Are you Ron Swanson? ;-) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Swanson)
I knew my post would not be popular. That's OK. I am not a cargo-cult thinker.
It's interesting that in a thread about innovation only one person so far --me-- brings-up the elephant in the room: Government, choking innovation in so many ways it is beyond criminal.
I think most on HN would agree that the Patent Office has, in the last, say, 30 years, done more damage than good. Why does it take thirty years to fix it?
Why does anything in government take FIFTY years to change? Notice I said "change" not "fix". They rarely fix anything.
What's the impact on innovation of not having a balanced budget? An I mean, not balanced by a TRILLION dollars, not a few million? No impact at all? How is that possible?
What is the impact to innovation of having tens of millions of Americans enslaved by entitlement programs? There exist people who have been living under these programs their entire lives, even families who've been under them for generations. Here's a huge mass of people who's very drive to live and succeed has been killed off by not having to fight for survival. Innovation does not happen when you are not hungry. Period. We have to break this chain of slavery and get these people to re-join society. Those who truly need help ought to receive it through sensible programs. That's a small percentage of those currently under these programs.
We also need to limit government and keep them away from industry. I mean, stuff like the NLRB and their fight against Boeing. I'll tell you, if I were running Boeing I would have said "Fuck you all, we are moving the entire operation to Canada until you figure out that unions are the enemy of innovation and growth.".
What's the impact to innovation of the double-taxation that happens with revenue generated by businesses: Tax the employees once and then, if anything remains, tax the company. Criminal. You are taxing the same pile of money that came in through the same door!
C'mon folks, picture it this way: You start a landscaping business. You have a job this weekend. You finish the job with four other workers. The tax man shows-up. You paid each worker and yourself $100. The tax man takes $20 from everyone. You spent $100 on supplies. That means $400 remains. This is $400 to save for a rainy day, advertise to get more work, hire more people, grow the business, etc. The tax man doesn't leave. He wants another $80 bite out of the same money. So, the same money got taxed twice. And now you have less money to tend to your business.
To make things even worst. The $180 the tax man collected is going to be wasted by government in a million different ways.
Anyhow, innovation does not come from those who sign-on to cargo-culture and simply parrot what their circle is also parroting. I know I am not voicing popular culture at all. That's OK, I am not a clone. I innovate.
It was designed that way because change comes in two forms, good change and bad change. No one at the time of the creation of the US form of government could come up with a way that would enable good change to happen faster than bad change, and they recognized that bad change could could be fatal, they had to create a system where change was slow enough that bad changes could be reversed as it slowly became obvious how bad they were.
They also made the assumption that the people being governed would proactively participate in the institutions of government in order to effect change. What we've seen as that things can get bad enough to motivate participation, and in doing so force more change. The 'tea party' movement is a good example of that sort of force in action. There were more new 'tea party' congressional representatives in 2010 than any new movement had produced in a while proving once again that a block of people, motivated by the same sorts of issues can effect change by participating in their government.
Things move faster today. We can't wait another fifty years to fix the patent system, have reasonable gun control and stop fucking with the rest of the world with senseless wars. Does it really have to take fifty years for these things to be resolved?
Let's use the Tea Partiers who are currently driving us off into some fiscal unknowns. A large enough constituent of people was of the opinion that the Federal Government had gotten too big and was fiscally out of control. Their efforts managed to elect a parliamentary significant number of them to congress where they have been generally voting as a bloc against additional taxes without significant spending cuts. Whether you and I agree with them, that agenda is moving forward. It went from whine to change in less than 10 years. (I count the start of that movement around 2005/6, how about you?)
So that patent system is broken, its been broken for a long time, but until patent-a-geddon here, it never rose to the attention of anyone outside of tech circles (and like it or not we're both a relatively small and (historically) a relatively ineffective political force). And yet patent-a-geddon has put it on the radar of politicians, and big time donors like Google and Bill & Melinda Gates have been bending the ears of said politicians and for the first time in my memory we're seeing actual changes to the way the patent system works (America INVENTS act) and more critical scrutiny on both the PTO and on the federal court in Washington that hears the appeals. That is all good news and indicative that change is happening.
2014 is going to be another election year. A number of people will put their names in the hat to be your congressional representative. If you don't like what your incumbent is doing with regard to patents, talk to the contenders and see if there is any one of them that will both support your desired changes to the patent system and their personal goals aren't too distasteful. If you live somewhere like the Bay Area there are a bunch of congressional districts in the area, you can talk to lots of folks. Try to get your entire state's congressional delegation lined up around fixing patents in the next two years. To do that you will need to research some ways in which the patent system should be changed (if you want to advocate the abolishment of software patents then it helps to look at other places that have done that, they have a history you can reference). Talk to some outspoken supporters and critics of the Patent system, find out how they rationalize their position, can you argue successfully against that rationalization? Find their arguments and their evidence and see where it leads you.
