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Research shows that the political ideology of communism restricts innovation, todays panacea for economic growth and long-term prosperity.

In broad strokes, the communist tenets of state ownership of business and property with strict government supervision lead to a risk-averse culture working in an environment that discourages ambition and creativity. This could not be further from the building blocks that innovation needs to thrive.

The 2017 International Intellectual Property Index, recently published by the Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC) of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ranks the current bastion of communism, China No. 27 and formerly communist Russia No. 23behind the smaller economies of Malaysia, Mexico, and Turkey, for example.

The report associates stronger intellectual property (IP) protection regimes with more innovative economies and conversely, weak IP protection as hindering long-term strategic innovation and development.

A robust national IP environment correlates strongly with a wide range of macroeconomic indicators that fall under the umbrella of innovation and creativity, according to the GIPC report.

The leading countries in IP strength are free market, capitalist economies such as the United States and United Kingdom. First-world democratic countries of Europe and Asia also rank highly.

Ma Guangyuan,Independent Chinese economist

The report states that Russias protectionist moveslocal production, procurement, and manufacturingwork to restrict IP rights. Russia also suffers from persistently high levels of software piracy.

For China, the report singles out historically high levels of IP infringement.

China and Russia are the usual suspects of cyberespionage. Theft of IP, the infrastructure for innovation, is one way these nations heavily influenced by communism try to stay competitive globally.

Melbourne, Australia-based agency 2thinknow has been ranking the worlds most innovative cities for the past 10 years. In its latest rankings published Feb. 23, the most innovative city in a communist country, Beijing, ranks No. 30, and Moscow ranks No. 43.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), not a single Chinese university ranks among the worlds top 30 in terms of most-cited scientific publications.

Universities are breeding grounds for young, innovative minds. Within their walls, ideas are born and debated, companies are formed, and research is conducted. They are key components of a healthy innovation ecosystem.

Harvard Business School professor William Kirby wrote about the strict limitations within Chinese universities on what faculty could discuss with students.

Faculty could not talk about any past failures of the communist party. They could not talk about the advantages of separation between the judicial and executive arms of the government, Kirby stated in an article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR) in 2015.

It is hard to overstate the impact of these strictures on campus discourse and the learning environment, Kirby wrote.

Protestors shout slogans during a rally against a pro-Beijing official who was appointed as chairman of Hong Kong Universitys (HKU) governing council, in Hong Kong on Jan. 3, 2016. Fears are growing over political interference in the citys education system. (Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images)

Communism is known for its corruption and cronyism. A Science editorial noted that the bulk of the Chinese governments R&D budget is allocated due to political connection rather than merit based on the judgment of independent review panels.

McKinseys 2014 report The China Effect on Global Innovation noted that the impact of innovation on Chinas economic growth declined to the lowest level since about 1980.

China has a massive consumer market and a government willing to invest huge sums of moneynearly US$200 billion on R&D in 2014and its universities graduate more than 1.2 million engineers each year.

Garry Kasparov,former world chess champion

Clearly, China has so much potential, but it is the United States that has taken the lead in technological dominance.

The country [China] has yet to make an internal-combustion engine that could be exported and lags behind developed countries in sciences ranging from biotechnology to materials, according to McKinsey.

While almost all western technology giants have R&D labs in China, the bulk of what they do is local adaptation rather than developing next generation technologies and products, wrote Anil Gupta and Haiyan Wang in a 2016 article in the HBR. Gupta and Wang are co-authors of the book Getting China and India Right.

Excessive government involvement often leads to waste and excessoverbuilding and overcapacity. Chinas real estate bubble and steel mills are two such examples.

Lately, the Chinese government has been trying to spur an onslaught of startups by providing them with generous subsidies. But it doesnt have the savvy to pick winners and losers. Instead, a more efficient use of capital comes from knowledgeable and discerning venture capitalists. Most startups are meant to fail after all.

Why China Cant Innovate, a 2014 article in the HBR co-authored by Kirby, noted that the Chinese Communist Party requires one of its representatives to be associated with every company of more than 50 employees. Larger firms must have a Party cell, whose leader reports directly to the Party at the municipal or provincial level.

These requirements compromise the proprietary nature of a firms strategic direction, operations, and competitive advantage, thus constraining normal competitive behavior, not to mention the incentives that drive founders to grow their own businesses, according to the article.

The system of parallel governance constrains the flow of ideas. Chinas innovation largely comes through creative adaptation, which can mean a lot of things including foreign acquisitions, partnerships, but also cybertheft.

Communism is against private ownership of property. This puts a damper on innovation.

The key to whether China can become a country of innovation is tied to the respect of property rights and the rule of law, wrote Ma Guangyuan, an independent economist in China.

In his blog, Ma cites renowned U.S. investor William Bernsteins writings, which discuss property rights as being the most important of four factors needed for rapid economic growth. Guangyang wrote, Entrepreneurs live in constant fear of punishment, due to the questionable business practices in China, an environment that leads them to lose trust in a viable long-term economic future.

