USSR could never exist on its own for a day.

You mean besides Machiavellian politicking? That’s not nothing.

I’m tempted to see the negative coupling between politics and invention as more essential than many other parties to this discussion do (it’s a dead-weight loss to zero-sum psychological manipulation and the talents needed to be ‘good’ at it have no techno-scientific pay-off). Still, it requires an argument with a lot more structure than this.

PS. ‘Silicone Valley’ is Hollywood and the porn industry, or Twin Peaks. The digital panopticon industry is based in Silicon Valley.

Innovation can occur in spite of, not because of, an immediate socio-political context. Some American inventions during the Great Depression and the invention of the welfare state include the electric guitar, FM radio, the radio telescope, the Richter scale, the pH meter, the Philips screwdriver, lambda calculus, and fiberglass . . .

I think it’s easier to talk about what doesn’t work to spur invention, rather than what does work. I’ve pointed to Joel Mokyr’s work on my blog, and his basic premise is that any attempt to stifle competition and create safe equilibria for economic players will atrophy innovation. This atrophy leads, in extreme cases, to total rot (c.f., Detroit).

It’s extremely difficult to reduce the complex engine of technological innovation to a single system, but it’s much easier to see what has clogged the engine in the past. For reactionary politics, it’s better to make sure the engine isn’t clogged, that it’s running well, than to argue about what’s more important for making it run.

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More politics, less accomplishment? Usually, that’s the case. But look at the 1960s and NASA. The Space Race was totally politicized and USG threw shitloads of money at it. NASA budget was 4% of the national at one point. And it got us to the moon.

But politics was on the side of real knowledge in this case. Another point made by Mokyr is that state-funding of science has only been beneficial when the money is well spent, that is, when it is spent on scientists who are actually on to something and need some help to bring it to fruition. The Age of Exploration was a success because governments began funding people who really had figured out this whole navigation business. Had they instead funded people still looking into a way through the Hollow Earth, well . . .

The reason we need to decouple knowledge-creation and politics is not because the two can’t be coupled together for positive ends; they can be. The reason we need to decouple them circa 2013 is that politicians make stupid decisions about which knowledge to pursue. America spends billions on blank-slatist education policies that we know don’t work while its space program rots. It brings in tax dollars but doesn’t channel enough of them toward innovative, profitable ends.

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Total collapse begins to occur when the stupidity of political decisions (not politics per se) outweigh the benefits accrued through innovations occurring in spite of that stupidity. California hasn’t collapsed because it has Hollywood, the porn industry, and Silicone Valley. Californian politicians can afford to be really, really, really stupid. Take away Hollywood, the porn industry, and Silicone Valley, California would be bankrupt within a decade and the L.A. riots would look like child’s play . . .