Bell Labs was more of a university than a company. It had a gov’t-mandated monopoly and basically infinite access to academic research resources. Along with the mandate that their research be made public
Noting that, was Bell Labs really much more successful than a more typical research institution like MIT or NASA?
TFA mentions why academia is not the same as Bell Labs. Most researchers spend more time writing grant proposals than doing research. And the culture of publish-or-die leads to a lot of stress to just get something out the door, which leads to a lot of bad science on top of it. Especially in the softer sciences where good experiments are hard to do right.
It is debatable whether NASA has made any great leaps of discovery or engineering over the last 3 decades or so. The Apollo missions were spectacularly successful (even accounting for setbacks) and we have a great deal of insight as to why they worked so well.
I have my own thoughts about why it doesn't work today (in the West, at least) but I'll keep them to myself because they are not organized and are likely to start a political debate or three in any case.
Do the younger generations stand a chance with the current state of the internet as a dopamine force-feeder always on tap? The curiosity that drove people to create hasn't left humans, but the sheer availability of interesting things to discover makes it hard to put the phone down and do boring things for long enough to make something great. I wouldn't be surprised to see productivity (not sure if that's the right word) loss of more than 20%.
Replace internet with TV, radio, or any of many other things developed over the years and the rest of your rant can be brought back in time as far as you care to go. Historians can find rants back in the Roman times about how the younger generation was only interested in dopamine. (Dopamine wasn't known 2000 years ago, but that is what they were getting at).
It's also not nearly as good as Eric Gilliam's "How did places like Bell Labs know how to ask the right questions?" https://www.freaktakes.com/p/how-did-places-like-bell-labs-k... , posted here a few months ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43295865 . That could almost have been written as a rebuttal to TFA's storytelling about unlimited researcher freedom at Bell Labs, though in fact it predates TFA by a couple of years.
The corporate tax rate was much higher during the 1950s and 1960s [0], which would seem to encourage companies to invest in research to grow their business instead of giving the government the money.
I don't have a strong opinion on this, but it seems like it could be a factor.
>The freedom to waste time. The freedom to waste resources. And the autonomy to decide how.
I think we massively underestimate just how much one simple fact, the absurd explosion of housing costs, have contributed to this. Take that away and just about everyone would have this kind of freedom. Look at just the gaming industry for example. Practically any great game from the past decade you can name was made in Europe or Japan; places that have kept these costs low relative to the rest of the West. When you don't have everyone terrified about how they're going to make rent next month, it frees up literally everything else. You can take these random walks and experiment when the cost of your existence doesn't necessitate bringing in huge amounts of income.
Japanese gaming industry employees have low economic stress and high feelings of freedom? I'd be surprised. Even if that is true, can that really be connected to housing availability? Again, I'd be surprised.
Instead of the efficient allocation of capital we have wealth transfers from producers and consumers to a financial rentier class that produces nothing. This class, which effectively owns the government and plans the economy, is responsible for not only high housing costs but high healthcare costs as well. It is gradually cannibalizing the rest of the economy and turning the population into debt slaves.
This is the real road to serfdom, which Hayek missed.
I don’t know about Japan, but housing costs in Germany (at least in the big cities) have increased massively (a lot more than wages) in the last 15 years.
In the UK at least, researchers have many options for research fellowships of 3-5 years, paid, many with total academic freedom to do whatever you like
My partner just got accepted to one after spending 3 months applying to 5 fellowships — an 8% ratio of application:research time.
In an Oxford or Cambridge college, you're working, eating and (for younger fellows) living in college with many other smart people. Sounds like a lot of cross-pollination of ideas happens there.
> In the UK at least, researchers have many options for research fellowships of 3-5 years, paid, many with total academic freedom to do whatever you like
Perhaps in theory. But surely you're not going to get the next fellowship (or other academic role) unless you have shown some demonstrable output at the end of this one? That's still at least some level of pressure to try something safer but incremental rather than risky but potentially groundbreaking.
In Spain, apart from the grant application, you have to write countless reports that take a lot of time, do endless bureaucracy to hire people or buy things, justify every expenditure. Probably you also need to hunt for a second simultaneous fellowship because typically they're too small to do meaningful research. And all this is on top of teaching, and endless evaluations where you need to submit various versions of your CV and supporting documentation (we often have 2-4 such evaluations a year). When all is said and done, time for actual research tends to zero. We live off PhD students who don't have to do all that.
The UK seems considerably better (much less bureaucracy and fewer hours of teaching) but still, you probably need to do reports and stuff on top of the grant applications.
Readit News
Why Bell Labs Worked - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43957010 - May 2025 (234 comments)
https://1517.substack.com/p/why-bell-labs-worked
The original definitely didn't include lines like
> Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Deleted Comment
Noting that, was Bell Labs really much more successful than a more typical research institution like MIT or NASA?
It is debatable whether NASA has made any great leaps of discovery or engineering over the last 3 decades or so. The Apollo missions were spectacularly successful (even accounting for setbacks) and we have a great deal of insight as to why they worked so well.
I have my own thoughts about why it doesn't work today (in the West, at least) but I'll keep them to myself because they are not organized and are likely to start a political debate or three in any case.
Despite that we have been fine.
Deleted Comment
The corporate tax rate was much higher during the 1950s and 1960s [0], which would seem to encourage companies to invest in research to grow their business instead of giving the government the money.
I don't have a strong opinion on this, but it seems like it could be a factor.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_tax_in_the_United_St...
I think we massively underestimate just how much one simple fact, the absurd explosion of housing costs, have contributed to this. Take that away and just about everyone would have this kind of freedom. Look at just the gaming industry for example. Practically any great game from the past decade you can name was made in Europe or Japan; places that have kept these costs low relative to the rest of the West. When you don't have everyone terrified about how they're going to make rent next month, it frees up literally everything else. You can take these random walks and experiment when the cost of your existence doesn't necessitate bringing in huge amounts of income.
Instead of the efficient allocation of capital we have wealth transfers from producers and consumers to a financial rentier class that produces nothing. This class, which effectively owns the government and plans the economy, is responsible for not only high housing costs but high healthcare costs as well. It is gradually cannibalizing the rest of the economy and turning the population into debt slaves.
This is the real road to serfdom, which Hayek missed.
In the UK at least, researchers have many options for research fellowships of 3-5 years, paid, many with total academic freedom to do whatever you like
My partner just got accepted to one after spending 3 months applying to 5 fellowships — an 8% ratio of application:research time.
In an Oxford or Cambridge college, you're working, eating and (for younger fellows) living in college with many other smart people. Sounds like a lot of cross-pollination of ideas happens there.
Perhaps in theory. But surely you're not going to get the next fellowship (or other academic role) unless you have shown some demonstrable output at the end of this one? That's still at least some level of pressure to try something safer but incremental rather than risky but potentially groundbreaking.
The UK seems considerably better (much less bureaucracy and fewer hours of teaching) but still, you probably need to do reports and stuff on top of the grant applications.