Newsweek once had an interesting piece on how Israel produces one of the highest innovations per capita every year in the world, coming right after or with Finland and United States.
Under Israel's highly competitive selection for elite institutions after school, when everybody undergoes compulsory military service, the best aim for and reach the electronics and technology based departments. The moment they leave there, many of them create technologies for which they easily receive seed capital and they often end up floating new ventures with technologies marketed all over the world.
Newsweek tried to make a suggestion that since the compulsory military service seems to bring out the best in Israelis, other western nations should imitate their model, so that young entrepreneurship could easily bring those countries out of recession. This was a circa 2008 article.
I ask all of you - does Israel's elite education system create its best innovations, or is it rather a stronger childhood aptitude for electronics in many Israelis that is merely supplemented by their education system?
I'm Israeli, but I wouldn't consider their education system "elite". I try to explain to people that in Jewish culture, that education is a very high priority and it always has been. Education is something that is pushed very strongly in the home.
As of late, their government has drastically laxxed their regulations on entrapaneurship.
Should be weighted against the fact Israel is a mayor recipient of foreign aid. How much of Israel's sucess in any field is down to subsidies from the American taxpayer?
Who subsidises computer security software? I don't think that happens anywhere in the world.
Marko: <Should be weighted against the fact Israel is a mayor recipient of foreign aid.>
If anything, subsidies of all kinds stifle innovation. Just look at almost any subsidized industry over time. I'd say that it's growth and innovation in the electronics and IT fields comes in spite of it's subsidies, not because of them.
Necessity, however, is a huge motivator. I think that Israel's national security need that drives many of the new innovations and highly skilled technical people. That's how they invented the cellular phone. Look at the new inventions that came about on both sides from the military buildup during the Cold War. That's one reason we're typing in this forum right now.
Ultimately, though, innovations such as cell phones and the internet need to be taken to the open market if they are to thrive. Restrictions imposed by governments only stifle new ideas, as they did before the deregulation of the phone company.
Military training can give someone in a technical field excellent training, and the ability to apply it in the real world. That's how I got my start. I have to say, however, that I'm against any kind of compulsory service unless, as in Israel, national survival is at stake. The overall quality of the military improves dramatically when it is entirely voluntary. It worked for Rome, and has worked for America until very recently.
Well, I remember having had long discussions with my father and various friends on this exact issue.
Does or does not scientific research by itself produce huge gains for humanity?
Both I and other people would begin by agreeing on one thing. There is a long gestation period between discovering something and applying it for mass production. In our conclusions, we differ. I say it means that it is not the research that matters, but capital, because only capital allows mass production and mass consumption of a new technological invention. They say that it is the research (and all the disproportionately high funding for it) that matters, because without either a generous donor or the pooling of taxpayer's money, such inventions can not get off since they won't face much immediate demand in the private market except in the very long term.
I always respond that this is a tautology and an admission that the research by itself did not create value for anybody but slow rise in incomes and capital for investment did. Then the entire discussion goes in such circles, with new, fresh, and interesting examples from all sides.
Either way, where the military was once a prime creator, it is now a consumer of secondary creations. One interesting news from two or three years ago was how the military was buying up large stockpiles of Playstations, rewiring them, and using them for own particular military-based application.
You were talking about the role of public education and compulsory military service on innovation. Even if they play a role it is not something easily replicated elsewhere where the means are more limited.
There is an aggregate loss as disproportionate means are taken from other projects and then spent in a fairly lackluster way, however throwing money at something usually helps more than it hurts looking narrowly at just the one goal.
But throwing money at something will reduce incentive to work harder, no? If our family's jewelry business started getting subsidies or a negative tax per good sold, we'd no longer be fighting to cut our prices and increase our sales, and we'd just be content with selling a smaller stock of goods at higher prices.
A Hong Kong statesman once refused subsidies for infant industry when he said that an infant industry coddled will always remain an infant industry.
But look, if the IDF or the public education system in Israel do something special to the young Israelis that go through them to turn them into bright little innovators (as was the thesis you offered), then it is plausible to say, this is easier for Israel to do since it recieves external funding and has more money to dispense with. So even if its "elite education system" is a success story it does not necessarily mean that other nations should take its lead and model their system after its. It could simply be that Israel's success is down to it as a recipient of free money being able to throw more money at it.
