15 2019 at 1:17am
Very interesting! I disagree almost entirely, but it’s a great big ideas post. Briefly, my counter-arguments would be:
In the arts, something like the nostalgia argument, plus a norm-setting argument. In any given genre, the first few great works come to define the norms of what is “great” for that genre. When the next guy does something demonstrably great, we tend to say, oh, that’s something else now. So, straightforwardly, the great songwriters appeared at the beginning of the century because that’s when recording technology appeared and froze what the “song” is; subsequent great musicians have found themselves shoved into other genres: hip-hop, performance poetry, lieder… As to the “judgment of history”, it seems to change all the time. In classical music, the Early Music revolution has happened in my lifetime, transforming our understanding of and judgments of music before the baroque.
In technology, the error is using the metrics of the early technological successes to measure later technological development. Planes now don’t go faster than they did 50 years ago… but do we need them to? At current speeds, you can get literally anywhere in the globe in 24 hours. Over the last 50 years, they’ve enhanced safety and efficiency. In particular, the technology of airline safety is a marvel to behold. Cars don’t go faster, though many cars can… it’s turned out that the tradeoffs aren’t worth it.
But my biggest point of disagreement is on the pessimism over whether we (government or any other we) can create the conditions for innovation. It seems to me that they’re reasonably well-known: educated, rich population to create ideas; plus a large group of poor, young adopters. Unfortunately, that last part is not very palatable, politically, so more work must be done to find the right balance. But this doesn’t seem very mysterious. Governments and/or voluntary organisations can work them out and do what’s necessary. My old employer, Huawei, loves talking about this stuff, and how it is “creating ecosystems”.
Scott Sumner
Sep 15 2019 at 3:06am
Phil, Our view of the high Baroque painters hasn’t changed recently, and it likely won’t change in the future. The next 50 years simply weren’t as good. And the gap is just HUGE. Then there’s De Vinci/Raphael/Michelangelo/Titian/Tintoretto/ Bellini of the Renaissance.
I’m no expert on music, but when I read articles I get the feeling that the reputations of Bach/Mozart/Beethoven are as high as ever, even if early music has risen somewhat. Tyler Cowen referred to that period of music as a golden age, and he’s an expert on music—well pretty much everything.
You haven’t presented any evidence that governments can spur innovation, beyond just getting out of the way. Maybe they can, but where’s the evidence? Will building an even bigger collider jump-start physics? Maybe.
As far as innovation jumping to new areas—that was my point (I mentioned the computer chip.) My point was you just can’t force innovation, it needs fertile ground.
Phil H
Sep 15 2019 at 3:43am
Hi, Scott. Of course, you’re right. I didn’t offer much evidence there. I think that the evidence that government can spur innovation on a gross level is very clear: it’s basically the Europe vs Africa argument. When governments mandate that the entire population will be literate, innovation explodes. And the capitalism vs. communism argument: when governments allow competition, innovation can explode. (This is also your “getting out of the way”, which I don’t disagree with.) Beyond those very broad strokes, of course, things get much more difficult to measure, but the basic outlines seem clear to me.
I don’t know anything about the art of that period, so I won’t attempt to comment on it, but I think I’d want to distinguish two levels. It sounds like you’re talking about a temporal cluster, and I’m quite comfortable with the idea that they exist. Perhaps that 1625-75 period was the “Silicon Valley” of Dutch painting. And you’re right that governments don’t seem to be able to make or predict Silicon Valleys. But they do seem to be able to provide the conditions under which a Silicon/Oil Painting/Tailoring/Banking Valley might appear (for a longer or shorter time). So perhaps I should just concede your point: governments can’t spur innovation directly; but rule of law – one of the fundamental functions of government – is one of the key enabling conditions that will let innovation happen. So I still think that governments have a role.