None of this takes money, but it does take time and effort. Its a crap load of work, much of it fairly clerical and boring. Get other people involved (from your congressional district is the most impactful but from all over is okay too). You are going to ask a representative to stand up and say "we need to make these changes ..." and they need facts to back that up, they need counterpoints to the arguments that will be thrown in their face, they need to know who is going to come after them, and they need to know what is at stake. Your congressional representative is your tool for manipulating the Government to your will, that is their job.
Recognize too that you are but one pusher in a sea of pushers, pushing from the home district gets +1 to impact because you're a voter but there are other pushers out there. Find them and blunt their story.
And that takes time of course. Less if you have money and you can hire clerical staff, more if you run down everything yourself.
Or don't. Your choice. FWIW the voter registrar will have the names and addresses of the folks who are putting their name in the hat for Congress usually in November of this year but no later than March[1] of next year. Get the names and go talk to them. They will be happy to talk to you if they are trying to get elected.
[1] http://fec.gov - "When are the Federal Election Activity periods for my state?
Within 120 days before an election, voter registration, voter identification, get-out-the-vote and generic campaign activities conducted by state, district or local party committees are considered federal election activity (FEA) and must be financed using federal funds, Levin funds or a combination of the two. As states establish their election schedules (including special elections), the Commission calculates the applicable FEA periods."
Another thought that is interesting is the idea that all legislation ought to be passed with an expiration date. This ensures that laws --and the ideas they represent-- will be re-evaluated every n years. This approach would be one step towards preventing politicians from making decisions that will affect generations to come. Of course, some legislation needs to become the law of the land forever (civil rights stuff). Still, laws ought to be passed with fully justified and debated expiration dates. If something needs to be "forever" and it is justified, then the expiration date is "never". Most anything else might not pass the "forever" test.
I nearly ran for congress in 2010, it is still on my list of things to do. The only thing that stopped me that time was figuring out the dynamics was taking longer than I had. I no interest in offering just a random name on the ballot and putting together something of a platform took longer than I expected. In some ways I chickened out when it came to sending the FEC money. My reasoning was the paperwork burden I was about to incur vs that possible outcomes. At the time I was going to run as a Republican although the California party had already said that my views on Gay marriage (for) and abortion (pro choice) made me "unsuitable" for their support. Too late to create a 'new' party, and unlikely to make it through the primaries as an "off" ticket, didn't bode well. Instead I used the time to try to learn more about the underlying processes. Starting out targeting congress is a pretty low percentage move unless you're a Kennedy. :-)
...eh. Sorry to say but it looks a lot like you are.
No brother, I am far from cargo culture, very far. On fiscal issues the stuff you'll see me write might seem to align with the Republicans. On social issues the right wing would burn me on a cross if they could because I tend to align with the godless left (gay rights, religion, abortion, gun rights, war, etc.)
The thing about fiscal issues is that they are very, very simple. Anyone with high school math can confirm or refute claims. If you use a spreadsheet even better; you can model a far larger system and see how it actually works.
The problem with most who react negatively to calls for severe cuts, balanced budget and reduced government footprint is that they are simply parroting what has been indoctrinated into their brains without even making a small effort to put pen to paper and really understand how things work.
Here's a simple example. Model this in your spreadsheet and then tell me how YOU would solve the problem.
You hire a union gardener. He gets $200 a month. After working ten years he can retire with 80% of his salary for the rest of his life.
Ten years later he retires. Now you pay him $160 per month to stay home.
You still need a gardener and hire another one. Now that position effectively costs you $360 per month.
Ten years later this new guy retires. Now the position costs you $200 + $160 + 160 or $520 per month, nearly triple the salary for just one person.
If I hire non-union I pay my gardener $100 per year and, when he retires, I pay a similar gardener a similar amount.
Get it?
Who pays for their amazing lifetime pension benefits.
You, of course.
Do the math.
Contrary to what you (somehow) believe, innovation can only really flourish (as opposed to the sporadic jumps made otherwise) when you are safe, warm and well fed.
Maybe humger drives some people to innovate (though it's hard for me to imagine how they could drink clearly when hungry). But I suspect hunger drives most people to simply do what's necessary to eat - and they can and would stop well short of innovation to do that. I would love to see data on a significant number of innovations that were developed by hungry people.
A huge chunk of our population would be easy to look like sorry excuses for human being when compared to the stories most immigrants could tell you about their history in the new world.
Granted, we created some of these problems. That said, the human condition is such that some of us will not act unless put into a sink-or-swim predicament. Stories of able-bodied youngsters stuck in this alternate reality abound. Some have even taken to YouTube to very publicly show off what they can get for free from the government and actually talk about how you can do the same.
Look, I recognize there are a lot of things government has gotten right. That's the truth. However, today, it has degenerated into this thing that has been relentlessly destroying our country from the inside.