You are choosing to assign the entire value of the internet to government. This is folklore that is nothing less than nonsensical. If your goal is to "destroy

You are choosing to assign the entire value of the internet to government. This is folklore that is nothing less than nonsensical. If your goal is to "destroy" my argument you have to do far better than that. The ARPANET was going to go absolutely nowhere without private enterprise rescuing it from obscurity and launching it into every-day life like a rocket. Government did not PLAN the internet as we know it today. They didn't even have a clue. Back before the internet got launched to the masses the masses were using services such as Compuserve, AOL and a number of others. The "internet" was going to evolve out of one of these efforts one way or another. It just so happened that industry found something that could be leveraged to make this happen and they did. In fact, I believe Compuserve was one of the first to offer it to it's millions (yes, millions) of customers. It's almost like the idea of giving some guy credit for the invention of the wheel. What, nobody else was going to invent the wheel if he did not? Nonsense. For every government project that resulted in a successful transfer to private industry there's probably ten or more that are still sucking money out of all of us and are useless. Government-funded initiatives are very important, but, please, don't give them god-like attributes as if claiming that without government programs humankind would still be rubbing two sticks together to make fire.