ChrisA
Sep 15 2019 at 6:50am
Phil
I think Government required schooling came after the innovations of the Industrial Revolution, so I don’t think that is a good argument for government or state role in innovations. Quite often progress attributed to Government is actually the result of richer societies having more money to afford Government programs, correlation vs causation again.
On the causes of innovation, there was a good recent post on the roots of progress on why bicycles were not invented earlier.
My take is that a lot of physical technology (like bikes, cars, airplanes) were not invented because there was no mass manufacturing technology. It takes an awful lot of effort to invent a workable product, and without being able to spread the cost of that effort across millions of products, it is not worth it. You are basically inventing for the fun of it and as we know incentives matter. So mass production was the primary innovation that caused these secondary innovations to appear. In that sense I agree with Scott in that innovations can only appear “at the right time” and they arrive in a burst, because of they are really riding on one primary innovation. I would perhaps guess music and painting examples quoted by Scott happened in the same way, there was some underlying advance that made them possible (perhaps perspective and pianos?).
I think these “super-innovations” are hard to spot in advance (if they were then they wouldn’t be innovations) so it is difficult to see even a fully agent free Government finding them. Of course the real problem is that any Government decision is eventually going to become agent led, like NASA and the space shuttle, and so the problem is even worse.
Phil H
Sep 15 2019 at 10:38am
Hi, Chris. I guess what you’re saying could be true, but I don’t see that it relates much to what I’m arguing. Sure, governments can’t predict exactly what innovations will have exactly what impact at what time. But they can and do provide the conditions under which innovations can appear and be exploited.
I think in Scott’s terms, you could say, governments can’t speed up innovation, but they can certainly slow it down. So what should they do and not do in order to avoid slowing human progress?
robc
Sep 16 2019 at 8:40am
Phil,
I think the answer is simple.
First, create a system to protect rights (property, speech, etc) and the rule of law. Make it simple and understandable.
Second, get the hell out of the way.
Phil H
Sep 16 2019 at 9:50am
Hi, Rob. Sure, I agree with that… except for the part where you suggest that that’s simple. It’s immensely complicated, hence The Law in all its confusing glory.
Paul A Sand
Sep 15 2019 at 6:28am
Reminds me of the “nerd harder” argument. Apparent origin in discussion of backdoor encryption, but can be applied more broadly.
Benjamin Cole
Sep 15 2019 at 8:42am
Maybe federal “X” prizes could spur industrial innovation, A $10 billion prize for a commercializable solid-state high-performance battery might be a good idea (maybe even better if financed by printing money).
Oleg
Sep 15 2019 at 11:34am
I’d just like to weigh in to say that the assessment of Evert Cilliers (who?), which I read, about who were the greatest songwriters cannot be viewed as authoritative.
Mr. Cilliers wrote, among other things: “I don’t count Schubert and his many Lieder. Can you whistle or hum even one of them?” Schubert did not make his top-10. Not even close, according to Cilliers (note: Schubert was the greatest songwriter of all time. Period. None other even comes close). Mr. Cilliers’ general ignorance of his subject matter is exceeded only by the confidence of his pronouncements, and I find it difficult to see how that is even possible.
“I’m no expert on music, but doesn’t the period from Bach to Beethoven also qualify?” That’s absolutely correct. You’re no expert. 🙂
Thaomas
Sep 16 2019 at 6:04am
The most certain way to increase innovation is to encourage the immigration of potential innovators: unlimited H1B visas, some tuition assistance for foreign students in US universities, Green Card on graduation.
Salem
Sep 16 2019 at 9:16am
The end of the High Baroque golden age of painting is an interesting example, because it was caused by the Rampjaar. The near-destruction of the United Provinces caused the Dutch art market to collapse and never recover (along with many other changes to Dutch society). So in a sense, this period is a coincidence, at least from an artistic point of view, because there was nothing in the nature of 17th century art that compelled France to invade Holland, or that forced Holland to become a much more militarised and less open country in response. It’s not a controlled experiment so we can’t know for certain, but it’s dangerous to assume this is just cycles of artistic expression running dry, rather than the material conditions changing. To take an extreme example, fine jewellery collapsed as an art form in Russia in 1917. It’s not necessarily because Carl Faberge ran out of ideas.
