“It may sound simplistic, but the ultimate indicator of patent quality is how much money a company or institution has spent on protecting its application, including by filing it in many countries,”
That’s kind of an interesting metric. Makes sense, I guess.
I assume it will keep going up. They’re pouring so much money into clean energy tech, and they’re still only doubling what little South Korea is doing.
We (USA) gave up on being clean energy leaders decades ago and now China has emerged in our place.
Now, between meddling in our universities, research granting system, and an insane HHS Secretary, we’re headed on the same path in a larger number of other science and technical fields, especially Medicine.
The US has never been a clean energy leader.
The article mentioned solar tech being first patented in the US, and even as recently as the 70s the government injected cash to push it forward.
So maybe not “Clean energy leader” per se, but certainly tech leader in the clean energy space.
A tech leader 55 years ago isnt a tech leader anymore. I donated a dollar to a solar development program, which is a larger percentage of my wealth than the US put forward of its. Am I a tech leader now too?
Because we gave up on it decades ago.
The correct wording would be to give up on becoming, giving up on being indicates that they were at the point they gave up.
Also, we (USA) gave up on being the world leader in 2025 and now China has emerged in our place.
Why are patents on clean energy developments allowed to begin with?
The same reason we allow them on any other technology — they create a financial incentive for innovation.
Because you need to horde the technology in order to secure private financing that builds the industrial productive capacity.
Who else is going to cover the up front costs? The government? Fuck you, that’s Communism! You’re going to kill 100 Zillion people
But that would work imply China isn’t Communist…ahh, yes, I see your point.
I’m not sure if this is serious but China’s a textbook definition of a mixed economy and has been since at least the 80s.
Their utilities are all state owned enterprises. They have an enormous public sector for housing, education, health care, transportation, etc. Then the private sector handles consumer logistics and private lending and luxury goods and entertainment, which is how you get a guy like Jack Ma or Hui Ka Yan arrested for embezzlement and fraud from time to time.
Being “state owned” isn’t seizing the means of production. Workers largely remain alienated from the fruits of their labor.
Where? In a country with high quality of life, low cost of living, ample at-cost amenities, and a sub-60 retirement age? Is the material wealth of the nation distributed in an egalitarian manner Not Real Communism?
What then is Communism? Is Communism when everyone has a 401k full of private equities (worker ownership)? Is it when they all own the same number of Bitcoins? Does everyone just need their name on their company letterhead?
Marx would frown at confusing fictitious assets for material analysis.
Yeah, that’s not what I’m getting at in the least. You have socialism when the workers receive the full benefits of their labor. You have communism when society is organized around providing what you can, and taking what you need. On a mass scale, I don’t see this happening anywhere in the world, but it does exist in smaller groups.
You have socialism when the workers receive the full benefits of their labor.
You have socialism when the community receives the full benefit of working labor. Even then, trying to slap a puritanical lens that ignores the dramatic shift in social equity between pre-Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary China isn’t materialist. To say a modern working class Chinese resident isn’t enjoying a vastly larger share of their collective surplus labor, you’ve got to ignore a ton of social investment and commensurate benefits to the public.
But if you do want to be puritanical, we can go back to Old School Maoism. Per Michael Parenti, the Maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry. Hard to get more Communist than that. The catch was that China’s subsequent divorce from global trade crippled their domestic economy and forced urban and rural proles into conflict. Dengism was an effort at reconciling the contradictions of industrial development.
We can debate the trade-offs. We can condemn the violence during the transition. But we cannot deny that these are Chinese people setting their own domestic policy. Maoism, Dengism, and Xi’s Socialism With Chinese Characteristics aren’t being imposed by Americans on Wall Street or the British Empire or the IMF Banking Committee. Chinese people are running the Chinese economy for the benefit of the collective community of Chinese residents.
On a mass scale, I don’t see this happening anywhere in the world
If you don’t see it happening, you’re not looking.
Or, you’re attempting to apply Socialism and Communism in such an orthodox manner that you’ve defined “Real Leftism” it out of existence.
awful lot of astroturfing for China recently.
They’ve gone ahead and built a solar and wind power manufacturing juggernaut. Its a big deal for anybody like me who wants those deployed at scale. You’ll find that I’m also critical of China on other topics.
Stolen tech.
There is a single light of science, to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
I can’t really argue about them stealing what was willingly given to them.
everybody on every level starts off by copying and stealing, from individual people to organizations and companies up to entire countries and alliances. if we are to develop as a species, maybe sharing more unique knowledge and technology with each other is actually a way to progress.
Well, I can’t order argue about that but what I mean specifically is that technical plans were given to Chinese companies in Chinese companies clearly gave to the government, because that’s what they are in business for. It was pretty silly for anyone to think that they weren’t going to steal it
Suspiciously, all claimed stolen tech seems to be based on stolen knowledge…
Why is NYTimes saying this?
In the useless hope that it will convince people who otherwise don’t care about “green energy” that it’s something they should care about. If it ever worked in the past, the effect was minimal at best. As evidenced by the fact that its need is still “hotly debated” in this backwater shithole of a country.
Is it debated? Maybe there are Fox News talking points to drag renewables, but here on the ground, in the most conservative place I’ve ever lived, solar is booming. I cannot imagine talking to anyone, of any political stripe, would debate the usefulness.
Oh, and “is it debated?” Among rational adults, not at all.
I have a feeling home solar is big for the obvious reason: lower power bills. Depending on needs and future residence plans, they pay themselves off in somewhere between 12-20 years. What they tend not to like is government investment in research and municipal projects to build out green energy in the grid. That’s communism!
Plus, (human-caused) climate change denial is certainly back on the rise. It’s more than talking points with many of the right wing politicians. It’s funny. I remember when global warming “wasn’t a thing.” Then, after it was changed to “climate change,” they kept banging on about the global warming hoax with BS like snowballs on the Senate floor. Then they came around to, “OK, climate change is real, but it’s cyclical. This isn’t caused by us!” They keep tiptoeing to the left on this, and recently, they’ve regressed back to “clean coal,” and “drill baby drill!”
Even if the voters know it’s bullshit, and believe climate change is man made and a real problem, it isn’t affecting their voting, so what they actually think doesn’t really matter. At least not until they force their party to get its head out of its ass.
I dont mind them harping on it, being afraid of being overtaken is the only thing that’s driven US tech since the Space Race started (as long as we ignore finding ways to swindle or torture poor folk)
I just think it’s sad that the country needs a “Bad Guy” for the government to think about driving serious innovation that doesn’t just benefit the military (see: DARPA &, to a lesser extent, the Interstate Highway System).
Why not? It gets clicks, probably mostly panic clicks but that counts, and it’s solid analysis. Maybe there’s ulterior motives, maybe not.
