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The blue LED was supposed to be impossible—until a young engineer proposed a moonshot idea.

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[-] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 169 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It's an extreme example that perfectly illustrates how profit is extracted from employees by the employers. He didn't have any leverage to get a larger share of the profit from his labor, as is the case with most employees. You could call it toxic behavior, and it is, but it's the expected behavior, the behavior incentivised by the system.

[-] Cethin@lemmy.zip 78 points 7 months ago

It also shows how capitalism hinder innovation. It doesn't create it. The potentially innovative path took money without any guarantee of creating profit. It's bad business to be innovative. Capitalism prioritizing profit never chooses the best path, even if it gets a good ending eventually despite itself.

[-] iopq@lemmy.world 25 points 7 months ago

It's a capitalist company that funded him to go to Florida and bought him the machine to do his work.

Where do you think he would get the 3 million the company gave him? It's the company that spent that money to bet on innovation and they got a return on investment

Capitalism never chooses the best path, but neither does any other system. We haven't invented a perfect system, and it's probably impossible. Sounds like a strange critique since we'll never reach perfection

[-] nintendiator@feddit.cl 12 points 7 months ago

Capitalism never chooses the best path, but neither does any other system. We haven’t invented a perfect system, and it’s probably impossible. Sounds like a strange critique since we’ll never reach perfection

Just because nothing is perfect doesn't mean we can't call out stuff for not being it. Sounds like a strange critique since we're supposed to improve on things.

[-] iopq@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

Yes, but in any system some guy will decide which research is important. And that guy can't possibly make correct decisions every time.

I don't see a way to improve on it

[-] nintendiator@feddit.cl 2 points 7 months ago

And that guy can’t possibly make correct decisions every time.

Doesn't matter. What matters is that they make correct decisions oftener than before.

And the way to improve on it is clear: do more of that, with peer review.

Come on this is not news, this is how progress has worked in the last [checks smudgy writing] 4600 years.

[-] iopq@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

Then invest in a company that is structured that way, there's no actual constraint on how a company is organized in capitalism

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this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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