Except when a competitive response to your offering threatens the incumbents revenue stream. That's the one case an incumbent will be slow to invest in competing technology.
Another trigger for the uproar these days is the fear that Krugman and his ilk are allowed to conduct grand social experiments with the economy. Many see huge economics experiments like the Great Moderation as the cause of our ills, and expect the worst from risky proposals from economists and politicians.
Odd, since our ipad has hardly been used the last few weeks. After a couple of weeks of heavy use, it's now gathering dust. Wife is back to using her netbook, kids have gone back to their own computers.
Not saying it's useless, but it is far less used than I expected.
This is an example of an obvious idea - only it won't be obvious until people start using networked computers for some time and realize the need. Unfortunately we have a low bar for what is not obvious, e.g. when no one else has yet had the need for it. Being the first to do something should not give anyone the right to prevent others from doing it.
Patents are a net cost to society, and software and business patents are teeing up to explode those costs. A large tax on the real economy this way comes, with the spoils largely to lawyers and financiers who produce nothing of real value.
I absolutely agree. The fact that I know of 2 independent reinventions in the period between filing and issuance underscores your point.
But the recollections of the Marimba founder, and my memories of how people around me reacted to apt, both confirm my point that the technology seemed very innovative to most people at the time.
Just because bankers are not the root of all evil does not mean they are not evil.
The key message is that bankers do a lot more damage than good with the money and leverage handed to them by the govt. Their positive impact on the economy has been vastly overstated, and the public is increasingly wise to that scam.
This is why the parents of affected kids don't trust the medical community to address their concerns. They see the impact immediately after the kids get vaccines, but your mind is made up unfortunately.
Someone comes to me without any credible evidence and states "I think statins cause cancer. Let us randomize people with high LDL to statins or placebo." I will reject this study, not because my mind is "made up" and I am stubborn, but because the prior probability is low (due to lack of credible evidence) that statins truly lead to an excess of cancer, whereas the evidence supporting the use of statins to reduce death in those with high LDL is of gargantuan proportions.
So while I am sorry that we as a medical community have not succeeded in making it clear why no randomized trial should be conducted for vaccines given the current evidence, I reject the assertion that this is simply because "my mind is made up."
There's plenty of parents of kids with autism who accept the science and e.g. get their younger kids vaccinated so it can't be as obvious a link as you'd suggest.
Krugman is obviously smart, as well as arrogant and a liberal shill. But that's not the problem.
The issue is that he, and the economics establishment led by Helicopter Ben, never met a rate cut they did not like. Cheap money and credit are the fix for every problem. Today many recognize Greenspan held rates too low for too long. At the time, Krugman opposed rate increases from those low levels. He and his ilk fail to see any connection between destructive booms and the cheap credit they promote.
vtnext, in all the excitement of his Nobel, his actual economic views (as opposed to his politics, which I completely don't care about one way or another) about events in the real world have been forgotten.
In fall of 2004, as Greenspan started raising interest rates in baby steps (very belatedly - housing was already bubbling up), Krugman was very opposed to those rate hikes. His analogy for the tech-telecom bust was with the post-bubble doldrums in Japan - and it was no time to be risking a slide back by rising rates.
In the event, directly as a result of that easy credit policy, we got the mother of all bubbles in housing, which has almost taken the entire financial system down with it. Krugman did not anticipate the bigger bubble that was brewing even as he was advocating continuing 1% interest rates (well below the rate of inflation even then!).
Economists like Nouriel Roubini, Steven Roach (then Chief Economist at Morgan Stanley), eminent people like Paul Volcker (Fed Chairman between 79-87), investors like Warren Buffet & Marc Faber all warned about the 2004-7 bubble in housing several times, for many years. Krugman had a very public voice during that entire time, but saw no problems with the Greenspan/Bernanke Fed.
It is worth remembering this real world record, as the world fetes his Nobel prize.
Krugman in this op-ed from 2004 doesn't seem to be advocating lower interest rates, but simply stating that they are probably coming, and that many people are badly prepared for them.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F05E6DD1E3BF...
"A number of analysts have accused Mr. Greenspan of fostering a debt bubble in recent years, just as they accuse him of feeding the stock bubble during the 1990's. Just two months ago, Mr. Greenspan went out of his way to emphasize the financial benefits of adjustable-rate, as opposed to fixed-rate, mortgages. Let's hope that not too many families regarded that as useful advice."
