Comment by YossarianFrPrez

In "The Utopia of Rules" David Graeber (author of "On Bullshit Jobs") suggests that one reason why "bell labs worked" is because the corporate tax rate was relatively high during the golden age of bell labs. This meant that forced with the choice of either a) sending a decent chunk of revenue to the government or b) reinvesting it in R&D as a business expense, AT&T chose the latter.

This seems to me to be under-discussed re: Bell Labs.