Capital flight out of China is one symptom of the problem; another is the preference of wealthy Chinese to send their children overseas for higher education. The loss of entrepreneurs like Li Ka-shing and Cao Dewang is a sign that greener pastures lie abroad.

Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, a Russian, wrote: Communism as a political ideology is as bankrupt as ever.

In his blog, he went on to say: It is no coincidence that the values of the American century are also the values of innovation and exploration. Individual freedom, risk-taking, investment, opportunity, ambition, and sacrifice. Religious and secular dictatorships cannot compete with these values and so they attack the systems founded upon them.

The authors of the HBR article Why China Cant Innovate recognize the nearly limitless capability of the Chinese individual, however, the political environment in China acts like a choke collar on innovation.

The problem, we think, is not the innovative or intellectual capacity of the Chinese people, which is boundless, but the political world in which their schools, universities, and businesses need to operate, which is very much bounded, they wrote.

Follow Rahul on Twitter @RV_ETBiz

Communism is estimated to have killed at least 100 million people, yet its crimes have not been compiled and its ideology still persists. Epoch Times seeks to expose the history and beliefs of this movement, which has been a source of tyranny and destruction since it emerged.

See the entire series of articles here.

Originally posted here:
How Communism Stifles Innovation - The Epoch Times

In the Hollywood hit comedy starring Daniel Brhl, a son goes to extraordinary lengths to try to convince his sick mother that she is still living in the hardline socialist state - despite the fact that the Berlin Wall has fallen and the regime is no more.

At the Alexa-Senioren-Residenz in Dresden the same principle applies. And dementia sufferers have shown progress in remembering things - and generally enjoying life more - in a part of the home given over to the German Democratic Republic.

There is a shop there selling products from the lost socialist Atlantis. Films and TV shows from the time when it was Soviet Russia's closest ally are screened in a room where pictures of former DDR rulers are on display.

GETTY

When home director Gunter Wolfram saw people "remembering things from the past when they couldn't remember their own name" he expanded the experiment.

Old objects from East Germany - such as a bread slicer, original wall hangings, a Communist-manufactured tape recorder and piles of old newspapers and magazines - now give those who grew up under Communism and grew old under capitalism a boost that no drugs can achieve.

GETTY

We got the idea to set up an area of the home in the style of the GDR

Gunter Wolfram

One carer at the home said: "Suddenly, amazing things are happening. Residents who barely could remember their names suddenly began talking about the brands of toothpaste from their youth, the petrol they put in their mopeds and the sorts of gherkins they used to buy."

Director Wolfram went on: "We got the idea to set up an area of the home in the style of the GDR. There is now, thanks to flea markets and e-Bay, an electric mixer from the GDR, GDR furniture, GDR cleaning fluids and much else besides.

"Since we started this therapy space, the number of applications for people to come and live here has rocketed."

Therapist Alicia Schppe and her team oversee the residents in this recreated piece of East Germany.

"Since it started, many have started to feed themselves again for the first time, can go to the loo unaided again and no longer lie around in bed all day."

View original post here:
Care home experiments has OAPs believe they are still living in Communist East Germany - Express.co.uk

Forbes

South America's Last Bastion Of Socialism Is Falling To Pieces Forbes The currency is worth a dime, though probably not even that much. The brain drain is immense. People are starving. Unemployment is in the double digits. Inflation is triple digits. And its president, Nicholas Maduro of the disastrous United Socialist ... and more »

See the original post:
South America's Last Bastion Of Socialism Is Falling To Pieces - Forbes

Citizen service is the very American idea that we meet our challenges not as isolated individuals but as members of a true community, with all of us working together. Our mission is nothing less than to spark a renewed sense of obligation, a new sense of duty, a new season of service. President Bill Clinton

When the United States was created, it was created with a new form of government, a democratic-republic, where the people have a great deal of power but not the final say. As one should remember from the last election, that those with the most popular support do not always win. While in this case, the majority peoples opinion was right, one easily could create a case in theory where the popular opinion is wrong and should not be supported by the government. In the article, it is stated that it would best for corporations to be owned and operated by employees, where the employees would all have an equal final say, one voice, one vote. But this is not true even in the USAs democratic-republic, so to work towards that goal is unreasonable. What the article is arguing is that workers, executives, and customers need to be more connected to each other and be willing to assist each other so that the economy acts in a more just way. This lack of connectedness is not just present in the workplace but in the society as whole as well.

The specific suggestion that cooperatives are the best way in which to create a more democratic economy is misguided because it provides a solution that is too simple and inapplicable. Co-ops could certainly work in many conditions, but the better overall solution is to use the current options available to increase the connectedness among the executives, employees, and customers. This could be achieved for example through strengthening labor unions, or through forcing corporations to have more local governing structures or through breaking up larger corporations. Co-ops are not the only way.