Scott Sumner
Sep 16 2019 at 7:40pm
Salem, The quality of art declined throughout Europe, not just in the Netherlands.
Phil H
Sep 16 2019 at 11:49pm
A small but possibly interesting point: You’re kind of conflating quality and innovation here. One possible argument would be to say that with innovation you would expect a *decline* in quality, because the artist/writer/musician/businesperson/technologist is trying something new, that we’re not very good at yet. The best *quality* should surely be a sign of stagnation – when the pinnacle of an artform has already been reached?
Scott Sumner
Sep 17 2019 at 5:17am
I’m conflating quality and innovation because in fields like the invention of new consumer products, theoretical physics, and art they are almost the same thing.
Todd Kreider
Sep 16 2019 at 10:15am
In 1969, half the cars couldn’t go from New York to California without needing a repair – a small exaggeration. Flying from New York to California is much cheaper today than in 1969 and airplanes no longer crash, which makes for a less anxious flight.
1960 to 1963 and 1968 to 1971 fatal U.S. and Canada crashes kill: (1960) 34, 50 {bomb}, 63, 62, 22, 128 (1961) 6,18, 72, 37, 74 (1962) 95, 12, 45 {bomb}, 17, 51 (1963) 43, 101, 43, 118, 81… (1968) 23, 32, 27, 21, 20 (1969) 32, 14, 35, 83, 11, 15 (1970) 109, 31, 75 (1971) 49,111
2002 to 2019 U.S. and Canada airline fatalities: (2003) 19 (2014) 3 {Korea Air} (2018) 1 {not a crash}
What about the internet/email and smartphone that have transformed the world in a way the 1969 version of Scott watching the Apollo landing as a teenager couldn’t imagine?
Scott Sumner
Sep 16 2019 at 7:42pm
I didn’t say innovation stopped, just that it slowed sharply in certain areas where it was expected to continue.
LK Beland
Sep 16 2019 at 12:19pm
Very interesting post.
I think that a part of the government role here is in training. To take the example of physics or materials science, a lot of innovation requires graduate-level training. Courses are not sufficient: a good PhD training program couples graduate-level courses to research.
While privately funded research programs do exist (I’ve actually been involved in some), there is a lot to be said for public funding, notably because of the peer-review process. While it has disadvantages, it does bring a level a intellectual rigor that sometimes is lacking in industrial-funded projects. This diversity has intellectual value, in my opinion.
That said, I’m not sure what the optimal mix should be.
mike shupp
Sep 16 2019 at 2:55pm
Methinks one of us is drinking something.
The US manned space program has stagnated for close to fifty years because Richard Nixon did not want to continue a large expensive (to his mind) manned space program after Apollo. Congress and a large number of Americans felt the same. Perhaps, in the long run, a vibrant human civilization will span the stars — if the Chinese politburo chooses to fund it. I don’t know how eagerly we should look forward to that.
Oceanographic research in the US, and programs for exploiting ocean resources, have generally stagnated since the same time, again because Richard Nixon (and Congress) did not want NOAA to be more than a fraction of NASA’s size.
Climate control, as any sort of applied art, is effectively dead because it’s conservative orthodoxy to oppose anything that smells of global warming, because. God demands it, I guess.
Nuclear power technology has basically stagnated since the 1960’s since leftists and “pro-environment” activists around the world go berserk at the idea of building new nuclear plants, and insist on lengthy delays during planning and construction which effective guarantee that such plants will be uneconomical.
It strikes me as just plain nuts to say the slow pace in developing these technologies had nothing to do with human choices. It also strikes me that Adam Smith were writing today, he’d give a couple of chapters in THE WEALTH OF NATIONS to Richard Nixon and Xi Jinping.
