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Also, I wonder where any of this (solar city, spacex and tesla) would be without government help Has any world-changing industry gotten anywhere without govern

Also, I wonder where any of this (solar city, spacex and tesla) would be without government help Has any world-changing industry gotten anywhere without government help?

twoodfin 11y ago
Many world-changing industries have not needed $10^8 loans or $5,000 per-unit consumer subsidies to take off. I'm not arguing (here, at least) that those are bad ideas, just that there's a broad spectrum in what constitutes government "help".
- michaelchisari 11y ago
  I think if you look at anything on the scale of what Musk is doing, then you'd be hard pressed to find many for whom $100,000,000 isn't a drop in the bucket. Aerospace? Energy? Transportation? All of these have had extraordinary subsidies in terms of loans, grants, tax breaks, etc. Did you have something specific in mind?
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >Many world-changing industries have not needed $10^8 loans or $5,000 per-unit consumer subsidies to take off. Industries such as what? If you don't throw subsidies at key industries (energy, automotive, aerospace, computers), some other countries will, and those countries will inevitably come to dominate. Most countries that do this might try to hide it, but they still do it.
  - twoodfin 11y ago
    The typical home PC was not bought with a tax credit. If government-directed industrial policy were the deciding factor in a sector's success, we'd all be in awe of the massive, globally dominant Japanese software industry, or the French Minitel business.
    - crdoconnor 11y ago
      >The typical home PC was not bought with a tax credit. A tax credit isn't the only way to give a subsidy. In the case of the microelectronics industry, much like aerospace, subsidies were (and still are) supplied via enormous levels of government spending on military/space technologies - all the way from the Manhattan project, to defense funded Bell labs projects, to the space race. No NASA and no ARPA and no Bell labs = no PC. >If government-directed industrial policy were the deciding factor in a sector's success, we'd all be in awe of the massive, globally dominant Japanese software industry No, we'd be in awe of the massive, globally dominant Japanese automotive industry. Oh wait... >or the French Minitel business. Minitel may very well have been the dominant 'internet' today had it been an open technology like Arpanet. The technology landscape of the time is littered with the corpses of companies who tried to own the Internet.

Also, I wonder where any of this (solar city, spacex and tesla) would be without government help Has any world-changing industry gotten anywhere without government help?

twoodfin 11y ago

Many world-changing industries have not needed $10^8 loans or $5,000 per-unit consumer subsidies to take off. I'm not arguing (here, at least) that those are bad ideas, just that there's a broad spectrum in what constitutes government "help".

michaelchisari 11y ago
I think if you look at anything on the scale of what Musk is doing, then you'd be hard pressed to find many for whom $100,000,000 isn't a drop in the bucket. Aerospace? Energy? Transportation? All of these have had extraordinary subsidies in terms of loans, grants, tax breaks, etc. Did you have something specific in mind?
crdoconnor 11y ago
>Many world-changing industries have not needed $10^8 loans or $5,000 per-unit consumer subsidies to take off. Industries such as what? If you don't throw subsidies at key industries (energy, automotive, aerospace, computers), some other countries will, and those countries will inevitably come to dominate. Most countries that do this might try to hide it, but they still do it.
- twoodfin 11y ago
  The typical home PC was not bought with a tax credit. If government-directed industrial policy were the deciding factor in a sector's success, we'd all be in awe of the massive, globally dominant Japanese software industry, or the French Minitel business.
  - crdoconnor 11y ago
    >The typical home PC was not bought with a tax credit. A tax credit isn't the only way to give a subsidy. In the case of the microelectronics industry, much like aerospace, subsidies were (and still are) supplied via enormous levels of government spending on military/space technologies - all the way from the Manhattan project, to defense funded Bell labs projects, to the space race. No NASA and no ARPA and no Bell labs = no PC. >If government-directed industrial policy were the deciding factor in a sector's success, we'd all be in awe of the massive, globally dominant Japanese software industry No, we'd be in awe of the massive, globally dominant Japanese automotive industry. Oh wait... >or the French Minitel business. Minitel may very well have been the dominant 'internet' today had it been an open technology like Arpanet. The technology landscape of the time is littered with the corpses of companies who tried to own the Internet.