In Dr. Putnams book Bowling Alone, one sees that a current problem in society as whole is that people are increasingly focused on themselves and less on others and groups. The American system was never supposed to work under these circumstances where employees and employers are completely disconnected and do not care about each others well-being. The answer is not more government involvement but more community involvement. Government involvement can certainly be useful especially for those in the middle and lower classes, but it will not fix the problems that exist in society. If the government takes more of a role in caring for others without the society first gaining increased connectedness and compassion, then the government will only make the problem worse. For example, people will not see how their taxes are benefiting others and then question why are they paying taxes at all for people who they do not know. When people know about and care for each others life more, then the economy can work for all people, and one can create a system that is more democratic.

Kenneth Goetz, MCAS 20

Excerpt from:
LTE: A Response to Socialism Is the Solution - The Heights

This presents a crucial test to the tea party movement that has reshaped American politics since 2008. The most obvious challenge is that Trump has chosen to leave Social Security and Medicare alone, two of the biggest components of the federal budget and two prime targets for conservatives like Speaker Paul Ryan.

Trump is going to assure Congress that the draconian cuts to domestic programs like the Environmental Protection Agency, reductions which tea party Republicans love, will balance out the huge increase in military spending. But the reality will be different.

President Ronald Reagan learned in the early 1980s that cutting government programs is extremely hard in practice. When Reagan slashed income taxes and boosted military spending, promising to balance the budget with domestic cuts, he failed. Reagan also backed away from cuts to Social Security and Medicare when he faced a political backlash for trying.

In the end, deficits skyrocketed in the 1980s. Reagan faced a Democratic House. Yet we have seen that Trump is already learning how hard it is to cut government, even in a moment of united partisan control, as he backs away from eliminating increasingly popular parts of the Affordable Care Act. In his speech to Congress, he also promised to move forward with a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, which surely won't sit well with fiscal conservatives in his party.

Finally, this increase in military spending is a significant expansion of the federal government. While tea party Republicans might want to distinguish national security from the rest of government, in reality if they swallow this proposal they are revealing that conservatism really is about what kind of government to support, not whether big government is bad.

Tea party Republicans insisted that they would be different and for much of the time that they have had representation in Congress since 2008 they have been true to the word. They have been an intensely ideological coalition, insisting on a commitment to purity on policy that left the Obama administration deeply frustrated and tied up in knots.

Added to all this is the curveball that the president threw when he announced that he is open to immigration reform that would allow a large number of undocumented immigrants to remain in the country. Despite his continued attacks on undocumented immigrants in his address, the mere mention of a proposal to liberalize policy is anathema to many Tea Party Republicans who represent constituencies that are sympathetic to hardline anti-immigration sentiment.

The Republicans went to great lengths to fight Obama on spending cuts. When Obama sought compromise, they stood their ground in the budget battles of 2011, threatening to send the federal government into default. Hawkish Republicans were equally frustrated with their tea party colleagues when Congress could not reach agreement on spending in 2013 and as a result of the rules put into place in 2011, forced the implementation of budget sequestration that imposed caps on military and not domestic spending.

When Republican leaders like former Speaker John Boehner showed that they were willing to give even an inch to the Democrats, the tea party toppled them from power.

The current Speaker, Paul Ryan, has built much of his career around promising tea party Republicans that he would move forward with "entitlement reform" (meaning Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts) despite the political risks. He has been a zealot on this issue and hoped that this moment of unified government would offer an unprecedented opportunity. A frustrated Speaker Ryan, who said after the election that Trump had a "mandate," has now warned: "I've been a big time entitlement reformer for a long time because if you don't start bending the curve in the out years, we are hosed."

By supporting Trump, tea party Republicans would also put themselves on the record as being in favor of big increases in certain kinds of government spending.

Tea party Republicans will soon discover that President Trump's budget doesn't really add up. They will be receiving numbers from a Republican administration, which generally is sympathetic to their goals on most major issues, that will contradict their promise to the reddest constituents that they would hold firm on the anti-government cause. Jim DeMint, the former South Carolina senator, said, "America cannot wait any longer before we get serious about balancing the budget."

Trump is putting the Republican Party in a difficult spot at a moment of united government that could easily have turned into a period of triumph. If tea party Republican members of Congress swallow what the President has sent them, they will quickly reveal to their supporters that they are as craven and opportunistic as anyone else in Washington. They will place themselves at risk to be "tea partied" out of office and they will greatly damage their own credibility with the electorate in the coming election cycle.

If they hold to principle, as they did under President Obama, then the Republicans as a party will be facing a dangerous moment. A Republican President, who has shown that he doesn't have much loyalty when it comes to people getting in the way of his success, will be facing off against a huge portion of the congressional Republicans. The Freedom Caucus, with about 32 votes, has the numbers in the House to tie up the administration.

Will Republicans unite and make the most of their control of Congress and the White House? Or will many of them remain true to their small government philosophy and risk war with a White House that wants to reshape Washington?

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Trump's huge challenge to the tea party - CNN.com