[rmrfstar]

Yeah, but you don't grow GDP 5% per year by shaving basis points off of vacuum tube manufacturing costs.

You grow 5% per year by putting physicists, chemists, and engineers under one roof and letting them invent transistors. Society at large will thank you, and the builders/makers/hackers doing dope shit will thank you.

[bumby]

R&D is definitely necessary for long term growth but I think you might be surprised how much process improvements can improve productivity.

In a previous role as an industrial/process engineer, it wasn’t unheard of to productivity increases approaching 20% for relatively little capital investment