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What to do? IMHO you have to kill all the regulation and the government mafia (yeah, that's what it is) preventing new businesses. I know of many people that have not started companies in the US because of the limitations for immigration (these people were computer scientists, mathematicians, physicists, some undergrad, some with PhDs). Examples abound. Beer is one that I like since I tried to start a brewery with a few chemical engineering friends a while back in Georgia. There is a regulation that breweries can only sell to distributors, and distributors can only sell to retail stores, and retail stores, pubs, and restaurants are the only entities allowed to sell alcohol. Heck, if you brew your own beer and it's more than 50 gallons a year (that's 9 batches) you can go to jail for up to 20 years. We stopped our project because of the ridiculous regulations. We had an idea of how bad it was going in, but it was beyond our expectations. I met more than 200 people that brewed on a consistent basis much superior beers than 90% of what you can get in the market (the 10% were imports), who would love to start a brewery but couldn't. They worked in the different layers of the distributors and restaurants, with their ideas crushed. This was just an example, in nearly every industry, including agriculture and manufacturing, this is the case. You want innovation, you have to fight against the ever growing crony government you have that plays special favors to each industry in countless ways to go towards a free market and allow competition. There are no incentives to innovate. You may say my beer example is outdated, well look at Dodd Frank with the banking industry, look at the federal reserve system which is destroying the money markets and causing the financial bubbles. Peter Thiel mentions that technological innovation is a way to leave recessions faster. He knows how to avoid them altogether, but suggesting ending the federal reserve is so politically incorrect (ever heard a democrat or republican even talk about this who is not alienated by his own party) that it has become a waste of time. The free market is the answer. There is more regulation in the US than in Sweden by the way, which is usually quoted as a Socialist state. The US is far more regulated than Sweden, even in healthcare and education! |