I've got news for you: historically, "centralised" research has led to fewer innovations in consumer technology and bureaucrats unilaterally redirecting funds away from promising areas for political reasons. For just two examples: Cybernetics was the target of a political campaign in the USSR, and their biologists denied genetics of all things and tried to promote agricultural policy based on genetics being wrong.

Alternatively, we could just look at where the USSR is now to see how well their centralised research and development efforts are going 👀

[–] sibachian@lemmy.ml 6 points 9 months ago

your example is irrelevant and makes little sense as a counter when all research and innovation globally is still paid for by taxes. no business will spend billions on new ideas, they spend billions on commercial application of public (tax paid) ideas in order to profit.

[–] ShepherdPie@midwest.social 1 points 9 months ago

You could even lump giant US corporations into that group too. Companies like IBM innovated less and less the larger they got. You can't expect constant innovation from a singular machine that runs the same all the time.