I could not have said it better myself. I’ve seen “behind the curtain” in both private and publicly funded research. I can’t think of a single area where priva

I could not have said it better myself. I’ve seen “behind the curtain” in both private and publicly funded research. I can’t think of a single area where private industry isn’t standing on the shoulders of collective advancement. (I speak from experience as someone who holds a degree in one of the fields I’m about to mention.) The biggest leaps tend to be made as a result of public-private partnerships. For example, essentially the totality of fundamental knowledge relating to aeronautics and aerospace, advanced medicine and life-saving pharmaceuticals (especially drugs for orphaned diseases), and any of the examples already offered in this thread. Private ownership of scientific knowledge isn’t inherently a bad thing, but locking it up indirectly by virtue of eliminating all public funding for it does nothing more than to invite a new corporatist driven Dark Age. Cyberpunk 2077 is a fun place to visit on the screen. I guess some people do want to live there.