Scott Sumner
Sep 16 2019 at 7:44pm
I don’t think it was a lack of money that slowed manned space exploration, it was a lack of technological progress. We need new technologies, not more money thrown at the old ones. If NASA spent 10 times as much, they’d just throw the money at more chemical rockets.
Henri Hein
Sep 16 2019 at 7:52pm
I don’t know about oceanography or climate control, but the private sector has been on a rampage of innovation in energy and space travel since government stepped back. Space travel, in particular, was monopolized from the Nixon administration you mention until 1984 (nominally) or 1990 (effectively).
Godfree Roberts
Sep 16 2019 at 7:37pm
Innovation can certainly be slowed down.
Underfunding and persecution of foreign researchers are effective, too.
China now outspends us 3:1 on R&D and is overhauling us at an alarming rate.
According to the Japan Science and Technology Agency, in 2016 China ranked as the most influential country in four of eight core scientific fields, tying with the U.S. The agency took the top 10% of the most referenced studies in each field, and determined the number of authors who were affiliated with the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France, China or Japan. China ranked first in computer science, mathematics, materials science and engineering. The U.S., on the other hand, led the way in physics, environmental and earth sciences, basic life science and clinical medicine.
Ditto most new technologies, like renewables…
Henri Hein
Sep 16 2019 at 7:56pm
As China’s economy approaches and eclipses the US’s in size, with 4x the population to draw talent from, they ought to outpace the US in innovation.
TFX
Sep 17 2019 at 6:56am
China is regularly flagged as the future fount of technological advance. Those with a knowledge of history can ask what is the answer to the Needham question.
No doubt many of you will not know what the Needham question is but he was a British historian of science who showed that China was the equal in technological scientific knowledge to ancient Rome and then the world’s technological leader until around 1500. For the next 500 years it languished making no further scientific/technological progress. A millennium and a half of being the technological leader and then half a millennium of being a nonparticipant. No one has been able to answer the question with adequate rationale. Why is it likely to now happen and didn’t for half a millennium.
Mr. Econotarian
Sep 16 2019 at 8:14pm
There were private sector analogs of ARPANET, such as Telenet, Tymnet, and BITNET in the US. But we should be clear, while ARPANET showed what could be done, the modern Internet we live on depended on private sector ISP companies joining up (such as UUNET, PSInet, DIGEX and of course when AOL joined the Internet).
Henri Hein
Sep 16 2019 at 8:25pm
It seems to me Cilliers define art differently for the different categories. Paintings an art critic would consider great might go unseen by many, but most people are familiar with the work of Andy Warhol. Great novels may go unread by many, but most people are familiar with Stephen King.
I don’t agree about cinema. There are many masterpieces from before 1980, to be sure, but this is a medium still very much in development. As a big fan of the Coen brothers’ work, I wonder if, a hundred years from now, this will be known as the “golden Coen years” of film-making. Here are a few other post-1980 titles for consideration:
Heat (1995)
The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
The Professional (1994)
Good Will Hunting (1997)
Requiem for a Dream (2001)
L.A. Confidential (1997)
Downfall (2004)
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Scott Sumner
Sep 18 2019 at 1:09pm
I agree about that quote being problematic and I also like the Coen brothers’ films. But cinema as a art form has clearly declined since 1980.
mbka
Sep 17 2019 at 2:28am
Scott,
2 issues:
1. the nature of innovation, between radical and incremental innovation. In evolution, the path of macroevolutionary changes is often described as a “punctuated equilibrium” and in science, as a series of paradigm shifts, with slower refinements in-between (Kuhn’s “The nature of scientific revolutions”). In short, science, art and technology, and biological evolution, are characterized by rare and occasional radical breakthroughs. Example, invention of the transistor, without which none of the information technology revolution could have happened even though information theory was well established. In the follow-up of radical innovation, the new product (or scientific / artistic feat) is fleshed out and refined in a series of incremental (efficiency-) improvements, until it stagnates, all along a diminishing return curve, roughly. So here is your “stagnation”, really just the absence of constant radical innovation. At some unpredictable future moment, a new radical innovation comes along and a new “step change” phase of fast growth, followed by eventual stagnation, ensues.
