| | | I have never stated the government started everything. That would be as ridiculous as your claims it help start nothing.
Take the airline industry. It greatly benefited from aircraft development during WWI and WWII. Granted, there was the airplane races between the wars that pushed a lot of development between the wars. And who sponsored much of that racing? The DOD. This should be no surprise since many of the companies involved in commercial aviation were also military contractors. To imagine there was no influence at all would be asinine.
Likewise with the auto industry. Who do you think built those military vehicles like tanks? Those government contracts were a huge factor in which companies survived and prospered and which ones are footnotes in the history books.
Now as to your drivel about the Internet. Sure, something Internet-like was coming. Outside of the government-funded Internet, the most likely system was France's Minitel. Actually, Minitel was more likely because of the technology and many in this country were pushing us to adopt it or create something modeled on it. It was a client-server system as were things like Compuserve. None were distributed, peer to peer systems like the Internet because a client-server system was more efficient given the technology of the time. Peer to peer is more robust and future-proof, but not as efficient with respect to resources. And the Internet had the extra and very important bonus of being non-proprietary. So innovation was not restricted to the providers. This proved to be a crucial aspect. Al Gore was instrumental in creating and passing the legislation that brought the existing ARPANET infrastructure to national status and opening it to commercial use. This is indisputable.
If it hadn't of been for government support, we wouldn't have any presence in space. SpaceX couldn't exist because a) most of its technologies are derived from work done for the government(spin welding anyone?) and b) government contracts, both ours and from other countries, is crucial for its growth. It would probably be ok without them, but growth would be much, much slower.
I have, in fact, started a business and been involved with the start up of others. I tend to recognize that many would be impossible without things like roads and other infrastructure, things you seem to assume grow out of the landscape, maintained by elves.
I realize that, for religious reasons you need to believe that the government is never a force for good. But that doesn't mean you can have your own set of "facts". |
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