Comments by "Holger P." (@holger_p) on "How Semiconductors Ruined East Germany" video.

Since you compare scale of productions, just remember, east germany had 17 million people in 1990, Japan hat 125 million, USA had 250 million. Around 15 times larger. Maybe this makes the gap of "producing in a year what others do in a day" a little smaller. The price paid was not producing cars, not updating chemical industries and finally not importing coffee or pineapple for the population.
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If they had technology to build a factory, of course they are able to create a copy. You have to imagine, it's all monopolies, no company exists twice or has competition. They built a machine to produce , let's say a disk drive, just one time or two times, to run it in one single factory only. Of course it's more effective to build it 3rd or 4th time and sell it. But demand was probably low.
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Living in 1960 like in others in 1955 is not really that bad. Beeing early is an advantage in capitalism, you have to be first in market, it's quiet meaningless if you just produce for self support and you have a state monopoly. It's not more than an image problem, to be "behind". This kind of "planned economy" is quiet good to keep up with a current status, entire marxist ideology is based on keeping things running. What Marx had missed is innovations. New demands didn't exist by definition. So creating new industries from scratch- not taking over from former owners, not copying anybody, was a challenge , or let's say a permanent struggle.
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The word of stealing is just in the meaning of infringing copyrights. Nobody lost anything, not one cent. There was no competition on the global market created, there was not one chip sold less by TI and others. It's just considered unlawful, but actually not harmful to anybody. It's the same as US "stealing" rocket science or scientists from the Nazis.
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@mathiasheyer3079 Of course there was creativity and engeneering and production. It's hard to say how much technology was "invented" or just illegally copied. Even copying needs brains. You have to remember the state propaganda, raised around this industry to create pride in the nation. Of course they claimed it's all based on east germans science and innovations alone. The ratio of spionage was never unveiled, as said in the video correctly. From "we don't know" you cannot conclude "there wasn't anything". "Home use" like the C64 or the U880, is more important for human development, for people starting to involve in computer science, for learning purpose. They hadn't had any technological or industrial meaning. Same as electronic calculators in schools, it's just an application of technology.
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