>The most depressing thing is that our generation can achieve so much more. We have more scientists, more engineers and much larger economies than babyboomer ge

>The most depressing thing is that our generation can achieve so much more. We have more scientists, more engineers and much larger economies than babyboomer generation. You're proceeding from a false assumption here. The quality of your scientists matters far more than the quantity. The tail end of the curve is where you get the big breakthroughs, and those people are no more likely to be scientists than ever. Maybe less, since there's so much money to be made in Wall St. And research was much more efficient back then. You could mix a bunch of nasty stuff together, get your results, and then dump the rest down the sink. It may not have been a good idea, but that's a whole lot cheaper than wading through the hazmat bureaucracies we have today today. There are all kinds of ways a larger and more intrusive government "taxes" efficiency. Each regulation makes sense on its own, but add them all together and you have a big drag on progress. As the writer says, it's easier just to write software than to do anything in the physical world. And the military spending point really favors the present. During the cold war we spent as much as 10% of GDP on the military trying to contain the Soviets. The Iraq war was nothing compared to that - we haven't spent more than 5% GDP on the military since the 90s.