From this follows:
2. There is a difference in nature between quantitative changes, i.e. innovation as increase in efficiency, and true radical, qualitative changes. Qualitative changes, e.g. jet engine air travel vs propellers, leads to huge leaps forward. Increases in efficiency (decreases in accidents and fuel consumption) lead to a slowing and asymptotic growth curve of optimization. Put both together and you get a series of S-curves that follow each other.
The above points are well documented in textbook approaches to evolution and technology. There is a bit of a mystery in what leads to a clustering in radical innovation. Sometimes, several factors need to come together before certain products become even possible, e.g. materials technology AND electric engineering, in the case of the transistor. Interestingly, there is another aspect. Competitive pressure (in nature: natural selection) primarily leads to efficiency increases because natural selection implies scarcity. Same thing in business, cost pressure leads primarily to stuff getting cheaper due to efficiency increases (also see: Marx) BUT not necessarily to radical innovation. Why? Even the best radical innovations are not competitive at first, and in a hyper competitive market (scarcity of materials, goods, customers), no one has any cash left for radical innovations or lengthy tests of faith in a new product. That has led some, e.g. Peter Thiel, to proclaim that competition never improved innovation. This is also misguided, because to escape the hyper competitive market, eventually, someone will make a breakthrough that is qualitatively different and get support from investors OR creates a totally new market together with the new product. This is closely related to the blue ocean concept – go somewhere where there is NO competition and your innovation / product will have an unfettered market, at first.
Another avenue for radical innovation to be accelerated, in evolution and in technology, is excess resources. This can come from monopolies that accumulate cash and invest it in “moonshots” (though e.g. Apple seems to be unable to pull that trick off). Or it can be because some disaster leads to a lot of resources being idle e.g. many breakthrough technologies, from information technology to nuclear to electronics, were achieved in the 1930s when economics was decidedly down. Some of it was government led but I think that’s a red herring – the crucial fact is that some segments of society became thinkers and tinkerers (Hewlett and Packard!), which in a well functioning economy would just have gotten rich selling cars, because that would have been the obvious route. Note, the idle resource here is the brains of people who had nothing better to do than to invent.
So, to conclude: competitive pressure can lead to 2 things, incremental efficiency increases, or trying to escape that predicament, radical, but occasional leaps forward, made easier by one of two things, either unused resources lying around or the competition being hampered by some kind of societal disaster.They key here is, temporary immunity from competitive pressure. In Nature, island environments are a great example.
And there is another facet: True technology / arts / knowledge regression has also been well documented in history. Its causes are two-fold: 1. knowledge tied to people, before the printing press – when people die because of wars, disasters etc, their knowledge used to die with them; and 2. many technologies are only feasible at scale. When natural disasters wipe out parts of populations, then certain technologies fall in disuse because there aren’t enough economies of scale for them to become feasible in the market. This can still happen today. The converse is also true: as soon as China started consuming (! step 1) all sorts of raw materials and making them into consumer goods for an expanding world consumer base (step 2) …. everything suddenly became a lot cheaper (!!! step 3 and the true miracle of economics). Simple: economies of scale. Hence, why the US had it easy at first, as a rare unfractured market for 2 centuries. Hence, why China has it easy now that its politics got sorted out after Mao. Hence, why the EU was so crucially necessary for progress in Europe … and Brexit so misguided. etc.
Scott Sumner
Sep 17 2019 at 5:26am
Mbka, Goods points. I’d add that technological regress (in the sense of slower progress) doesn’t require a disaster. There was no disaster in painting after 1675 or 1920 or physics after the the 1960s that slowed progress, rather many of the good ideas had been developed, leaving less opportunity for further breakthroughs.
