INNOVATION FUNDS

There is perhaps no single English adjective which may descriptively encompass benevolence combined with low efficacy ,as well as German word "gutmuetig".

So, gutmuetige EU every year hands out billions of money for innovation funds, in hope to lead the world in producing innovations. The EU divides the money using geographic/demographic principle , based - sensibly - on assumption that talents are born everywhere and need only to be found and supported. Considering scale , there is no way for large organisation as EU to attend to each single case.

The same principle is used in each further step of distribution; money arrive to national bodies - ministries and is divided among administrative units - districts , counties, etc. There , usually next step of geographic distribution begins , and money are divided between towns and villages.

Any other way leads to immediate and loud protests , where major argument is " the village A got 2 millions Euro last year and our village only 1.5 !!! "

Such system works quite well to get streets freshly paved and water flowing in pipelines , which certainly is benevolent , albeit usually costs double the commercial price of similar jobs.

But, the system is rather unlikely to produce waves of new Faradays, Edisons , Marconis . etc...

Why? An old russian comic book comes to my memory, from series called "12 chairs":

A guy has found 100-rubel note at the entrance to his factory (large factory, as it used to be in USSR). Communism brought up honest people, so he immediately placed an ad on wall- newsboard , near canteen , saying :"I have found 100 roubel note. The owner please come to my room No.1123 on third floor to pick it up".

(Today he would probably use internet, but in those times wall newsboards were standard means of intra-factory communication.)

The story ends , that before the lucky founder managed to remove the unfortunate ad from the news board , he was forced to apply for short -term loan in factory mutual-support fund against his full next-year salary, in order to satisfy the demands of unending queue of qualified applicants. All were perfectly well justfied demands...