I am sure that a private education would be even better in creating innovators, but we are not comparing private to public. We are comparing public systems. A richly funded public service will be generally superior to a poorly funded public service.
It is very hard to talk when you don't seem to remember what the content of your opening post was. Also I said Israel was being subsidised by the US. I did not say Israel spent the aid on subsidies.
also North Korea has a compulsory military.. so what?.I must say that In spite of Israeli compulsory military service and compulsory poor education they succeed to innovate. I invisitigated Jewish culture and one must understand Jewish culture to understand Israel. Most of them are diligence and industrious. look how they succeeded in the capitalist U.S... in Israel they have low incomes, mainly because of the socialism imposed by Israel founder David Ben Gurion. It is true that Israel High-Tech is in an unfettered market, however, big government and powerful union ["Histadrut"] ruin Israel industrious output. For this reason, Israel GDP per capita is lower than other western countries.
To assume that Israel military helps innovation is just a ridiculous statement. it`s like to say : "Western countries are the richest in the world because they have welfare programs". Of course, western countries are the richest in the world because the era of an unfettered markets and in spite of their welfare programs. Same with the IDF. one must be careful to not be "Fooled by Randomness" as Taleb said.
AustrianAdvocate is spot on correct.
The socialists (call them the "Ben Gurion" camp) have for a long time been dominating politically more market minded people "(call them the "Menachem Begin" camp): to the detriment of living standards.
There are many high level professionals who cannot get good jobs because of various union and government restrictions and meddling in industrial output.
There are many consumer electronics produced outside of Israel that are toys to us, but are expensive at their price level and living standards. Real wages are much lower in Israel than in the USA.
Every nation would be 'GREAT" in all the meaning of the word if every day they are faced with the same question of NATIONAL SURVIVAL as Israelis do.
Corporatism is using state means to enhance market share and profitability of a few favored firms, at the expense of the citizen.
Does this work for neighbourhoods? and individual households too?
Hoping some pitchforky people with siege your house so you can be 'great' too?
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
Israel had/has great tax breaks for technology companies. (what libertarian can be against tax breaks, just too bad other industries are taxed so bad)
Israel had a lot of technology/investment subsidy (100's of millions of dollars of matching funds). Of course, this is to the detriment of other Israeli industries and the general israeli welfare, and so too, global welfare, but by subsidy you can coax high tech industry to your country taming it/tainting it, but then... its in your country, so thats where people see it. My point is that, if the USA started up a 'jetpack' subsidy, although it would be a net welfare loss to everyone, in the USA and in the Global Community, however the country in which you would see the 'jetpack' industries big players run their factories (at least in the short-medium-run) would be the USA.
Also, I think the post-soviet brain drain has a lot to do with it.
does Israel's elite education system create its best innovations, or is it rather a stronger childhood aptitude for electronics in many Israelis that is merely supplemented by their education system?
1) subsidy
2) Nations do not create people, and we can't speak of society in a holistic sense. These metaphors are beyond logical or scientific discourse
LTV? Plus once again, what is "for humanity"?
You can not use the word "create" with a subsidized force in economic language or in the world of inter-subjective values.
Elite education, being well bred, and superior technology is created by your valuations, nothing more. And unless you plan on ruling the Israeli people, I don't even know if you can be cognizant to anything you are asking.
>I ask all of you - does Israel's elite education system create its best innovations
You aren't even providing emperical data. You are providing mere anecdotes. And your anecdotes conflict with the point you are trying to make: you said US created even MORE innovations than Israel. And I would call US education opposite of "elite".
>Newsweek once had an interesting piece on how Israel produces one of the highest innovations per capita every year in the world, coming right after or with Finland and United States.
Who cares? Based on Ricardo's Law of Comparative Advantage, maybe the world would be better off if they focused on bagels instead of "innovations"?
>the best aim for and reach the electronics and technology based departments
I see. But you are spending time on an economics forum. Does that mean you aren't "the best"?
>Newsweek tried to make a suggestion that since the compulsory military service seems to bring out the best in Israelis
The fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc
Maybe founding bagel universities would be the best use of Israel's capital. Who knows?? Your socialist overtones (i.e. we should force people at gunpoint into involuntary military service, because they'll magically make more "innovations", which are magically good) are misguided.
You mean like Rhodesia?