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And you thought Silicon Valley was a free market Capitalist system. As the article notes, many of the big innovations have come out of Big Government spending o
by abalone 10y ago
And you thought Silicon Valley was a free market Capitalist system. As the article notes, many of the big innovations have come out of Big Government spending of taxpayer dollars through agencies like DARPA. Yet most of the profits stay in private hands.
- jeffmcmahan 10y agoAnd all God's people said: amen.
- icebraining 10y agoAnd you thought Silicon Valley was a free market Capitalist system Who did? Certainly not people reading HN attentively, which gives plenty of coverage to technical developments by governmental institutions (and universities). DARPA alone has 2000+ stories about them. Yet most of the profits stay in private hands. Of course. Public institutions don't make a profit, by definition.
- clydethefrog 10y agoSee the book The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato who covers this topic. "Her book comprehensively debunks the myth of a lumbering, bureaucratic state versus a dynamic, innovative private sector. In a series of case studies—including IT, biotech and nanotech—Professor Mazzucato shows that the opposite is true: the private sector only finds the courage to invest after an entrepreneurial state has made the high-risk investments. In an intensely researched chapter, she reveals that every technology that makes the iPhone so ‘smart’ was government funded: the Internet, GPS, its touch-screen display and the voice-activated Siri. And in another chapter she argues that the green revolution is today is missing the kind of patient public sector financing, and de-financialized private sector, that got the IT revolution off the ground." http://marianamazzucato.com/projects/the-entrepreneurial-state/the-entrepreneurial-state-usa/ http://marianamazzucato.com/projects/the-entrepreneurial-sta...
- davidiach 10y agoAren't profits taxed? Where does Big Government get all that money in the first place?