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Research labs wholly owned and operated by large corporations were prevalent sources of innovation throughout the 20th century in the United States.

Obvious, probably for Hacker News crowd:

• Bell Labs • Xerox PARC • IBM Watson, Almaden Research • Dow Chemical

I'm missing the big ones from petroleum and agricultural businesses. Aerospace.

I'm willing to believe that a political retreat from 21st century choices looks towards legendary captains of industry, rather than sprawling government bureaucracy, as a source of American greatness.

My attempt to frame this week's gleeful destruction of government institutions as a revitalization of the fountainhead.

But I don't know. It's easier to just call it the same old spiteful hatred of science that is as American as apple pie.



From my basic understanding of Bell labs, the government granted AT&T a monopoly in communications with the condition that they spend a portion of their revenue on public research. The other labs I don’t know much about, but my guess is it was either similar situations or high corporate tax rates incentivizing spending profits on research to decrease their tax burden.




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