Are patents a way of creating the island effect–sheltered from competition?
mbka
Sep 17 2019 at 9:08am
Scott,
I know little about the painting example but I’d suspect that a clustering of genius for a while was enabled by some technique breakthrough (I remember the camera obscura hypothesis, vaguely, leading to hyper-realistic painting) which then petered out once the main breakthrough had been made… but this is just speculation.
I forgot one point I had wanted to make. Infrastructure. This is one point where my bleeding libertarian heart gives up the ghost and admits that government may have a role here. Why?
1. creating standards e.g. transport, communication, compatibility, etc… lots of economies of scale to be had that often only work as a public good. True this can be had by private monopoly too but is more haphazard in its appearance than straightforward imposition by government. It’s just too silly to wait for self-organization of a free market when you can just say, dammit, you shall drive on the right side of the road and use 60 Hz electricity cycles. ALL of you.
My hunch is that the typical inefficiencies of government are less harmful here because the simple fact of a shared standard or infrastructure are so huge, because of network effects and economies of scale, that any cost inefficiencies in their creation pale in comparison.
2. infrastructure especially, works in tandem with the point I made above on cheap / excess resources. e.g. cheap internet enables playful exploration of communication that would have been impossible w/o the (at face value, wasteful) bonanza of subsidized networks. I’m on thin ice here, no research I know of backs this up, but it would follow from theory.
Scott Sumner
Sep 18 2019 at 1:26pm
On infrastructure, I agree that government has a role. But it’s also worth noting that governments currently play too much of a role. The new high speed rail line proposed for Texas is being held back by government regulations. Hong Kong’s private subway system is one of the world’s best.
The camera obscura doesn’t explain the golden age of painting. Of the 5 greats I named, only Vermeer was believed to use that technique, and it doesn’t even explain his greatness. But you are right about technical developments being important. The same is true for more recent periods. Techniques pioneered by Cezanne helped Picasso and Matisse.
mbka
Sep 17 2019 at 9:09am
Oh yes and patents, should provide a protection analogous to islands.
Olof Lindgren
Sep 17 2019 at 4:49am
Interesting discussion. The Standard Model in physics was certainly not established in 1969. It took a few more years to incorporate our theory of the strong nuclear interactions… and while to what extent physics could be considered “finished” may seem to be debatable, Nature is the sole arbitrator of that debate, and there is no way to really evaluate our possibilities for further progress. Scientific consensus is certainly unrealiable, as all fields should have found by now.
Consider the period 1625-1725. Another description would be that Holland was the only country that created good opportunities for painters during this time, and only in the first half. This could easily make the Dutch artists stand out in a competitive sense. And a previous dearth of art production would make them stand out further, since they would be close to pioneers.
One should also admit the role of normal fluctuations appearing in this particular context. I think is somewhat underappreciated. But whether it is the funding of art or the actual production that should be made the focus could be debatable. Clearly there is correlation.
I think you’re too quick to believe that government cannot support innovation well. Several basic points have been made. And if you compare success rates between government attempts and venture funding the differences are not that large. Comparisons are not trivial to make, so care is needed. You should look at the work of Mariana Mazzucato, who deconstructed some of the hype that has served to devaluate the possibilities for governments. Her shoulders may be good to stand on for deeper discussion.
Scott Sumner
Sep 18 2019 at 1:34pm
Olof, There has certainly been a dramatic slowdown in innovation in physics, even if the standard model wasn’t quite complete in 1969.
I disagree about art. Generally speaking, the market for art has grown over time, while innovation has gone in cycles in any particular art form. (Of course new forms like cinema pop up, creating more fertile opportunities.)
I agree that government can fund successful projects. I just don’t think they can do much about the overall pace of innovation. The human genome project was highly successful, but I doubt it sped up progress very much. The private sector was working along the same lines.
