The Jenkins report on R&D policies in Canada, which was released on Monday, starts with a bureaucratic fantasy. In 1874, two Canadians, Henry Woodward, a medical student, and Mathew Evans, a hotelkeeper, were in the race to build a commercial light bulb, but they couldn’t find backing. When Woodward applied for a U.S. patent, Thomas Edison saw the proposal and bought it. What, asks the report, if Woodward and Evans had been able to find investors? If only, it implies, there had been a government funding body.
If only I’d bought the Google IPO. If only I’d backed Wings of Erin in the 3:30. If only government policymakers had a time machine, they’d be able, literally, to “pick winners.” However, in the absence of Doctor Who’s Tardis, their picking sucks, not least because they attract glib rent-seeking losers, or genuinely innovative corporations that just can’t resist free, or cheap, funding either to do what they would have done anyway or, worse, wouldn’t have.
Canada has been lagging in innovation for so long that it has lagged itself into becoming one of the most successful economies on Earth. “Well,” bleat the statists, “then we must have been doing something right.” Sure, the government has been doing less. Canada got most of its experiments with government-funded failure out of the way the 1970s and 1980s. However, the fetish with boosting R&D just won’t die.
Private initiative has been trouncing the government-guided or government-assisted alternative for more than 200 years. Indeed, carefully buried and tactfully worded within the Jenkins report lies the conclusion that the “bewildering array” of federal and provincial government R&D programs just doesn’t work.
The good news is that the report wants to simplify the Scientific Research and Experimental Development program by restricting it to labour costs. The bad news is that it wants the money saved to be “reallocated” to new schemes.
One must here be somewhat sympathetic to the report’s authors since the possibility of scrapping, or even shrinking, R&D expenditures was never part of their mandate. Indeed, they were specifically instructed not to consider funding cuts, presumably so that the then-minority government of Stephen Harper wouldn’t spook any rent-seekers. Now they have a majority, we can only hope that R&D is on the secret agenda.
2011年10月19日 星期三
2011年9月9日 星期五
A little civic-minded flash in Tremont: editorial
Around 8:30 Friday evening, during the Tremont neighborhood's monthly Art Walk, something very cool is going to happen. A switch will be thrown and 17 LED light fixtures attached to buildings along Professor Avenue will come to life.
That moment will mark the culmination of a 2-1/2-year grass-roots effort to make a neighborhood that includes some of Cleveland's hippest restaurants, galleries and boutiques feel even safer and more welcoming.
And the driving force has been a group of (mostly) young professionals who call themselves 10,000 Little (micro) Ideas to Keep You Believing in Cleveland.
The group's goal is pretty simple: Make this a better place to live.
When 10,000 Little (micro) Ideas held a civic brainstorming session in 2008, one idea that quickly gained traction involved better street lighting, for aesthetic and safety reasons. After some consideration, they picked Tremont.
As volunteers, they sought expertise from the corporate world, neighborhood groups and City Hall. They raised money with help from Tremont restaurateurs, and immersed themselves in the study of lighting systems. There were setbacks and disappointments, but tonight, in the city where Charles Brush introduced the electric arc streetlight in 1879, 10,000's tenacity is going to pay off.
The array of lights that will fire up may not be as extensive as originally hoped, but, as 10,000's co-President Erin Smith says, it's a start -- and if stakeholders in Tremont or other neighborhoods want to expand on it, she and her colleagues have shown them how.
It is easy to complain about what isn't being done or what someone else ought to do to make Cleveland better. But it's inspiring when passionate volunteers show that, through hard work and tenacity, this city can find ways to renew itself.
That moment will mark the culmination of a 2-1/2-year grass-roots effort to make a neighborhood that includes some of Cleveland's hippest restaurants, galleries and boutiques feel even safer and more welcoming.
And the driving force has been a group of (mostly) young professionals who call themselves 10,000 Little (micro) Ideas to Keep You Believing in Cleveland.
The group's goal is pretty simple: Make this a better place to live.
When 10,000 Little (micro) Ideas held a civic brainstorming session in 2008, one idea that quickly gained traction involved better street lighting, for aesthetic and safety reasons. After some consideration, they picked Tremont.
As volunteers, they sought expertise from the corporate world, neighborhood groups and City Hall. They raised money with help from Tremont restaurateurs, and immersed themselves in the study of lighting systems. There were setbacks and disappointments, but tonight, in the city where Charles Brush introduced the electric arc streetlight in 1879, 10,000's tenacity is going to pay off.
The array of lights that will fire up may not be as extensive as originally hoped, but, as 10,000's co-President Erin Smith says, it's a start -- and if stakeholders in Tremont or other neighborhoods want to expand on it, she and her colleagues have shown them how.
It is easy to complain about what isn't being done or what someone else ought to do to make Cleveland better. But it's inspiring when passionate volunteers show that, through hard work and tenacity, this city can find ways to renew itself.
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