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Because it's hard and especially hard for monolithic systems (i.e. governments) to go up against private enterprises in certain spaces. Governments are really g
by macspoofing 7y ago
Because it's hard and especially hard for monolithic systems (i.e. governments) to go up against private enterprises in certain spaces. Governments are really good at funding cutting edge research that does not have an immediate or obvious market (e.g. early internet, space exploration, fundamental physics research, etc.). Governments are not good at actually competing in a space where there is a market and private competition.
>But I would think it would be more productive to have an international software arms race than a military / space arms race.
There is. It's called 'the market'. We are in the midst of an 'international software arms race', and this arms race spans every category of software. You want project management software? There are a thousand options. In a top-down communist-style system, you would maybe get one option.
- naveen99 7y agoYeah, I guess it’s more profitable for them to just collect taxes from Microsoft instead. But I am not sure it can’t be done. What if the government deployed desktops to all citizens that were centrally administered, and requires them to be used for all government business / taxes, public services. Clearly I am talking about a dystopian society... but I don’t see why some dictator or communist wouldn’t want to implement it. Aren’t large Chinese companies essentially branches of the government? Why doesn’t China want a fully controlled clone of Microsoft ? They clearly wanted their own google: baidu, their own amazon: Ali baba, their own Facebook: wechat... It’s no more inefficient in principal to have government controlled personal computers as it is to have corporate controlled work computers. Work desktops are famously useless with all the required bloatware, encryption, antivirus, restrictive group policies and internet policies... but corporations think it’s worth the loss of efficiency, electricity, employee time to have a stranglehold on their computing. Why wouldn’t the super power hungry governments want the same ?
- goatinaboat 7y agoWhat if the government deployed desktops to all citizens that were centrally administered, and requires them to be used for all government business / taxes, public services. France tried this, le Minitel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
- andrekandre 7y agojust to add to your overall point: > Governments are not good at actually competing in a space where there is a market and private competition. they are also good at serving markets that are too unprofitable for private companies to serve (such as public transportation or housing for extremely poor people, cheap postal services, fuel subsidies etc)