{"id":80676,"date":"2022-01-17T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-17T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=80676"},"modified":"2022-01-16T15:07:41","modified_gmt":"2022-01-16T21:07:41","slug":"innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=80676","title":{"rendered":"Innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Americans are the world&#8217;s greatest innovators, right?\u00a0 We come up with all the clever new ideas, then other nations copy us.<br \/><br \/>Except . . . not lately.\u00a0 Remember the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973? The price of gas doubled, if you could even buy it (purchases were rationed).\u00a0\u00a0 American carmakers were building V-8 Impalas and Chargers when consumers wanted 4-cylinder Civics and Corollas. And nobody wanted a Nova, Pinto, or Pacer, ever.\u00a0\u00a0 At one point, it was cheaper to dig iron ore from Minnesota, ship it through the Great Lakes to the Atlantic, then through the Panama Canal to Japan to be made into steel which was turned into an automobile to be sent by ship back to the US and carried by rail to Minnesota for sale . . . cheaper than a car built right here in America. American car makers got hit so hard President Reagan had to impose &#8216;voluntary&#8221; import quotas to save the industry.\u00a0 The innovation in automotive design and manufacturing came from abroad, not from at home.<br \/><br \/>I enjoy flying very small airplanes (Light Sport category, total aircraft weight under 650 lbs, smaller than a Cessna 152).\u00a0 I&#8217;d love to have one but surveying the used airplane market is eye-opening, and not just in price.\u00a0 The 162 Skycatcher never caught on and is all but orphaned now, they&#8217;re practically giving them away and for good reason &#8211; nobody wants one.\u00a0 The real innovations in light sport aircraft are coming from Europe: Germany (Remos and Flight Design), the Czech Republic (Aerotrek, Aeroprakt, Bristell, Evektor, Czech Sport), Slovenia (Pipistril), and Italy (Tecnam). \u00a0 My last airplane had an Ivo prop (go read his life story on the company website, it&#8217;s amazing).\u00a0 Even South Africa (Sling) and Australia (Jabiru) are in the game.\u00a0 Sure, there are American light sport airplane makers but the big names aren&#8217;t ours, the big sales aren&#8217;t ours, the innovation and enthusiasm aren&#8217;t ours.\u00a0 Why not?<br \/><br \/>Some people argue it&#8217;s because the FAA regulations are stupid (they are, but that&#8217;s nothing new).\u00a0 I wonder if there&#8217;s something else going on.\u00a0 Why has America lost the innovation lead?\u00a0 What happened to our entrepreneurs?\u00a0 Was President Obama correct to say, &#8220;You didn&#8217;t build that?&#8221;\u00a0 What happened to us?<br \/><br \/>Joe Doakes<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Possible guesses:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Americans are too addicted to entertainment to innvovate<\/li><li>Regulations &#8211; FAA or whatever &#8211; really <em>are <\/em>stifling innovation<\/li><li>Democrats have succeeded in raising a generation with no ambition whatsoever.  <\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m open to othet theories. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Americans are the world&#8217;s greatest innovators, right?\u00a0 We come up with all the clever new ideas, then other nations copy us. Except . . . not lately.\u00a0 Remember the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973? The price of gas doubled, if you could even buy it (purchases were rationed).\u00a0\u00a0 American [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy-and-the-market"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80677,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80676\/revisions\/80677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}