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Governments cannot invent or develop technology, they only hinder it.
by afsina 10y ago
Governments cannot invent or develop technology, they only hinder it.
- vidarh 10y ago.. and yet here you are using the internet.
- afsina 10y agoSome entrepreneur or company in silicon valley would have invented stg better and cheaper.
- vidarh 10y agoSilicon Valley itself wouldn't have existed in the form it does without the huge government investments in the area, so even if that happened - and you can speculate all you want but facts remain they didn't -, it'd still be a win for government R&D funding.
- pjc50 10y ago.. said literally in reply to a comment about the Manhattan project.
- jMyles 10y agoGP's post is oversimplistic, but I think there's something there. Maybe it's better stated as, "Governments tend toward invention of things that, in the long term, are destructive and divisive rather than peaceful and collaborative." If "technology" is defined (or construed) to more closely follow successful human evolution (which I think is reasonable), then weapons of mass destructive are a differently (albeit obviously related) phenomenon and not "technology." It depends on how you view the age-old political question of means and ends. If the latter grows out of the former, and if governments, as monopoly-holders on initiation of violence, use force as their means, then naturally we can expect things that come from government to grow toward those ends.
- btym 10y agoA comment made on the Internet...
- whazor 10y agoActually, you could not be more wrong. If you read The Entrepreneurial State from Mariana Mazzucato[1]. It argues that most inventions are coming from public funding. Companies are the ones that customize to the users need and then monetize it. [1] https://www.demos.co.uk/files/Entrepreneurial_State_-_web.pdf https://www.demos.co.uk/files/Entrepreneurial_State_-_web.pd...