TFX
Sep 17 2019 at 7:19am
I would like to provide a pessimistic view on the potential for innovation delivering in the future. Robert Gordon from North West University has demonstrated recently that there have been diminishing marginal returns to research across a variety of fields in the US, including agricultural research. My knowledge of Australian agricultural research, where we are at the frontier like the US is that we are showing diminishing marginal returns for our research efforts.
The frontier is not moving very much. Countries behind it can do the catch up there is no dispute that there are significant productivity gains for the rest of the world.
My favourite data point on this is that when the Nobel prizes were introduced, there were estimated to be 1000 physicists in the world. There are now estimated to be 1 million physicists. A recent physics Nobel prize was given to a paper that had over 1000 authors. In both cases we are looking at changes of three orders of magnitude.
Another data point is the the average age of Nobel science prizewinners has increased since the beginning of them indicating the additional investment costs to become fully cognisant of the field.
I am not sure what governments can do to change policies to engender major changes in innovation and therefore economic productivity.
A pessimistic view of the future but also realistic.
Scott Sumner
Sep 18 2019 at 1:36pm
In the short run I agree. But innovation goes in waves. Perhaps AI will eventually lead to another surge.
Michael Rulle
Sep 17 2019 at 10:26am
A wildly speculative and fascinating article.
Too much for me to comment on reliably. My most general comment on greatness in art is that it is easier to “include” than “exclude”. As it relates to 1960s as a specific point in time for “all time greatness”—-it feels biased—-even as all mentioned (and some buried deep like Paul Simon, John Phillips and Brian Wilson…..) I thought were greatest.
Scientific advancement is obviously in our nature——but “big picture” the leaps happen infrequently——Automated transportation (RR)——75-100 years later—-flying. Individual transportation —-cars—-60 years later flying. In early 60 I carried around a small device with an earphone in my ear (transistor radio) and saw Oswald murdered live 1500 miles away. 40-50 years later handheld total and complete communication devices where anything ever done or made can be known, seen, heard almost instantly.
Information——real, fake, good, bad——is flooding the zone—-not a question, idea or image can one think of where we cannot see it an answer in seconds. My curiosity is satisfied almost just by knowing I can know.
Next up for radical transformation—-education——maybe.
Don’t think we have made much progress in prediction. We have in “description”—which we sometimes confuse with prediction.
Newton’s framework lasted 250-300 years. Einstein framework still going strong. Physics today is trying to create new paradigm—-but they have hit the empirical wall—so Far. Space time is gargantuan—-.I love the concept of UFOs as “aliens”—-even as it is clearly not true—- as I assume it means “speed of light” is incomplete.
This does not mean civilizations have not existed elsewhere billions of years ago and from now and everywhere.
It is still hard to fathom center of the earth is as hot as the sun.
Each of us had an almost infinitely small chance of existing versus someone else existing in our place——-let alone our species.
Doubling tripling life spans? So far max life has not budged. Bet on continuity.
Government is just part of humanity and is a mental “construct”. And has real day to day impacts. It can power ideas forward with money—-(nuclear power, interplanetary travel) but its nature as a construct is not creative—-which comes from everywhere——but it can aim at specific non economic ends.
We cannot know of course, but if their were no Einstein, would there not be his equivalent? Of course, that thought makes it feel like all is “fate’.
Ray Lopez
Sep 17 2019 at 3:53pm
Control + “F” key + “PATENT” –> phrase not found. Would a comprehensive history of WWI fail to mention the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferninand in 1914? Yet I constantly read about innovation without a single mention of patents. And I constantly see chessboards set up as artistic displays with the white square on the left side. Sigh.
Joseph McDevitt
Sep 18 2019 at 9:35am
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle – Franklin, Jefferson, Washington. What is next?
Scott Sumner
Sep 18 2019 at 1:40pm
Trump, Biden, and Pence? (Just kidding.)
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