I'm not sure whether the parent commenter meant "zero sum" in a pure fiscal sense or as a descriptor of productivity/capability/something-not-money. Yes, a dol

I'm not sure whether the parent commenter meant "zero sum" in a pure fiscal sense or as a descriptor of productivity/capability/something-not-money. Yes, a dollar taken from someone and given to another is a net null. But when we consider scale and efficacy of large organizational actors, perhaps we notice the potential of these tax dollars. It's not just the individual line A to B that must be considered. It's A to Gov to B. I can't fund high-capacity battery research the same way the government can. I'd need to find, say, 10,000 other folks to throw $100 into a pool that we could give to a researcher to fund her experiments. She hires help, does work, maybe something comes from it. But, How do we know she's using our money as intended? How do we know she's producing results, and the quality of those? How do we select her from all the other applicants? Well, let's hire an auditor to check that the money is being used appropriately. Then, we need other folks in her field to confirm for us that her research is productive. We'd also need those experts (or others) to help in the technical review of her proposal against other proposals to select the most beneficial one. Interestingly, it all starts to look like a bureaucracy. Because that's ultimately what a government, in all its spite, ends up providing -- a shared set of resources through which a society can effect greater change as a whole on itself than it could individually. I'm sorry that your experiences and epistemology lead you toward contempt for such an apparatus, but please recognize the benefits and net-positive effect, particularly to science and engineering, such an organization has demonstrably provided.