> You say it as if it was easy. Like they had it handed to them. Clearly a lot of tumblers fell into place, but that doesn't mean the NSF is due a share of the

> You say it as if it was easy. Like they had it handed to them. Clearly a lot of tumblers fell into place, but that doesn't mean the NSF is due a share of the profits. Would you claim Harvard is due a share of Microsoft if it gave Bill Gates a scholarship? A private educational institute giving a student a scholarship is very much not the same thing as a public institution granting monies for research. That isn't to say the NSF ought to receive a share of profits, necessarily, but your comparison isn't reasonable. Moreover, it underlines the point: that the risk of research was socialized (NSF Grant), but the profits were privatized (Google). I think the debate is whether or not that's a good thing. Personally I think it depends on the context but generally I don't think that public grants should result in private profits (at least not exclusively), and it should be especially closely scrutinized if any of the resulting research work is not 100% made available as public knowledge. > What are you getting at? I have no idea what you're trying to say here. He's mocking the "rah rah free market! American Capitalism is awesome!" mentality that he perceives "Americans" (clearly a generalization; I doubt he thinks all, and hopefully not even most, Americans actually subscribe to that view) to have. I can't say I disagree with his point. It's especially prevalent in the software industry, where all the programmers are Jon Galt (apologies to Garrison Keillor). It's an especially amusing thing to see given just how much the software industry is and has been, since its inception, reliant on government for its existence.