You know, I've just about had enough of libertarians and conservatives claiming such moral superiority of their economic world view that they perceive any disag

You know, I've just about had enough of libertarians and conservatives claiming such moral superiority of their economic world view that they perceive any disagreement with it as obviously wrong. I was replying to a parent comment that claimed that ARPA wasn't particularly important in the greater scheme of things ("If it wasn't ARPA, it would have been something else"). I replied by pointing out that even when ARPA did exist, it took quite some time before the free market started churning out Internet alternatives (none of which really survived, by the way), so perhaps the initial bootstrapping was useful. I also pointed out the the ARPA internet defined the character of the "public internet", which most people here think is vastly superior to the walled garden alternatives that the free market cooked up years later. I didn't go into a long treatise on economics because that wasn't the point I was responding to. Just because I don't take every tangentially related opportunity to evangelize my personal thinking on economics does not mean that I'm ignorant about economics. I've said this before to people who take a moralistic tone on economics: if you are a true believer of purely free market economics thinking, please take the time to read extensively from respected economists who disagree with your world view. There are plenty of Nobel Prize winning economists who disagree with your position, so it shouldn't be hard. I, personally, have a somewhat nuanced (read: "not unprincipled") view largely because I have read extensively from people with radically different positions on economics. It really helps.