Yet empirically, the biggest funders of basic research have historically been monopolies. The US government was, at least up until the last few months, the largest funder of basic research globally and it obviously maintains multiple different monopolies, a monopoly on legal use of force, a functional monopoly on financial transactions as the global reserve currency, and I'm sure others. Excluding national governments, Bell Labs and IBM were both probably the biggest funders of basic research in the last century during their respective heydays. Bell was obviously a monopoly and while IBM might never have faced anti-trust penalties, they did at one point control 70% of the mainframe market and the DoJ did bring a case against them (that was eventually dismissed by the Reagan administration.)
I think there are many good reasons to pursue anti-trust action against companies that are in a dominant market position, but we should be honest about the tradeoffs. Businesses that have to aggressively compete to maintain market share don't have the slack to fund basic research.
Is this not a bit "tail wagging the dog" thinking? There wasn't much innovation in telecommunications once Bell's monopoly was entrenched. Once it dissipated, innovation was everywhere in the space. Similarly, computers had less innovation while IBM was a monopoly than they've had since its monopoly dissipated.
Though both companies created novel & useful inventions, the biggest shifts in those industries during those monopoly eras were from outside those organisations by competitive startups. As an example, IBM should have produced Microsoft, but they didn't. They missed out on a multi-trillion dollar value creation opportunity as a result.
There's a difference between conducting basic research and bringing new inventions to the market in the form of consumer goods or services. Monopolies are much, much worse at doing the latter than normal businesses because they have no competition pressuring them to improve their offerings.
> There wasn't much innovation in telecommunications once Bell's monopoly was entrenched. Once it dissipated, innovation was everywhere in the space.
I don't think that's accurate at all. If we take say 1920 or so as the date when the monopoly was entrenched and 1984 as the break-up, there was tons of innovation in telecom in that time period. Novel telecom technologies introduced in that time period include television, microwave relays, satellite communications, submarine telephone cables, cellular telephones, fiber optics, electronic telephone switching, packet switching, the Internet.
Which is why, like the 'monopoly on violence' the government should also be funding a _lot more research_.
It should be at, or partnered with, higher learning institutions and since it's public funded all of the results should be free to use*. I'm willing to entertain the idea of: Free use for people and corporations within the country/countries that funded research, everyone else pays compulsory license fees.
But public funded research isn’t “free to use.” In many cases, you can’t even read it without paying a scientific journal for a subscription. See the Bayh-Dole Act as well: universities can patent discoveries from federally funded research.
The intent of the Bayh-Dole Act was to deal with a perceived problem of government-owned patents being investor-unfriendly. At the time the government would only grant non-exclusive licenses, and investors generally want exclusivity. That may have been the actual problem, moreso than who owned the patent. On the other hand, giving the actual inventors an incentive to commercialize their work should increase their productivity and the chance that the inventions actually get used.
> I think there are many good reasons to pursue anti-trust action against companies that are in a dominant market position, but we should be honest about the tradeoffs.
Okay. I’ll take the monopolostic government over the monopolistic corporation. Thanks.
This line of argument to defend monopolies is the same line of argument against progressive taxation of high incomes. Just because those with trends excess use some small fraction of that excess to do good does not justify the means.
I have been close enough to billionaires and how they spend their money to not be fully impressed by such arguments.
And certainly the robber barons of the 2000s spend far less on the public good than when tax rates were higher and they used to fund universities, libraries, hospitals and the like.
The biggest funders of basic research are those with the most resources. This is your insight? I don't think anyone disagrees. Then you conflate correlation with causation and move it to _monopolies_ fund basic research. Bravo.
I think there are many good reasons to pursue anti-trust action against companies that are in a dominant market position, but we should be honest about the tradeoffs. Businesses that have to aggressively compete to maintain market share don't have the slack to fund basic research.